The Hireling's Tale Read Online Free

wouldn’t rush to call us if they saw something suspicious. Hell, if they saw a naked girl staggering about they’d give her some music and take up a collection.’ Barry Lacey had been right to
back away from The Fen Tiger: it wasn’t his sort of pub at all.
    Shapiro rocked his head non-committally. ‘Apparently it was quite a fall. I know, you can break your neck tripping over a kerb-stone; but she didn’t break her neck, she smashed her skull. Crowe thinks she fell further than four feet into the bottom of the boat.’ He was too old to undergo metrication now. ‘Actually, a lot further.’
    Liz frowned. ‘This is a canal boat we’re talking about, not a square-rigger. I mean, she didn’t fall from the yardarm.’
    ‘The highest point on the Guelder Rose is the top of the cabin roof, about four feet above the deck. If she’d fallen from there she could have managed about eight feet. It still isn’t enough. And how did she get there? She was too tripped out to walk; and if someone was trying to kill her, why risk being seen with her in a public place?’
    ‘Could she have fallen off something else? It’s a boat, it passes under bridges - could she have come off a bridge? If Lacey was busy steering he might not have noticed. Even if he felt the bump he might have thought he’d brushed against something: he’s a novice at this, after all, he can’t be too familiar with the boat.’
    It sounded plausible, and there was room in the time envelope. Time of death had been narrowed to between seven and ten p.m.; the Guelder Rose arrived in Mere Basin after eight; if you could accept that a man busy steering a large unfamiliar boat through a narrow bridge could fail to notice someone
falling on to his foredeck she might have come aboard up to six miles short of Castlemere. Shapiro could believe that, but other parts of the theory still gave him problems. ‘If you’re trying to commit suicide you don’t wait till there’s a boat underneath you! Besides, we hit the same snag: she had too much cocaine in her to be doing more than crawling round the bedroom floor. Someone must have helped her. And if he helped her off a bridge that’s still murder.’
    ‘You said you’d learned something about how she lived as well,’ Liz reminded him. ‘Do you know who she is?’
    Shapiro shook his head. ‘But I know what she is: a prostitute. Well, probably. Crowe said there was enough wear and tear, inside and out, that if she wasn’t being paid for it she should have been.’
    Liz wasn’t surprised. Violent death takes people on the fringe of society much more often than it ambushes those at its cosy heart. And people who turn up naked anywhere but their own beds tend to be burning the candle at both ends. ‘Working as in, that’s how she made her living? Or working as in, that’s what she was doing when she died?’
    ‘Both, apparently. Read the report if you want the gory details.’
    ‘Then somebody’d better talk to the Toms’ Union.’ Queen’s Street, like most police stations, had an ambivalent relationship with the local prostitutes. The girls were committing an offence, and at intervals there would be prosecutions, fines and short, pointless prison sentences. But between times
hookers and coppers were a fact of one anothers’ lives, and there were benefits to be gained by keeping the relationship amicable. Sometimes the girls needed protecting, sometimes the police needed the sort of information picked up by women who made their living on the street. ‘Donovan’s off today, isn’t he? - shall I go?’
    With his chin in his chest Shapiro smiled a secret smile. ‘Yes and no. Donovan was off; Donovan then heard about a body on a boat and all but beat me to the scene of crime; now he’s down at the Basin looking for someone who saw something.’
    Liz elevated a surprised eyebrow. She was a good-looking woman rather than a beautiful one, tall and athletic, with strong features and a clear intelligence in