Five Down: The first murder was horrific, but then the taunting clues began... by Tom Sibson

Author:Tom Sibson [Sibson, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Dragon Publishing LTD
Published: 2022-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Everyone who has learnt their perception of what our solar system looks like by looking at diagrams in textbooks would be shocked to discover just how spectacularly wide of the mark they are. Faced with the unenviable paradox of having to create a legible diagram that fits across a double page spread, every textbook illustrator has been forced to make such incredible compromises that the scale of the resulting picture has no bearing on reality whatsoever. In 1999, three scientists from York devised an innovative way to put the record straight.

Laid out along a cycle route running south from the outskirts of York, an accurate scale model of the solar system had been constructed, and many of those who experience the joy of walking or cycling along it return with their perspective forever changed. Scores of motorists drive up and down the busy York bypass without ever noticing the colossal golden metal sphere that hangs beside one of the bridges, marking the sun at the start of the trail. The planets of the solar system are laid out along the route, each represented by a small metal sphere in an accurate scale of both size and distance. Earth, by comparison to the vast sun, is roughly the size of a marble and is a few minutes’ walk away. An hour’s walk would take the intrepid hiker to the football-sized Saturn three and a half miles down the track. Those with tenacity and a good pair of walking boots, or a bicycle, would arrive at tiny Pluto – still a planet when the trail was constructed – more than six miles from their starting point.

None of this was on Karen Parkinson’s mind as she rammed her foot on the brake pedal to bring her car to a screeching, skidding stop. Yanking out the keys with trembling hands, she leapt straight out of the car to sprint down under the bridge below the bypass. The beam of her torch bounced erratically off the garish spray-paint graffiti that decorated the concrete supports as she raced underneath, panting heavily.

Around the bend in the track, the scenery opened out to fields on both sides and as Karen hurtled round the corner with her lungs on fire, she could make out two standing figures in hi-vis jackets on the path ahead, each pointing a torch downwards. The sight that made her blood run cold was the ominous, dark third shape lying motionless on the ground.

She came to an abrupt halt by the figures and saw that they were PC Charlie Atkinson and PC Gabby Janowski, the police officers who had also been first on the scene in the cold hours of the morning for the killing of Kirsten McNally in Hull Road Park. She stared down aghast at the lifeless form illuminated in the harsh light of the torches, her breath coming in huge gulps which sent large visible clouds of condensation into the freezing night air.

‘We rushed straight over as soon as you’d called it in,’ explained Atkinson.

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