Saxon Read Online Free Page B

enjoyed an excellent meal, not to mention significantly more than their allotted one unit per night of wine. This was turning the clock back big-time; this was going to be fun.
    Monday, May 6, Angel Cottage, Sewel Mill , 9.45AM
    Dr Marks went back up to Janson’s bedroom. Something was nagging at the back of his mind. Something wasn’t right. He pulled the duvet from Janson’s face. The angles were all wrong; the head position just didn’t seem to sit right. Granted, this was the head of a corpse and you would expect it to be in a relaxed position. However, this was all wrong, relaxed but not relaxed fully.
    Marks held Janson’s head with both hands and moved it gently, and then he felt what he had half-suspected – a click. Therealisation hit him almost like a punch in the stomach: a man with a broken neck doesn’t put himself to bed.
    By mid-morning, the local police were joined by a couple of specialists. Commander Paul Saxon and DS Guy Parker from New Scotland Yard.
    The local police had been on the scene quickly bearing in mind there was no police station in the village. The local officers had in fact come up from Brighton this morning. Sewel Mill had lost its police presence ten years ago and Brighton was the nearest big centre that could offer assistance when a crime was committed, as it clearly had been here.
    Introducing themselves to the local officers, Saxon mentioned that he himself lived on their patch, in Brighton, and had just reached the office in London when the call came to return to Sussex. He left them to continue their routine.
    ‘You see, Parker,’ he said, ‘they call it cutbacks, that’s how they explain it. In the old days, there would’ve been a local bobby, who would know everyone in the village. He would’ve been a mine of useful information.’ Saxon shook his head in frustration. ‘A couple of lads up from Brighton aren’t much use to me.’
    Parker had heard it before. In common with many of his colleagues, Saxon regarded the cutbacks as more of a retreat, which allowed the crooks to run amok in the countryside. He was all for value-added work practices and efficient use of people and resources, but this was daft. It meant more police were required to solve the extra crimes, which of course cancelled out any possible savings resulting from the cutbacks.
    However, that was another subject, for another time, probably over a pint or two. He didn’t allow himself to get distracted from the business in hand by the questions of policy and politics.
    Saxon was looking around the cottage, reviewing the information he had so far. The victim was still upstairs in his bed. Downstairs, where they were now, DS Parker was making notes, which they would later go over together, comparing facts andimpressions, knowledge and question marks. The first thing Saxon did on arrival at a crime scene was to fit the things he’d been told, usually by phone, into what he could see around him. He and Parker made a good team.
    Joining the police force after university, Saxon had progressed swiftly through the ranks, experiencing most aspects of police work, from drug squad to vice. Now thirty-five years old, he felt he’d found his niche at this comparatively young age. He had in fact been selected from considerable competition to lead a specialist serial killer detection squad. Real life might not be too much like TV, but it was true that murders came in a reasonably steady flow, most of them proving quite easy to solve. The usual scenario was sadly predictable: the jealous lover, the deceived spouse, or a close relative who couldn’t take any more.
    Harder to solve were stranger killings, where the victim and the killer were never acquainted. These were much less common. A good thing, when you considered that the lack of motive often gave the police very little to go on. Serial killings, on the other hand, were something else altogether. Saxon and Parker were here in Sewel Mill because their unit