Malice in London Read Online Free Page B

edge of a flagstone and she fell sprawling to the pavement.
    The wet stone was cold on her face. She felt a sharp pain in her left side, and she couldn’t breathe. She could see a couple passing by on Charlotte Street just ahead. She tried to cry out but could only gasp for air. She managed to struggled to her feet and began to jog stiffly, clutching her side, not daring to look back. She could hear a man’s excited voice behind her now.
    With a final burst of energy, she turned the corner and ran across Windmill Street, nearly colliding with a man carrying a cane who was standing outside the Fitzrovia.
    “Sorry,” she mumbled breathlessly as she dashed into the pub.

CHAPTER 4
    Powell sat in his office Monday morning reviewing the Brighton file. As Detective-Sergeant Black had suggested in the pub, the case did have its points of interest. On the evening of March 11, at approximately nine-thirty in the evening, one Edith Smith of Number 134 Jamaica Road SE16 was searching for her dog at Butler’s Wharf, Bermondsey. Upon hearing a commotion, she observed a man attempting to climb out of the Thames. She was unable to provide assistance, and the man fell back into the river where he is presumed to have drowned. She reported the matter to the local police at Southwark Police Station. At ten-forty-three the same evening, a man’s body was recovered from the Thames along the Bermondsey Wall. There was no identification found on the body. The constable attending the scene recognized the deceased and identified him as Richard Brighton, a Labour councillor on Southwark Council, who resided nearby at Number 42 Cardamom Court. When Brighton’s spouse, Helen Brighton, returned homejust before midnight, she was met by police and taken to the mortuary to view the body, where she confirmed the ID. The results of the postmortem, conducted on the morning of March 12 at ten o’clock, indicated a blunt force trauma to the head inflicted by an unknown object. The actual cause of death was drowning. The coroner concluded that Brighton’s death was a homicide perpetrated by a person or persons unknown, possibly during the course of a robbery. Reading between the lines, Powell got the impression that the investigating officer, an Inspector Boles, was not entirely satisfied with this finding. Brighton was thirty-five years old, married, without children, and a schoolteacher by profession, Boles had added as if by way of an afterthought.
    Powell was trying to find the pathologist’s report amidst the chaos of paper on his desk when Detective-Sergeant Black walked into his office.
    “A Miss Burroughs on the phone for you, sir.”
    Powell frowned. He was still feeling a bit sheepish about Friday night. “I’m up to my neck in it right now. Take her number and tell her I’ll ring her back. And come back when you’re done, would you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Black soon reappeared.
    “Sit down, Bill. I was about to have a look at the pathologist’s report. Have you seen it?”
    The burly sergeant nodded. “Er, I think it’s that one beside the ashtray—the stapled one there, sir.”
    Powell grunted and retrieved it. He skimmed through the report, his face expressionless. When he had finished,he lit a cigarette. He looked speculatively at Detective-Sergeant Black. “It seems straightforward enough.”
    “Yes, sir,” Black replied dutifully.
    “I’d like you to review all of the statements and let me know if anything needs following up. And dig up what you can on that property development scheme in Rotherhithe that Brighton was so keen on. I remember seeing him on television a few months ago, attempting to rationalize the number of council tenants that would have to be evicted. Not exactly the way to win a popularity contest, as you so perceptively pointed out. And while you’re at it, I’d like a list of the names and phone numbers of the other members of Southwark Council.”
    Black nodded. “Right.”
    Powell spent the remainder