All Quiet on Arrival Read Online Free Page A

quite miserable by now. Meanwhile, Holmes stood silently aloof, undoubtedly thankful that he’d stayed in the car while Watson was making his enquiries. Even so, he probably wasn’t too hopeful that he’d escape any flack that was going. He knew instinctively that once an investigating officer started issuing Forms 163 – notice of complaint – that he’d get one too.
    â€˜And you marked the log “All quiet on arrival”, did you?’ I asked, well knowing the answer.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said Watson unhappily. I imagined that he was thinking how easy it was for blokes like me to be wise after the event. ‘It’s all right for the bloody guv’nors’ is a phrase often heard among ‘canteen lawyers’.
    â€˜We’ve not told the press that this is a murder enquiry, so I don’t want them to hear about it from you. Understood?’ Regrettably, there were coppers who’d happily part with confidential information for the price of a large Scotch, but perversely would be outraged by the offer of a straightforward bribe.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said the two PCs in unison. They were probably hoping that no one else would hear about it either for fear that a finger, most likely mine, would point in their direction.
    I turned to Dave. ‘Take these two officers into the incident room, and get as full a description as possible of the two people at Tavona Street he spoke to.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said Dave, and frowned. He always called me ‘sir’ in the presence of strangers: police and public. If he called me ‘sir’ in private it usually meant that I’d made a ridiculous comment. As for his frown, I assumed that was because I’d ended a sentence with a preposition.
    â€˜And then take Watson to the mortuary. I want to be certain that the woman he spoke to was not the woman whose body was later found in the master bedroom.’
    â€˜From Watson’s description, sir,’ said Dave, ‘there would appear to be quite a disparity in the ages of the two women.’
    â€˜I know,’ I said, ‘but from what we know of Watson’s action so far, he could have been mistaken about that, too.’
    Watson looked decidedly dejected, as well he should.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said Dave.
    As Dave and the PCs departed, Colin Wilberforce came into my office. ‘I’ve just taken a call from Chelsea, sir. A Mr James Barton went into the nick about ten minutes ago, wanting to know why his house was boarded up, and what had happened.’
    â€˜Tell Dave Poole to hand over those two PCs to someone else to take descriptions, Colin, and to get hold of a car. Oh, and tell him not to bother about getting someone to take Watson to view the body. At least, not yet. I think we might be about to solve that particular problem.’
    Minutes later we were on our way to Chelsea police station.
    James Barton was a tall, spare, silver-haired man of advancing years. He stood up when Dave and I entered the lobby of the police station. We escorted him into an interview room.
    â€˜I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Mr Barton, and this is Detective Sergeant Poole. Please sit down.’
    â€˜What on earth has happened, Chief Inspector?’ asked Barton. ‘I got home from a trip abroad this morning, and found that my house had caught fire. The police here seemed unwilling to tell me what had happened. Either that or they don’t know. And where’s my wife?’
    This was the difficult part, the part that policemen dislike the most. Over the years I’ve had occasion to tell many people of the death of their nearest and dearest, and it doesn’t get any easier. The worst is having to tell parents that their young daughter has been the victim of some paedophiliac killer.
    â€˜After the fire was put out, sir, one of the brigade officers found the dead body of a woman in the main bedroom. We think it might be