Free The Killing of Katie Steelstock by Michael Gilbert Page B

“Mark Holbeck, 22a Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He’ll know as much as anyone about her. Don’t be too long about it. I’ll want you back down here. I’ve a feeling we should be able to clear this one up pretty quickly.”
    He picked up the internal telephone and said, “Eddie? Would you and Ian come in for a moment, please.” He used their Christian names with a slight hint of irony, as if it was all part of man management and he knew it and they knew it. To Metropolitan officers, country policemen were swedes. Men who checked the rear lights on bicycles, dealt with sheep-chasing dogs and could recognise a Colorado beetle when they saw one, but knew nothing about the realities of serious crime.
    “One of them took some nice photographs,” said Shilling. “That must have been Eddie.”
    They were good clear colour prints, taken from directly over the object so as not to distort its dimensions, with a yard rule lying alongside each. They showed the body of Kate as it lay face down clasping mother earth. There was a close-up of the deep fractured wound in her head above the right ear, as though someone had been standing directly behind her and she had half turned her head, perhaps sensing at the last moment that there was someone there.
    “Right,” said Knott. “Here’s how we split it up. Ian, you tackle the Havelocks and the Tress woman. Eddie, you take the Nurses. The one I’m interested in is the girl, Sally. She seems to have gone for a midnight spin with young Gonville. Interesting to compare their stories. That’s why I want them taken separately. Then you can have a word with the parson and the Group Captain and their trouble-and-strifes.”
    Esdaile said, “Is there anything in particular you want us to find out? I mean, they all seem to be—”
    “They’re all as white as driven snow,” said Knott. “What I’m interested in is two things in particular. Whether they saw, or heard, anyone else on the move around that time. And what they knew or thought about Katie. What sort of girl she was. What her interests were. Who were her special friends. They may be a bit shy of talking about that, but if you go about it the right way you’ll probably get there in the end. All those people should be available, being Sunday.” He paused, then added, “There’s one other thing. Don’t rely on your memories. Take these with you. They’ll save you a lot of trouble afterwards.”
    He pushed toward each of them a contraption the size of a small camera. “Put it in your side pocket. It will pick up a voice speaking normally at five paces. Don’t forget to switch it on.”
    Esdaile had picked up the box and was fingering it lovingly. He was a man with a passion for mechanical devices. He said, “That’s a great little machine.”
    McCourt said, “I take it that these tape recordings will be in place of written statements.”
    “Wrong,” said Knott. “I want both. I want the tape and your transcription of it. And I want them both by six o’clock every evening.”
     
    “The thoughts of all of us present here today,” said the Reverend Bird, “must be focused on the tragedy which has struck our happy community like a bolt from the blue. It would be idle to pretend otherwise. It is in times like this that we have to ask ourselves reverently, but seriously, why God should permit such things to happen.”
    Matins at eleven o’clock was the popular service in West Hannington. It allowed the men to get to the club for their pre-lunch drink and the women time to cook the lunch for which the men were going to be late coming back from their pre-lunch drink. On this occasion St. Michael’s Church was unusually full.
    (“It’s the cohesive effect of shock,” Mr. Beaumorris had explained to Georgie Vigors when he met her in the porch. “How it does bring people together!”)
    “Katie was not our private possession. She belonged to the whole country. Nevertheless, having been born here and living