Free The Cold Hand of Malice by Frank Smith

Reg?’
    ‘There were slight abrasions on the knuckle,’ Starkie said, ‘but she could have pulled them off herself for all I know.’
    Paget wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t sure that it mattered very much. The point was, two valuable rings were missing, and there was a chance that the killer or killers would try to dispose of them, and that might just be the break they were looking for.
    ‘Anything else I should know about?’ he asked.
    ‘Not unless something comes back from the lab. Otherwise it looks straightforward enough. No surprises as far as I can see.’
    ‘Good. And thanks, Reg. Appreciate the call.’
    Paget was pleasantly surprised to see Grace’s car in the driveway when he got home at ten minutes to six that evening. With the way things had been going these past few months, between staff shortages and heavy workloads in both areas, they were lucky if either of them got home before six thirty or seven most evenings. Luckier still if they arrived more or less at the same time. So he was even more surprised when he opened the front door to be greeted by the aroma of beef roasting in the oven.
    Grace appeared at the kitchen door, apron on, oven mitts on her hands.
    ‘Thank goodness!’ she said with feeling. ‘I half expected you to phone at the last minute to say you would be late. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding all right, is it?’
    He shrugged out of his coat, and made a face. ‘I was rather hoping for a green salad,’ he said, ‘but I suppose I could manage a bit of beef if that’s all you have.’
    ‘I can dump it in the dustbin,’ she warned, ‘so be careful what you say.’
    He gathered her to him. ‘Seems a shame to waste it since you’ve been to all that trouble,’ he said, and kissed her. ‘You must have come home early to do all this. What’s the occasion?’
    ‘I just felt like it,’ Grace told him, ‘and the work I have to do can be done just as well at home as in the office.’
    ‘Oh, Grace, surely you don’t have to—’ he began, but she put a finger to his lips.
    ‘It has to do with the Holbrook case,’ she said, ‘and I want to go over my findings with you and see if we come to the same conclusion. But let’s not go into that now. Dinner is almost ready, so let’s enjoy it.’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘Roast potatoes, peas, Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire pudding and gravy? Enough meat on the joint to give you roast beef sandwiches for the next three days at least? One more word and I’ll burn the lot!’
    He sighed heavily and raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘You’re a hard woman, Grace,’ he said, ‘but then, I suppose I shall have to give in as always. Good cooks are so hard to find these days.’
    ‘And you’re so easily bribed,’ she said. ‘Now, get on upstairs and have your wash. Dinner is in fifteen minutes.’
    After the table had been cleared, and the dishwasher loaded, Grace opened her briefcase, took out six folders, and set them out on the table.
    ‘One for each burglary,’ she told Paget as they sat down side by side at the table. ‘They include itemized lists of the things that were stolen or vandalized at each location, and I believe that what I’m about to show you may be what Charlie was talking about when he sent me out to the Holbrook house.’
    Grace opened the first folder and took out a single sheet of A4 paper. ‘The first house to be hit was in Dunbar Road,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what they expected to find there, because it’s a poor district to start with, so all they came away with were a few coins they found in a drawer, and some bits and pieces of cheap jewellery left by the man’s wife when she left him – worth maybe ten quid for the lot, if they were lucky, and some food. They smashed the glass in a cabinet, which would have cost something like ninety to a hundred pounds to repair, but it wasn’t worth that much to start with, so it was a write-off, as was the small radio they smashed. They also damaged a