Free The Ring of Death by Sally Spencer

for office.
    Monika Paniatowski had never liked these press conferences, and liked them even less since the Linda Szymborska murder investigation had attracted national press attention, and, in the process, had made her a minor celebrity. Some of her colleagues, she knew, envied her this celebrity status – some of them would given their right arm to have had a little of it themselves – but, as she saw it, a detective’s job was to detect, and anything which got in the way of that was to be avoided!
    â€˜Don’t get your kickers in a twist about it, boss,’ Colin Beresford had advised her, when she’d complained about it to him. ‘Fame is a fleeting thing, and will soon fade away.’
    And maybe it would, she thought, as she mounted the podium and looked down at the assembled journalists and the two camera crews from regional television stations – but there was no evidence of it fading away quite yet.
    Unless, of course, she wasn’t the reason they were there at all, she thought, with sudden concern. Because it was just possible there had been a leak in police headquarters – just possible that what had brought them all crawling out of the woodwork was some knowledge of the bizarre nature of the murder – and that really was the last thing she wanted.
    She faced her audience with much greater calm and self-assurance than she would have been able to display even a month earlier.
    â€˜This morning, at around five-thirty, the police were called to a piece of woodland just off the Whalley road,’ she said. ‘There they discovered the body of a man, who has since been identified as Andrew Adair. Mr Adair was thirty-six years old and died as a result of wounds inflicted to his throat. We are treating his death as suspicious.’ She paused for a second. ‘That’s all I have to say at the moment. I am now willing to take questions, though – as always – I am not prepared to say anything which I feel may prejudice my investigation.’
    As she’d been speaking, she’d also been scanning the audience for potential problems, and had soon found one sitting right there on the front row.
    Mike Traynor – staff reporter for the Lancashire Evening Chronicle , and stringer for at least two of the more sensational national newspapers.
    Mike Traynor – his collar drowning in dandruff, his foxy eyes searching for a weakness in her statement that he could use as the basis of an attack.
    Their history was short, but bitter.
    Paniatowski would never forgive him for the way he had questioned her conduct of the Szymborska case – her first investigation as a DCI.
    Traynor, for his part, would never forgive her for solving the case so successfully that he’d been forced by his editor to publish a grovelling apology.
    But it was not Traynor who made the initial attempt to breach her defences and trick her into admitting to something she’d rather have kept herself. Instead, the initial salvo was fired by Lydia Jenkins, rising star of the local radio station.
    â€˜So Adair’s throat was slashed , was it?’ Jenkins asked, innocently.
    â€˜Slashed!’ Paniatowski repeated silently. ‘Yes, you could call it that. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it had been ripped to bloody shreds!’
    â€˜As I told you, Lydia, he died as a result of injuries sustained to his throat,’ she said aloud. ‘And I’m afraid that’s as far as I’m prepared to go at the moment.’
    â€˜Was he a local man?’ asked Bill Haynes, a journalist from the Telegraph , the Chronicle ’s main rival.
    Now that was a question she’d been expecting, Paniatowski thought. Local papers were always most interested in local people. In fact, the formula was quite simple – the death of one local man equalled the death of two other Lancastrians, four northerners, fifty southerners or a hundred