The Enemy Within Read Online Free Page A

forwards. Woodend dragged the corpse clear of this new danger – but not before the blonde, curly hair which topped the victim’s head had caught on fire.
    Paniatowski was suddenly by his side, her jacket in her hands. As a coughing fit coursed through Woodend’s body and forced him to double up, he saw his sergeant drop to her knees and use her jacket to smother the victim’s head.
    Woodend’s lungs began exacting their full revenge for what he had put them through. His chest heaved. His head swam. All the noises around him melded into a single, unpleasant cacophony, and he began to doubt that he would ever breathe normally again.
    The attack passed, and Woodend cautiously straightened up.
    Paniatowski was barking instructions into her police radio. ‘Get a fire engine here, Bob! Quick as you can! Get a bloody fire engine!’
    â€˜Who were you talkin’ to?’ Woodend asked, coughing again – though not as badly this time. ‘Was it Rutter?’
    Paniatowski nodded. ‘Yes. How are you feeling, sir? Up to carrying on for a while longer?
    â€˜Just about. As long as I don’t make any sudden moves.’
    â€˜Then you’d better see this.’
    Paniatowski bent down and picked something off the ground. Straightening again, she held it for her boss to inspect.
    Woodend did his best to focus his still-streaming eyes on the object. Part of it was black and frizzled, the rest yellow and curly. In other circumstances, he thought, he would probably have recognized it immediately for what it was. But these weren’t other circumstances. His brain was still too fuddled, his body still complaining about being poisoned. He hadn’t been sick yet, but he was in absolutely no doubt that he soon would be.
    He made another attempt to identify just what it was that his sergeant was showing him.
    A cap of some kind?
    No, that wasn’t it!
    Yet from its shape, it seemed as if it had been specifically designed to be moulded to the shape of the human head.
    He was now probably steady enough on his feet to run the risk of looking down again, he decided. He turned his eyes from Paniatowski’s hand and cautiously tilted his head so they were fixed on the ground.
    The woman’s body was still where he had left it when the coughing fit had struck him, but it no longer looked quite the same. She’d had blonde hair before, he remembered. Blonde hair which had caught fire as he’d pulled her free. Now, though, there was no sign of burning on her head: she was completely bald.
    And suddenly he understood exactly what it was that Paniatowski was holding in her hand.

Four
    J amie Clegg sat at his desk in the Mid Lancs
Evening Courier
office, reflecting on the unexpected twists and turns that life could suddenly come up with.
    Take this office as a case in point, he told himself. Though it was almost nine o’clock at night, there were at least half a dozen people still working there. Yet only a year earlier not a single desk would still have been occupied – even by a keen young reporter like him.
    Of course, it had to be said in all fairness to himself that there wouldn’t have been much point putting in the extra hours back then. The
Courier
had been quite happy, in what now seemed like those far-off days, to continue to occupy the same boring niche which it had occupied so comfortably for the previous sixty or seventy years.
    All that had changed when the Editor died. After his funeral – splendidly covered in a six-page spread by the
Courier
– the paper’s ownership had passed into the hands of his niece. And it was her husband, Dexter Bryant, who had taken over as Editor.
    Dexter Bryant!
    Just the name had brought a shudder of anticipation to Jamie’s thin, but eager, frame.
    Dexter Bryant – possibly the most successful crime reporter that Fleet Street had ever known! Dexter Bryant – who was so good at pointing the police in the right