A Knife in the Back by Alex Coombs

Author:Alex Coombs [Coombs, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: No Exit Press
Published: 2024-07-31T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The following morning I had an unofficial visit from the police. DI Slattery, the policeman who lived in a house across the green from my restaurant, drank down his espresso. He pushed a large, muscular hand through his thick, dark hair and his cold grey eyes rested on mine.

‘She had been stabbed,’ he said, ‘a single blow to the heart. There was no trace of the weapon in the vicinity of her car so the killer obviously took it away with them. Dr Young probably knew her killer, they were in the passenger seat when the fatal blow was struck.’

‘That’s terrible,’ I said. ‘Have you got any idea who might have done it?’

Part of me longed to blurt out, ‘Arrest Mel Craig, she’s a criminal nut-case.’

But I didn’t.

Slattery shook his head. ‘I am assuming it was probably the same person who tried to kill her when she was shot in that field a few weeks back. That person had good local knowledge, they knew where she would be at the time and they also knew the surrounding area well enough to work out where to shoot from and make good their escape.’ He frowned. ‘This attack shows a similar knowledge of local geography. The vehicle was in that layby near the school and as you know, it’s partly screened by a hedge and trees and it is also next to a footpath. We assume that the attack occurred around about six in the evening, the killer making off down said footpath.’

‘So, a local person then, or someone living in this area who knows it reasonably well.’ I was thinking again of Mel Craig. Wishful thinking I daresay, but if she were hauled off to prison for murder it would keep her from trying to extort money from me.

‘Exactly.’

‘Why are you telling me all this, DI Slattery?’

‘What do you think of Lance Thurston?’ he abruptly changed the subject.

‘Lance?’ I repeated, surprised.

‘Yes. You worked for him, did he strike you as the kind of man likely to commit murder?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Then again, I’ve met a couple of killers and they didn’t strike me either as the kind of people to commit murder. But he certainly wasn’t going around complaining that Dr Young had ruined his life or his livelihood.’

I thought the thing that was worrying him most was being cursed but I wasn’t sure if I should bring this to the attention of the police. Besides, I was sort of sorry for Lance. It sounds ridiculous but he struck me as a kind of sad figure. To many he was a huge success. His audience was measured in the hundreds of thousands, he was influential, he was famous – not as famous as he would like to be but still pretty well-known, nevertheless. To me, though, he was like the kid at school whom nobody liked, forever trying to prove himself in ways that would always prove futile because whatever he did was never going to be good enough.

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