The Frame by David W Robinson

Author:David W Robinson [Robinson, David W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
Publisher: crooked cat / darkstroke
Published: 2020-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Pamela Normington, the senior member of Walston’s small staff, was uncertain about allowing Drake access to her employer’s office, until Larne assured her that it was permissible.

Left alone while the sergeant spoke to the staff, Drake ambled upstairs and into the generous space of Walston’s private domain.

It was not significantly different to his place at Howley College. Box files arranged around the shelves, all labelled and stacked in date order, a couple of comfortable chairs, Newton’s Cradle on one corner of the modern, pale teak desk, and an executive, tilt and swivel chair in black leather behind the desk, close to the room’s only window.

It was, however, conducive to work rather than idling away the hours. That solitary window looked out onto back streets, rear yards, and the kind of terraced housing common to towns like Landshaven. Like the view of Coronation Street as often seen on the credits, but without the basking cat, the overall impression anything but inspirational.

The desk was untidy. The only clear space was the centre, where a laptop stood. Around it, files were stacked here and there, piled high in the trays, the modern, cordless telephone cast to one side, a pad of post-it notes, the top one blank, dropped haphazardly in front of a pencil holder, which in turn contained a range of cheap biros and pencils, a couple of coasters, upon one of which rested a half empty cup of coffee, an ashtray – a souvenir of Rabat – littered with cigarette ends, paperclips and, of all things, a nail clipper, finally, where the blotter would normally be found was an A4 sketchpad, the top sheet stained with a dusting of cigarette ash but otherwise clean. It spelled out Walston’s self-indulgent arrogance; as well as considering women to be there for his pleasure, he did not give a fig for anti-smoking regulations.

When Drake checked the drawers, he found them equally untidy, one of them stashed with packs of cigarettes (none of which bore the ‘UK duty-paid’ sticker) and lots of disposable lighters in packs of ten. In the bottom drawer, he found prescription drugs, amlodipine 5mg and losartan 100mg, from which he deduced that Walston suffered from high blood pressure – one of the known side effects of smoking. In the third and final drawer, he found a plethora of IT equipment: memory sticks, USB hubs, a couple of web cams, both with USB cables, a freestanding microphone, and old software CDs, some of which he recognised, others which he had never heard of.

On a nearby shelf stood a photograph of a woman in her late forties, a blonde who had once been attractive but whose eyes were red rimmed, bagging, her jowls hanging, mouth turned down. He guessed it was Walston’s wife, a woman who – according to the Landshaven police – was an alcoholic. He wondered idly how she would react to the morning’s news. Would she spiral down into a fit of grief, hit the bottle, or both?

He picked

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.