Free Body Line by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page B

bobs. Maybe he chucked out all his childhood stuff when his parents died, then got rid of everything else when Mrs R evicted him from paradise.’
    ‘Or maybe he’s got another pad we don’t know about,’ Hollis persisted.
    ‘You think there’s an attic in his picture?’ Atherton suggested.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘You think he was leading a double life?’ Slider translated.
    ‘Not necessarily, guv. But it might be the Hofland house is his town pad, and he’s got another house in the country. He might have a wife tucked away there for all we know.’
    ‘You’re getting into the realms of speculation now,’ Slider said. ‘The fancy stuff. The Christmas and Easter menus. Let’s stick to what we do know.’
    ‘Which isn’t much,’ said Atherton. ‘It starts with Amanda Sturgess, and stops there as well.’
    ‘She could be a tasty suspect,’ Mackay said. ‘Wronged wife, pissed off with his womanizing, set on revenge—’
    ‘After being divorced ten years? Have sense,’ Connolly objected from her desk. ‘She’s a life of her own now. Why would she want to kill him?’
    ‘Revenge, and money,’ Mackay said. ‘The two best motives.’
    ‘We don’t know there’s any money,’ Connolly said.
    ‘Well, anyway, using a contract killer is good for it being her. It’s cold, and it’s arm’s length.’
    ‘We don’t know it was a contract killer. What about Frith?’ Hollis put in. ‘She’s living with him. Maybe she used him.’
    ‘Aude said the killer was tall,’ said Atherton, ‘and Frith isn’t.’
    ‘What’s tall? And how could she tell, hanging off the balcony at floor level?’ Hollis said. ‘She said the killer had dark hair, and Frith has dark hair. And you said he had work boots on.’
    ‘Let’s not run away with ourselves,’ Slider said. ‘Amanda Sturgess came across to me as a determined and well-organized person who could carry through any project she put her mind to, but we haven’t the slightest reason to suppose she wanted Rogers dead, so let’s just clear as we go, shall we? Mackay, you can look into this agency of hers, see if it’s genuine. Connolly, I want you to look into Robin Frith.’
    ‘The dyslexic’s Colin Firth,’ Atherton said.
    ‘Is she getting the ride off him?’ Connolly asked.
    ‘He could be the lodger, her long-lost cousin or one of her ex-clients, for anything we know,’ Slider said. ‘That’s why you have to look into him. What else have we got?’
    There was a bit of a deadly silence.
    ‘Then get on with this lot,’ Slider said, waving at the bags of Rogers’s effects, and took himself off to his office to make phone calls.
    Dennis Markham, the ballistics man, rang. ‘I’m sending over the report to you,’ he told Slider, ‘but I thought I’d tell you what it says.’
    ‘I’m not going to like it, am I?’ Slider guessed from the sympathy in his tone.
    ‘Sorry, mate. Wish it was better news. We’ve got a match with a weapon used in a non-fatal shooting three years ago, a post-office robbery gone wrong in Lewisham. The gun – a .38 revolver – seems to have been let off by accident. The evidence of the postmaster was that three masked men came in brandishing the shooter and shouting for the money. He hit the alarm, the one with the gun let off a shot into the ceiling, and they panicked and ran for it. Didn’t get a penny. Local police had a fair idea who it was, but they couldn’t get the evidence against them, so nothing happened, except that the suspected lads made themselves scarce. So you see?’
    ‘Yes, I see,’ said Slider. ‘It sounds like a rental.’
    ‘Got it in one,’ said Markham.
    ‘Blast.’
    ‘Sorry about that. And given that it was used in a fatal this time, chances are it’ll have been melted down by now.’
    It was an unhappy fact that there was no need for criminals to go to the trouble and danger of buying illegal firearms these days, when they could rent them by the day for an extremely reasonable fee. The