Brock And Kolla - 08 - No Trace by Barry Maitland

Author:Barry Maitland [Maitland, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, FIC050000
ISBN: 9781741147773
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2003-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

15

As usual, Tevfik Akif, second cousin to Yasher Fikret and site manager for the building work on West Terrace, was the first to arrive on site that wet Thursday morning. It was still dark as he unlocked the gate in the chain-link security fence along the back lane, and then the door of the site hut in the compound formed from the cleared backyards of the houses. He didn’t remove his dripping raincoat because, having switched on the lights and heater in the hut, it had become his habit to go over to the basement room in number thirteen where they had formed a kind of recreation room. There was electricity down there and a sink, and they had installed a fridge, a microwave and a water boiler for hot drinks. So he pulled on a pair of rubber boots, took a torch from the shelf and made his way along the path of wooden duckboards that crossed the mud and puddles of the yard to the back door of the old brick building. He cursed as water from the broken gutter high above splashed onto his neck and shoulders as he fumbled for the key of the padlock securing the door, then swore again, louder, when the beam of his torch revealed the hasp ripped out of the door frame. Some bastards had broken in. He hesitated, then returned to the site hut and collected the pickaxe handle he kept there for emergencies of this kind.

Returning to the back door, Akif pushed it open and flashed his torch inside. There was no sound or sign of anyone. From the darkness of the front of the house he heard the old sash windows rattle as a delivery truck rumbled past in the square. There was nothing to steal here except down in the basement room. He went to the head of the stairs and found the light switch that the electrician had rigged up for them from the basement light. He switched it on and his heart leaped in his chest as he saw an unfamiliar shadow extending across the flagstones down there. Someone was waiting for him.

‘I know you’re down there!’ he yelled in his fiercest voice. ‘You come out now where I can see you!’

But the shadow of the figure remained motionless. Akif began to wonder if he was mistaken. Perhaps something the men had left propped in the middle of the room was casting that shadow. Holding the pickaxe handle in one hand and the torch in the other, he slowly descended the stairs. At first, the glare of the bare bulb blinded him, and all he could see was an indistinct shape. He froze—there was a man, a black shape against the light! Then his eyes adjusted and he registered the truth in a single shocking moment—it was not a man but a woman, completely naked, hanging by the neck from an iron hook in the ceiling.

Kathy ran through the rain towards the front of number thirteen, where a uniformed man was sheltering in the doorway beneath the scaffolding.

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