Free Over the Edge by Stuart Pawson

I be able to claim the book on expenses?’
     
    We didn’t stay long in the pub. Dave was driving and it was my weekend to be senior detective on call. It comes round every six weeks, starting at 10 p.m. Friday, and I was expected to remain alert and lucid. We dropped Jeff off at his local, where he would probably imbibe freely until loss of the use of his limbs indicated to him that he’d had enough, or his audience deserted him, whichever came first. Dave took me home and came in for a coffee.
    It was nearly ten thirty and we were well into a discussion on investments and pensions when the phone rang. I gave him the here-we-go smile and picked it up. A uniformed constable had been called to a body lying in the garden of a house just outside Heckley and he’d radioed in to say it was a murder. Now they needed a senior detective to confirm things and set the wheels rolling.
    ‘What makes him so sure it’s a murder?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, the deceased has a pickaxe embedded in his head,’ I was told, rather tardy. ‘Not a usual MO for a suicide.’
    ‘I’m convinced,’ I said, flicking the top off a pen and turning to a blank page on the memo pad. ‘Give me the details.’
    * * *
    It was a nineteenth century mansion on the south side of town, surrounded by trees and converted into four luxury apartments. Once upon a time it had housed a local surgeon and his family and their small army of retainers. Rooms that had once been home to the pastry cook, the nanny and the maid now echoed to the clink of glasses of Chardonnay, the Opera Babes on the CD player and shouted conversations about the merits of personal trainers. The PC who’d raised the call had the good sense to turn his blue light off and was sitting in darkness just outside the electrically operated gates. I parked behind him and Dave – try to keep him away – pulled in behind me.
    There’s a popular misconception that for every murder we straight away call in the pathologist, the scenes of crime people and all the other experts. We don’t. We haven’t enough of them and they cost money. Fortunately, most murders are committed by someone close who we just happen to find sitting there with his head in his hands, saying: ‘I didn’t mean to kill her.’ If we are reasonably certain who did the deed we just get on with it and don’t waste time with fingertip searches and DNA swabs of half the town.
    But this didn’t look like one of those.
    ‘Any ideas who he is?’ I asked the PC when he climbed out of the panda to meet me. He looked about seventeen.
    ‘No, Sir.’
    ‘Boss or Mr Priest will do,’ I said. ‘So tell me about it.’
    ‘Well, Sir, I took the call at 21.40 and came straight here. One of the residents had come home and parked his car in the car barn and as he walked to the rear door of the house he came across a body, lying across the path. It was obviously dead so he rang the police, um, us.’
    ‘And is it obviously dead?’
    ‘Yes, Sir. There’s a pickaxe embedded in his head. It’s in solid; must be about six inches into his brain.’
    ‘OK, you’re right: it looks as if we have a murder on our hands. I’ll ring the pathologist and the duty superintendent and we’ll call in the experts.’ I looked at the imposing facade of the building, discreetly illuminated by concealed lighting. One window on the top floor was lit, all the others were in darkness. ‘Is that where the resident you met lives?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes, Sir. I told him to stay indoors, and it looks as if everybody else is out.’
    ‘But he didn’t recognise the body?’
    ‘No, Sir. He said he didn’t know any of the other residents. Everybody liked to…’
    ‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘They like to keep themselves to themselves . It’s a national disease.’
    ‘Um, aren’t you going to look for yourself, Sir?’ the PC ventured.
    ‘At the body? Nah,’ I replied airily. ‘Seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. And stop calling me sir. Let’s make