Free A Walk With the Dead by Sally Spencer Page B

neo-Gothic mansion, and such had been the demand in the previous few years for the kind of ‘superior education’ it claimed to offer, that several modern annexes had been grafted onto the original building.
    Looking at the gothic part of Fairfield from the road, Kate Meadows thought back to her own school days.
    She recalled vividly the countless occasions on which she had been hauled into her headmistress’ study, a stuffy overbearing room which smelled of leather and spinsterhood. She had only to close her eyes to see the headmistress, Miss Harvey, a woman in late middle age, who had worn heavy tweed costumes, kept her grey hair rigidly in place with a complex network of pins and grips, and looked at the world through heavy-framed glasses.
    â€˜So you’re here again, Katherine.’
    â€˜Yes, Miss Harvey.’
    And then one of the obligatory lectures would begin. They were long, rambling lectures, full of disapproving adjectives and adverbs that were framed within rhetorical questions.
    The only relief from the stream of condemnations came when Miss Harvey broke off to point to one of the numerous photographs of ‘old girls’ that adorned her wall.
    â€˜That’s Lucinda Hubbard. She’s only a few years older than you, but she’s already a junior partner in a most prestigious firm of accountants.’
    Good for her – the smug-looking cow!
    â€˜And that’s Miranda Bonneville. She’s a junior lecturer in St Hilda’s College, Oxford now, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if she is offered a chair by the time she is forty.’
    And she was more than welcome to plop her big fat academic arse on it, because Kate didn’t want it!
    â€˜I really would have thought, Katherine, that these girls would serve as an inspiration to you.’
    â€˜They do, Miss Harvey.’
    â€˜Well, I must say, that’s certainly not apparent from either your work or your attitude.’
    But they had inspired her – though not in a way the headmistress would have hoped.
    â€˜Look at me now, Miss Harvey,’ she said to the empty air. ‘A common-or-garden police sergeant, rubbing shoulders with all sorts of riff-raff. Ain’t that just grand?’
    It seemed somehow wrong to be entering the morgue without Dr Shastri standing there at the door to greet her, Paniatowski thought, and she found herself hoping that the beautiful and delicate doctor would soon get bored of exploring her exotic roots and return to dank, chilly Whitebridge.
    It was the new doctor – wasn’t her name Liz Duffy? – who was conducting the post-mortem, and as the attendant showed Paniatowski and Crane into the dissecting room, she looked up from her work and said, ‘Good God, Jack Crane! What are you doing here?’
    â€˜You know each other, do you?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜Know each other?’ Dr Duffy repeated. ‘I should say we do! Jack and I were at—’
    â€˜At school together,’ Crane interrupted hastily and – it seemed to Paniatowski – rather shakily. ‘As a matter of fact, our families lived on the same street, didn’t they, Liz?’
    â€˜Er . . . yes . . . er . . . they did,’ Duffy said, and though she was wearing a surgical mask, Paniatowski could still read the puzzlement in her eyes. ‘But I still don’t know what you’re—’
    â€˜I’m a detective constable now,’ Crane said, interrupting her again. ‘I bet that shocks you, doesn’t it? You probably always imagined I’d end up as a bricklayer or a window cleaner.’
    â€˜Well, I certainly never thought you’d end up as a policeman,’ Liz Duffy said, in evident confusion.
    â€˜Anyway, we’re not here to chat about old times,’ Crane said. ‘We’ve come to find out what you can tell us about the body, haven’t we, boss?’
    â€˜Yes, we have,’ Paniatowski