Free Souvenirs of Murder by Margaret Duffy Page B

don’t want you to lose your edge.’
    â€˜Have I?’
    â€˜From your MI5 days? Yes, you have a bit.’
    â€˜Am I relying on my consultant too much?’
    â€˜Perhaps. At one time you would probably have towed me through all these hedges, looking, and be damned with lunch.’
    For answer he grabbed me, gave me a big munching kiss, took my hand and soldiered off into the rectory garden.
    After half an hour of soggy searching through the remaining rapidly melting thin layer of snow we found it.

SIX
    The heavy hammer had been in the shrubbery long enough to have started to rust a little but had arrived sufficiently recently for the leaves of an evergreen plant, a branch of which it had borne to the ground, not to have yellowed beneath it. Only an Olympian would have been able to throw it to this spot from inside the churchyard so whoever had done so had either come into the garden or tossed it from a window of the house, the latter not an easy option either.
    â€˜There’s paint on the handle,’ I said as we gazed down at it. ‘I’d put money on it belonging to one of the builders.’
    â€˜It doesn’t mean they had anything to do with the killing,’ Patrick pointed out. ‘There have been vans parked out here for weeks with the rear doors open and any number of tools in full view. They only take the valuable stuff indoors with them. And this might not be the murder weapon.’
    He drove to our present home to fetch a sample bag and gloves from his briefcase – which for some reason was not in the car – rang Carrick to tell him what we had found and we then went straight to Bath, only pausing to buy some sandwiches at a corner shop. We found that the DCI was on his way back from somewhere but would be with us shortly, this information given to us by Derek Woods, the duty sergeant.
    â€˜Glad to have you back, sir,’ said Woods, referring to a stint that Patrick had done with Bath CID the previous year. ‘And you, Miss Langley.’
    â€˜Thank you, Derek,’ Patrick responded. ‘Tell me, is it more likely to be a man or a woman who would murder a bloke by hitting him on the head with a hammer and then shoving a vacuum cleaner nozzle down his throat and pouring cleaning fluid down it?’
    The sergeant grimaced, sucked in his breath through clenched teeth, thought for a few seconds and then, in his soft West Country voice, said, ‘It might depend if the body was moved at all and on how heavy the murder victim was.’
    â€˜We’re assuming until it’s proved otherwise that both actions occurred at the same place, in this case a church vestry.’
    â€˜Then first of all I’d start looking for a woman with a horrible grievance. She might have been aided by a male accomplice, of course. He may have wielded the hammer.’
    â€˜Thank you. My thoughts entirely.’
    â€˜Is this the investigation at Hinton Littlemoor?’
    â€˜It is.’
    â€˜There have been complaints coming from that quarter of what people have called “dodgy goings on”. Not the usual antics of youngsters coming back from the pub and making nuisances of themselves but adults drinking and making a lot of noise around a bonfire. It might have nothing to do with the case you’re working on though, sir.’
    â€˜Is this activity centred on any particular area?’
    â€˜I understand it mostly involves the new development down where the railway station used to be.’
    â€˜When does this happen?’
    â€˜Seemingly during the night.’
    â€˜That’s where the new drainage scheme’s being put in,’ Patrick mused. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜And where the diocese was going to rehome your parents,’ I said as we strolled in the direction of Carrick’s office.
    â€˜Noble reward for half a lifetime’s service,’ Patrick said sarcastically. ‘A bunch of shitty little bungalows that tended