Free Golden Mile to Murder by Sally Spencer

woke up – THE DREAM. In capital letters. This time, he’d decide later, it was worse than it had ever been. The things he touched seemed so solid, the smell of the night air was so agonisingly realistic. And though he did not know he was dreaming, he knew that he was still only about a quarter of the way through a terrible and terrifying sequence of events – and that there was nothing he could do but stay with them until the end.
    It was the loud knock on his dressing-room door that saved him from his own subconscious.
    â€˜On in ten minutes, Mr Bolton!’
    Bolton opened his eyes. When he’d fallen asleep on the couch, he’d been fully stretched out, but at some time during the course of THE DREAM, he’d raised his knees, so that now he was almost in a foetal position.
    It’s a wonder I didn’t go arse over tip, and end on the bloody floor, he thought as he swung his body off the couch.
    He walked over to his dressing table and examined himself in the mirror. His eyes were red from sleep and booze, but the audience would think that was make-up – a part of the act which had made Tommy ‘Now Where Was I?’ Bolton popular up and down the country. He was
so
popular, in fact, that he had finally received the ultimate accolade – being booked to top the bill for an entire summer season in Blackpool, the mecca of entertainment. And not just in any old theatre, he reminded himself. Not in some backstreet show with a load of old has-beens – but on the Central Pier, supported by a host of rising stars.
    He lit a cigarette, and looked at his reflection again. Who would ever have thought that little Sid Dawkins, the rag-and-bone man’s son from Moss Side, would turn into Tommy Bolton, a man who already owned a detached bungalow in Lytham St Anne’s outright, and had a bank account which was steadily climbing towards five figures.
    â€˜Why did you have to bugger it up?’ he asked his reflection angrily. ‘You were sitting pretty. Why couldn’t you just take a little more care?’
    Because, he supposed, when everybody around you told you that you were the king of the world, you started to believe them. So that excused one mistake.
    But
two
?
    The second mistake had been so incredibly stupid that however much he tried to convince himself otherwise – and he’d tried very hard indeed – he knew that he had no one to blame but himself.
    There was another knock on the door. ‘On in five minutes, Mr Bolton.’
    The comedian from Moss Side adopted a comical, bemused expression. ‘Now where was I?’ he asked the mirror. ‘Oh yes, I was telling you about my Aunt Gladys, and how she came to lose her knickers on a day trip to Skegness.’

Nine
    W oodend looked around the long Formica table at the team which had been assembled to work under his supervision. Sitting closest to him was Sergeant Hanson. Woodend approved of the intelligent grey eyes and serious expression which looked back at him – an expression which suggested Hanson was a conscientious bobby who knew his own patch. Next to Hanson was the bullet-headed Constable Brock, and Woodend got a distinct feeling that this wasn’t a man he’d like to meet in a dark alley. From the opposite side of the table, Constable Stone looked expressionlessly back at him, his sandy hair and slightly rounded face making him seem like a big lazy ginger tomcat. Constable Eliot, sitting next to Stone, had a fresh, young face, but from the frown on his unlined forehead he was obviously deeply troubled by something or other. Finally, at the far end of the table, Sergeant Paniatowski sat in splendid isolation.
    It was not necessarily the team he would have chosen for himself, Woodend thought – in fact, most of the time he preferred to work with no team at all – but he supposed he was stuck with them and there was nothing he could do about it.
    â€˜How far has the