Free Body Politic by J.M. Gregson Page A

himself with images of the bedroom. The duvet would have its own attractions in this weather. And tomorrow, Christmas Day, he would light a fire, and sit with her in the comfort of the warm house, watching the flames which had been so necessary to the former owners of this quiet place, which were to modern man no more than an added luxury, a novelty in a world of domestic comfort.
    He plugged in the television set in the corner of the long beamed lounge: checking the news was an occupational tic for a politician. There was little of it. Snow in the Scottish glens; colder weather moving rapidly south. The roads were already packed with people journeying home for the Christmas break. A girl had gone missing after hitching a lift on the M4 three days previously. The police thought there was ‘serious cause for concern’. Raymond smiled grimly: that was public-speak for, ‘We think she may well be dead.’ Otherwise, there was no news; the pictures of the snow might have been taken from the Decembers of other years.
    When he had had a drink, he’d bring in his holdall from the car, and put Zoe’s present, which the shop had wrapped so carefully for him, in the corner where the tree was to go. He must get the tree out from the garage, and string the lights upon it; women liked the trimmings of Christmas.
    It would take the thick old walls of the cottage some hours to warm up. Raymond, sitting on the sofa in his car coat, still felt the cold of the room around him. Somewhere in the house, there was a small but efficient fan heater. It had been put away when it was not required during the summer. At first he could not remember where: it was curious how it took you time to adjust to the geography of a second home, even when all the furnishings around you were familiar. He remembered, once he mustered his concentration. The heater was beside his desk in the small study along the hall.
    As he rose to retrieve it, every light in the house went off.
    A fuse. Perhaps something to do with the lights being put on all together and suddenly after a period of disuse, he surmised vaguely. Well, he knew where the fuse-box was. In the old walk-in pantry off the kitchen, where it had been sited when he had the house rewired. There were candles there, too, and a torch, if he remembered right. Power cuts were not the rarity in Gloucestershire that they were in London; they usually had two or three during the winter. So be prepared, as he had learned long ago in the boy scouts.
    He fumbled his way to the door, his fingers clawing his way along the uneven plaster between the ancient oak framing. It was curious how monstrously bulbous it felt, when you were proceeding totally by feel. It took him quite a long time to find his way along the hall he had thought so familiar to the door of the kitchen. The pump seemed to have gone off too, for there was no sound now of circulating water. But the pilot light gave him a tiny illumination; with eyes beginning to adjust now to the darkness, he could pick out the white doors of fridge and oven as his landmarks. He found the dark wooden door of the pantry quite quickly, fumbled open the old wooden catch on its door, and pushed it inwards.
    He was reaching up to the mains switch when the cord tightened around his neck. He had both hands clawing at it in less than a second, but he still had no chance to utter the cry which rose into his throat. The sound died there, as the thin cord cut into his flesh and the wood at its ends twisted and twisted behind his neck.
    Raymond Keane died quickly, his hands flailing for a moment towards the invisible ceiling of the pantry, his assailant twisting the awful pressure about his neck ever tighter as he sank to his knees, feeling his own weight hastening him into oblivion. He was conscious of a brief wonderment that this should be happening to him, of a blinding, explosive light in his head.
    Then he slumped dead upon the stone floor of the small room. His assailant