The Scent of Blood Read Free Page A

paint off the wall.
    “Remember S.M.,” I said. “Sounds threatening, doesn’t it?”
    “It does have a rather menacing tone,” agreed Graham.
    “Sandy Milford,” I mused thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t need to remember him unless he wasn’t around any more, would you?”
    “No,” said Graham. “That seems to be a fairly safe assumption.”
    “So he’s probably dead. And as Mr Monkton said it was ‘tragic’, I think we can assume he didn’t die of old age.” I looked at Graham. He was trying to avoid meeting my eyes. “We can’t ignore it,” I told him. “We’re going to have to find out what happened.”
    Gleaning information about Sandy Milford proved surprisingly easy. The Great British Public were out in force, so there were plenty of people milling around. As far as the staff were concerned, Graham and I were just like every other punter – i.e. totally invisible. Which provided us with plenty of opportunities for eavesdropping.
    Everyone who worked in that place seemed to love a good gossip, and the people who had seen the graffiti before it got scrubbed off were having a great time telling the people who hadn’t. For the next hour or so, wherever we went we heard the events of the early morning being told over and over again. In the shop, in the café, by the burger bar – if two members of staff were standing together, they seemed to be having pretty much the same conversation. Each one was marked by the same ghoulish relish, and they all went something like this:
    “In blood-red paint, it was. ‘Remember S.M.?’”
    “Sandy Milford?”
    “Who else?”
    “Who did that, then?”
    “No idea.”
    “Poor Sandy. It was a shocking waste, really it was. No one should die like that.”
    “Killed by a tiger!”
    “Horrible!”
    I glanced at Graham. He looked a little pale.
    “It’s his kiddies I feel sorry for. Poor loves.”
    “And his wife.”
    “Mr Monkton was pretty upset when he saw it.”
    “Serves him right. There are plenty of people around here who think it was all his fault. He just hasn’t kept up with things the way his father did, has he?”
    “He screamed!”
    “He never!”
    “Yes, he did.”
    “Why?”
    “That new girl came up behind him. What’s her name? Zara. She was in that old tiger outfit.”
    “I thought they got rid of that after the accident. Didn’t April say it was bad taste to keep it?”
    “That’s what I heard. God knows how she ended up wearing it.”
    “Someone’s idea of a joke?”
    “Reckon so. It made Mr Monkton nearly jump out of his skin. Silly sod. Everyone in the office saw him.”
    A heavy bout of sniggering brought each conversation to a close.
    “They don’t seem to like Mr Monkton much, do they?” I said to Graham.
    “No… And yet the man seems harmless enough,” he replied.
    “Maybe that’s the point. I mean, you wouldn’t want someone harmless in charge, would you? You’d want someone who could do the job.” I thought back to the days when my mum had worked for the Town Parks Department. She’d complained endlessly about her boss because he wasn’t “up to it”. She’d left in the end and set up her own landscape gardening business, saying she’d rather live with her own mistakes than someone else’s.
    “You could well be right,” mused Graham. “I read an article recently about what voters expect from their leaders. Charisma, intelligence, charm. They like a certain commanding presence; a superior quality. I suppose there’s no point following them otherwise.”
    “Well, Mr Monkton certainly doesn’t seem to tick any of those boxes,” I said. “Maybe that explains why he’s not popular. And if he’s not running the place as well as his dad did, no wonder people are moaning.”
    By 10.45 a.m. Graham and I knew that Sandy Milford had been a keeper who’d been killed by a tiger about a year ago, but we were no closer to knowing who’d sprayed the graffiti on the wall. And by then we were due to start