Free Stone Cold by Andrew Lane Page A

you?’
    ‘I am Sergeant Clitherow, of the Oxford Constabulary. This is my colleague, Constable Harries. We’d like to ask you a few questions.’
    ‘Oh. All right then – what do you want to know?’
    ‘Not here, sir. Down at the police station, if you’d be so kind.’
    ‘I’ve got a tutorial!’ Chippenham protested.
    ‘Don’t worry, sir – this won’t take long, and there’ll be other tutorials, I’m sure.’
    One of Chippenham’s friends stepped forward. ‘I’m studying law,’ he said, trying to sound officious but just sounding pretentious. ‘I demand that you tell us why
you want to talk to Mr Chippenham.’
    ‘Inquiries in connection with a series of recent thefts,’ the sergeant replied.
    ‘Thefts of bodies,’ the constable confided. ‘Well, bits of bodies.’
    The sergeant stared at him, frowning, and the constable subsided.
    ‘Is Mr Chippenham a suspect?’ the law student asked.
    The sergeant shrugged. ‘Let’s say he’s helping us with our inquiries,’ he said. He turned to Chippenham. ‘Aren’t you, sir? Might look suspicious if you
refused. Might look like you had something to hide, like.’
    ‘I’ll come along and answer any questions you’ve got,’ Chippenham said firmly, but Sherlock could detect a slight tremor in his voice. Chippenham turned to his friends.
‘Tell my tutor,’ he said. ‘Let him know what’s happened. He might be able to . . . intercede with the police, or something.’
    The policemen guided Chippenham away by the elbow. He cast a last, despairing glance over his shoulder before they vanished around a corner.
    ‘I’m glad I’m not ’im,’ Matty said darkly. ‘The Oxford police have a reputation. They don’t like cheek, or anyone talking back to them. ’E’d
better cooperate, otherwise ’e’ll find ’imself trippin’ up every time ’e walks down a flight of stairs. Man could do ’imself some nasty injuries that
way.’
    ‘I can’t see him being guilty,’ Sherlock said.
    ‘Why’s that then?’
    ‘He seems too normal, too ordinary. And when he talked about the thefts, the other night at Mrs McCrery’s, he was completely open.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘I suppose you
can’t tell what’s in people’s minds, but I’d like to know if there’s any evidence against him. I’m not convinced that the police actually care that much about
evidence, just as long as they have someone in the cells.’
    ‘Surely,’ Matty reasoned, ‘if there keep on bein’ thefts, then they’ll have to let him go.’
    ‘Not necessarily,’ Sherlock said bleakly. ‘The thief might stop for other reasons. Or, if I were them and someone had been arrested for the crimes I was committing, I might
move to a different area, a different mortuary, and start again.’
    ‘You’ve got a cunnin’ mind,’ Matty pointed out. ‘Ever thought of becomin’ a criminal yourself?’
    It was much later in the evening, after dinner, that Paul Chippenham returned to Mrs McCrery’s boarding house. He was pale, and his hands shook as he sipped at the sherry that Reginald
Musgrave poured him. There was a fresh bruise on his forehead.
    ‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.
    ‘They asked me a lot of questions about the Oxford hospital mortuary, and why I had been visiting it. I tried to persuade them that it was nothing suspicious, but they were fixated on the
idea that I was the one who had stolen those body parts that have been in the newspaper, and that the lecturer mentioned this morning.’ He raised a hand to the bruise on his forehead.
‘Things got a bit . . . physical . . . and the constable belted me across the head when he thought I was being cheeky.’
    ‘What did you tell them?’ Thomas Millard wanted to know.
    ‘The truth.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘It was going to be a jape – a joke. A small group of us were going to steal a body from the mortuary, dress it up like a student and
prop it up in the lecture theatre for the anatomy lecture. We