Free Death in a Far Country by Patricia Hall

keeping to sidestreets and back alleys as she climbed the long hill to the west of the town where, in the faint light of dawn, she had seen the skeletal remains of the flats on The Heights, and realised that these abandoned relics might offer her temporary shelter at least. Finding a way through the fencing had not been hard. Others had been there before her. The doors of the one remaining block that looked relatively intact had been half open. The early morning light was sufficient to show her the way up the staircase to the top level, where she collapsed on the floor of what had evidently once been someone’s home, the plumbing ripped out now, the electricity wires dangling uselessly from the ceilings, the windows smashed and mouldering wallpaper hanging in strips like tattered bunting from the walls.
    And there she had stayed. She was no longer very sure how long she had been there, days and nights merging in the half light of the abandoned flat and the winter daylight when she emerged occasionally on the rooftop. The men below would move into this last block soon, she thought, as she watched them from above. Then she would have to decide where shecould go next. Or not, she thought. Because of one thing she was quite sure. If her pursuers found her here, or if anyone else threatened her, she would not run any more. She could not. And there was another solution, obvious in its desperate simplicity. As she gazed down she could already see her own body, smashed and bloody, on the concrete far below.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Saturday dawned heavy and dismal, with the threat of rain carried over the hills by a biting wind, but nothing could dampen the excitement of the thousands of football fans who thronged the narrow streets around United’s stadium in Beck Lane, a narrow thoroughfare in the valley surrounded by retail outlets and motor showrooms and new housing, which had mushroomed where old stone textile warehouses had once stood. There was a heavy police presence on foot and on horseback, shepherding the gold and blue bedecked crowds towards the stadium as Laura Ackroyd approached the main entrance to the looming and slightly dilapidated stands where the local team had played for almost a century. She thought briefly of Thackeray, who had gone into CID headquarters that morning with an unconvincing explanation that the murder inquiry demanded his attention for the whole weekend. Laura had not believed him and she wondered how long it was going to take him to confront the demons that were coming between them. And how long she could wait.
    She shook her head sharply at the memory, tossing her red hair back and letting the wind take it behind her in a cloud.
    ‘Hi, copperknob,’ a young man in a gold and blue flat cap yelled as he passed her in the jostling throng, and she feltunaccountably cheered up. When men stopped noticing her, she thought with a grin, was when she should start to worry. And she determined to enjoy the new experience of a big FA Cup match in Bradfield with more cheerful anticipation than she had felt all day.
    She had not felt threatened in the jostling, excited crowd, but she remembered that Tony Holloway – when he had recovered from his chagrin after learning of Laura’s coveted invitation to the directors’ box – had warned her to take care. There were enough wild local lads still around, he thought, to take the arrival of a major London club, especially one with its own reputation for supporter violence, as a challenge. In other words, he said, there could be trouble, more likely these days outside the ground than in, and it was clear to Laura, as she pushed her way to the main entrance, that he might well be right. Amongst the press of mainly men and boys garlanded in the club colours, there were a few pockets of cold-eyed young men who looked as if they might have more than raucous and foul-mouthed support for their team on their mind.
    Avoiding the queues for the turnstile entrances, she made her