The Salton Killings by Sally Spencer

Author:Sally Spencer [Spencer, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 1998-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The killer stood on the canal path in the shadow of the salt store, metal cutters clutched tightly in his hand. He had prayed for a cloudy sky, but it was a clear night and the moon shone brightly on the patch of scrub.

Light or dark, he would have to go in. He didn’t want to, God knows he didn’t, but there was no choice. Any day now, Woodend might order a search. It would take a while, but they would eventually find what he had left behind. And then they would know. He couldn’t let that happen – not while his work was still unfinished.

He edged his way along the side of the store, his back against the wall, terrified that the Chief Inspector would suddenly appear, demanding to know what he was doing there, what he had in his hand. He moved slowly, lifting and lowering each foot carefully, avoiding the holes and clumps of grass which might trip him. It seemed to take an age.

And then he was there, at the corner of the building. The small, locked door only feet away from him. But what hazards lay in that short distance? He would be in the open – exposed. Anyone walking up Maltham Road would see him; any passing car would illuminate him in its headlights.

He stuck his head cautiously round the corner. The street was deserted. He listened, concentrating his whole mind on detecting sounds of danger. The crickets chirped in the grass, the old wooden building creaked. He could hear his own breathing, irregular and nervous. But there was no noise of an approaching car, no heavy crunch of footsteps.

“Move!” he ordered himself. “Move!”

He was in front of the door before he realised it, the metal cutters on the lock. He squeezed and they slipped off.

“Again! Do it again!”

He pressed and pressed, and still the lock did not give. The hands that had been so sure, so steady, when he was killing, were failing him now. His head was thumping, his heart racing. He clenched his teeth and forced his aching hands to one last effort. The lock broke.

He looked desperately over his shoulder, expecting to see people running, coming to investigate the crack that had sounded to him as loud as an explosion. The street was still empty. He drew the bolt back quickly, opened the door, and disappeared into the salt store.

Constable Yarwood drove slowly down Maltham High Street. There had been the usual Friday night crowd about – queuing outside the cinemas and the Maltham Variety Theatre, popping in and out of pubs, sitting on benches and eating their fish and chips – but nothing had happened.

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” he said in a pseudo-American accent, “an’ not a bloody one in Maltham.”

“What’s eatin’ you, tonight,” asked his partner, Constable Downes.

“I’m bored,” Yarwood replied, striking the steering wheel repeatedly with the flat of his hand. “Bored, bored, bored.”

“How about a run out to Salton?” Downes suggested.

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