The Winds of Change Read Free Page B

bag into the sink and went to his chair in the living room. He stared out of the window at blackness. In another minute he was up and rooting in his coat pocket, searching for the incense.
    Jury fixed one stick in the rough stone holder and lit the tip.
    The dish in the kitchen clattered as if the dog were shoving it around with his nose. Stone must have smelled the incense, the strong fragrance of patchouli, for he left the bowl for this more interesting event in the living room. He sat beside the chair and watched the spindle of smoke rise toward the ceiling. He looked from the smoke to Jury and back again. His nose quivered a little, taking in the unfamiliar scent.
    During that final visit to Newcastle last year, Sarah had retrieved her photo album and they had looked at snapshots of themselves as children, again throwing spanners in Jury’s memory works, although she hadn’t purposely done that; Jury had brought up the old days and her derisive mood had changed-she had simply wanted to look at the pictures. They had sat with the album on the table between them, turning pages. It was as if in this sharing of childhood pictures they were acknowledging something between them
    You wife, mahn? You laddv fren? No, it’s for my cousin.
    He watched the thin trail of smoke curling toward the ceiling, and listened to Stone’s tail swish along the floor.
    Like something almost being said.

3

    The dead woman lay on a stone bench inside a stone enclosure that looked much like a shelter to ward off bad weather at a bus stop, as if she’d been waiting for one and simply fallen over, her torso on the bench, her legs off, feet dragging on the stone floor.
    This shelter stood at the bottom of the large garden of Angel Gate. The garden had been neglected over the years and was now in the throes of refurbishment, being redesigned and reestablished. Thus, the first persons there in the early morning were the principal gardener and his daughter, a horticulturist. It was they who discovered the body. The next to arrive was the cook-housekeeper. She was busy giving tea to the father-daughter gardening team and any of the police who wanted it and who had arrived later from Launceston and Exeter.
    Brian Macalvie, divisional commander with the Devon and Cornwall police, stood with his hands in his coat pockets. Standing about were some two dozen crime scene and forensics people from Launceston police headquarters and Macalvie’s people from Exeter. Brian Macalvie, motionless and silent, had been looking down at the dead woman for a good two minutes (‘which you wouldn’t think was a long time,’ one of his forensics team had saidto a friend over a pint at the local, ‘but you just try it sometime; it’s an eternity, is what it is’).
    No one standing right near Macalvie, then, was any more animated than the corpse. No one was allowed to touch anything until Macalvie was good and done. This irritated the doctor who’d been called to the scene (local and not indoctrinated to the divisional commander’s odd ways). He had made a move toward the body and had been roughly pulled back by his coat sleeve by the chief crime scene officer, Gilly Thwaite.
    ‘For God’s sakes,’ said the uninitiated doctor, ‘it’s a murder scene, not a funeral. I’ve got appointments.’
    The others, nine or ten, squinched their eyes as if over an onslaught of headache or sun and stared at the slate-gray sky as Macalvie turned to the doctor. He was a general practitioner from Launceston, but adequate (everyone but Macalvie assumed) at least to do a preliminary examination in order to sign a death certificate. The Launceston M.D. whom Macalvie liked was unavailable.
    ‘Let’s at least turn her over,’ said the doctor. Then added, acerbically, ‘I think she’s done on this side.’
    Gilly Thwaite made a noise in her throat. From here and there came a choked kind of laughter. Macalvie was not a fan of gallows humor.
    Macalvie nodded to Gilly. ‘Go