THE WASTEFUL MURDER an addictive crime mystery full of twists by LEWIS ROY

Author:LEWIS, ROY
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JOFFE BOOKS crime thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2020-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Charlie Spate slumped in the chair in his office and winced at the recollection of the thudding in his skull as he had talked to the forensic pathologist at his tiny office in Gosforth. Elaine Start had taken him straight there — Charlie had been in no fit state to drive. She had asked him what was the reason for his pub crawl, but he really couldn’t remember. It had started with a general feeling of depression, the idea that he was a fish out of water up here in the North, a reluctance to admit that he was feeling lonely: he had just pushed aside his desk work in the middle of the afternoon and gone on a bender. The Northumberland Arms was the last of the list before she found him. And when she had, and taken him to see the people at the forensic laboratory, he hadn’t really been up to focussing on the matters in hand.

The little man with the moustache turned out to be called Paterson. He was aware of Charlie’s state and he rolled his eyes in Elaine Start’s direction expressively. It was she who had asked the questions, mainly, while Charlie listened, partly to Paterson’s replies and partly to the growing noise in his head.

The forensic group had finally got around to taking a closer look at the deserted farmhouse. They had eventually reached the conclusion that it was on the ground floor, in the kitchen at the back, that the fire had been started. It had spread quickly, not least because it seemed as though there was a considerable amount of inflammable material there, paper, documents, and other items which had been liberally sprayed with petrol.

‘If the intention was to blow up Stagshaw, why do you think the fire was started at the farmhouse?’ Elaine Start had asked.

Paterson had gazed at her with a certain owlish admiration. Charlie had guessed the little man quite liked Elaine Start and had felt a stab of irritation. ‘I didn’t say an intention to affect Stagshaw was apparent from the evidence. And I’m not really qualified to look into motives. I just present facts.’

But it seemed that the fire had spread quickly in the old farmhouse, the rising wind had pushed flammable material into the compound beyond the perimeter fence where it had ignited chemicals on the site. Once ignition had occurred there, the fire had quickly spread throughout the Stagshaw site, culminating in a massive explosion. The explosion was one of the reasons why they had discovered the body, behind the damaged wall of the farmhouse. The wall had been blown down, the upper floor had collapsed, and the corpse had been thrown to the ground.

‘The body had been badly burned, of course,’ Paterson had explained, caressing his little moustache as though he thought it would be a turn on for Elaine Start. ‘But it’s not easy to burn a body unless the temperature is such that the flesh is consumed. In this case, the legs and torso had been badly damaged, but the head, oddly enough, was largely intact.

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