The Killing Club Read Online Free Page B

sisters, not that he knew of anyway. His gran and grandad had died, the prison officers had told him that. But his mum was still alive. But she wouldn’t want him, Craig, back ever. Because he had murdered her bloke and therefore driven a pile of nails into his own coffin.

DAY 4
    The drive from Swift’s cottage to the station just outside the market town of Ilkley was a match for any recommended scenic route you could pick from a tourist handbook of the Yorkshire Dales. And the weather was typical too; a bleak chill in the air, the sky low and glowering, turning the hills to brooding dark monsters. Streams sparkled beneath humpback stone bridges and dips in the road had become glinting splashy fords following the heavy rain through the night. A photographer’s dream.
    By 7.45 a.m. he was settled behind the desk in a tiny office, the only space the superintendent could find for him at present. It was on the top floor of the building, which was currently undergoing a re-fit. The walls were bare and ready for painting and the room smelled of dust and stale cigarette smoke. The single window was about the size of a tea tray. But the room had a computer and a phone and a pleasing air of quietness, being removed from the hub of activity of the work being carried out on the floors beneath.
    Swift was well aware that the waters had partly closed over him since his decision to take time off work. That happened with everyone who had a long absence from the team: no one, however good at their job and valued as a person, was irreplaceable. He imagined the comments on his file; queries about possible post-traumatic stress disorder, about his ability to deal with it, about his future in the force. Curiously none of this worried him. His main concern was to get to grips with the case in hand and to make good of the opportunity to test himself out once again.
    The sergeant at the front desk had told him that Inspector Fallon was finishing off paperwork in her current station and would not be joining him until the beginning of the next week. Swift was not sorry about that: getting his feet back under the work table would be easier on his own.
    Not that he intended to sit behind his desk all day. Having reviewed the brief details in the file Stratton had given him, he made an appointment to visit the mortuary and speak to the pathologist, then turned his attention to the issue of doing some research regarding the scene of the crime.
    His first port of call was a well-heeled bungalow in a small cul-de-sac about a hundred yards from the base of Fellbeck Crag. The man who opened the door was a tubby, baldheaded man with a grandfatherly appearance. A toddler who looked like a good candidate for fulfilling the role of grandchild was standing behind him, peering curiously around his right leg.
    ‘Good morning, young sir!’ said the tubby man. ‘And who might you be?’
    ‘Good morning, to you,’ Swift said, thinking it was a long time since he had been called a young sir, and showing his ID. ‘DCI Swift.’
    ‘Bertrand Morrison,’ the man responded, waving Swift through the door, whilst the toddler continued to stare in solemn silence. In the sitting room, a large blond dog raised an untroubled head as the three of them filed in.
    ‘Sit down, sit down!’ Morrison said. ‘What can we do for you, Chief Inspector? I’ll guess you’re here about the poor beggar who met his maker on the crag.’
    ‘You’re quite right. I’m investigating the circumstances of the man’s death.’
    ‘Checking out that there was no foul play, I’ll be bound,’ Morrison replied.
    Swift nodded, making no comment.
    ‘Do you know who he was?’ Morrison asked.
    ‘Not yet. I take it you didn’t recognize him.’
    ‘Never seen him before in my life.’ Morrison shook his head regretfully. ‘Poor chap, toppling off the crag and then being set alight. What a terrible business.’
    ‘Yes,’ Swift agreed. ‘And a troubling experience for you, Mr