Over the Edge (33 page)
It was signed by an under-secretary, but whether that was his title or a boast, I didn’t know. I unpinned the over-exposed snapshot of the girl I’d last seen six weeks earlier and propped it against the phone. In this photo she looked much younger and happier. She was holding one hand above her eyes, shielding them from the sun, and was wearing a flowered dress. There were mountains in the background and the sky was cloudless.
It was an ordinary photo, like I’d seen hundreds
of times before in old scrapbooks. Apart from the mountains it could have been taken anytime in the 40s or 50s in rural England. The girlfriend of a young man about to be called into the army, enjoying a last day with him. That’s what Ludmilla was: an ordinary girl. But forces were at work in her country to create extraordinary events. Racial hatred and religious intolerance were channelled and exploited by groups who didn’t care who or what they destroyed in their lust for power. Her parents had fled their homeland, like countless ancestors before them, in a ceaseless ebb and flow of humanity looking for somewhere safe to raise their children. Could it happen here? Some would like it to, no doubt about it.
The fingerprints were on an actual size contact print, presumably made after they had been lifted from something that had belonged to Ludmilla. I placed them in my pocket, put everything else back in the envelope and addressed it to myself.
Our fingerprints department loves it when you call on them unexpectedly and ask for a favour. ‘C’mon,’ I insisted. ‘I get you all the decent jobs. Without me it would be all stolen cars and TICs. Where’s the fun in them?’
The officer who’d worked with me on the Wallenberg case came over. ‘What’s the problem, Charlie?’ he asked.
I pulled the photo of the prints from my pocket.
‘49, Juniper Avenue,’ I said. ‘How do these compare with the marks you found on the walls?’
‘I thought it was natural causes,’ he said.
‘You know me,’ I replied. ‘No stone unturned Charlie.’
‘Can you leave it with me?’
‘If you insist.’
‘How urgent is it?’
‘It’s not. Just sewing up the loose ends.’
‘Cheers. I’ll ring you this aft.’
Sonia rang, between climbers, to see where we were eating. I volunteered to cook and she said she’d be at my house about seven. ‘I should be home,’ I said, ‘but let yourself in if I’m not.’ The SOCO rang shortly after I replaced the phone.
‘We have a match,’ he declared. ‘The prints all over the walls of that room are from the same person as the ones you brought in. Is that any help?’
The photo of Ludmilla was now pinned above my desk, next to the calendar. I looked at her, decided she needed a break. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Elimination purposes only. They’re from the daughter of a previous tenant.’
‘Fair enough. Shall I destroy them, then?’
‘That’s what the law says. Thanks for helping.’
‘No trouble. I’ll stick them all in the shredder. Don’t come again for a while, please.’
I found my diary and copied a number on to my telephone pad. After six rings I was transferred to
the BT Answer 1571 service. I tried again, several times, without luck, so I decided to leave a message.
‘Hello Lorraine,’ I said. ‘This is Charlie Priest. Tell Ludmilla to send a postcard home. Her parents are worried about her.’
On the way home I called in the supermarket and bought crusty bread, shallots, tomatoes, peppers, root ginger, coriander, mussels and tiger prawns, with a bottle of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. I put the wine in the freezer and propped the recipe book against the microwave. After a few minutes of cleaning the mussels I decided something was missing. I walked through into the lounge and put a CD on, with the volume wound up loud so I could hear it while I prepared the ingredients.
It was Bruce Springsteen. As I reached the kitchen he started singing and I joined in at the chorus.
Born…in the USA
…we sang, top of our voices, with Springsteen accompanying us both on guitar and me doing my best on the wooden spoon.
I
F YOU ENJOYED
O
VER THE
E
DGE
,
YOU’LL LOVE THE OTHER BOOKS
IN THE
DI C
HARLIE
P
RIEST SERIES.
Praise for Stuart Pawson’s DI Charlie Priest series
‘Enthralling’
Financial Times Magazine
‘The DI Charlie Priest series is one of the most delightful – and under-rated – in the genre. Stuart Pawson has created a thoroughly believeable and likeable character who’s surrounded by the kind of funny and hard-working colleagues you’d give you left arm to have in real life! …If you haven’t come across Charlie and mates, go back to the start of the series and prepare to be royally entertained’
reviewingtheevidence.com
‘Yorkshire’s answer to Inspector Morse’
The Bookseller
‘Perfect for a long winter afternoon with the rain beating down on the windows’
Independent on Sunday
‘A fast-paced, tense thriller, written by a true master’
Good Book Guide
‘Enough to satisfy the most ardent lover of crime fiction’
Yorkshire Evening Post
‘The character of Charlie Priest is a winner; a good and intelligent man in a hard world, fighting the villains on his patch with a mixture of common sense, determination and, above all, humour. Highly recommended’
Crime Time
‘Totally engrossing. A classic whodunit with the best bit of misdirection I’ve seen since Agatha Christie. A truly brilliant book, but don’t start reading it in the evening or you’ll never get to bed’
Sherlock Holmes Magazine
S
TUART
P
AWSON
had a career as a mining engineer, followed by a spell working for the probation service, before he became a full-time writer. He lives in Fairburn, Yorkshire, and, when not hunched over the word processor, likes nothing more than tramping across the moors, which often feature in his stories. He is a member of the Murder Squad and the Crime Writers’ Association.
www.stuartpawson.com
I
N
THE
DI C
HARLIE
P
RIEST
SERIES
The Picasso Scam
The Mushroom Man
The Judas Sheep
Last Reminder
Deadly Friends
Some by Fire
Chill Factor
Laughing Boy
Limestone Cowboy
Over the Edge
Shooting Elvis
Grief Encounters
A Very Private Murder
Allison & Busby Limited
13 Charlotte Mews
London W1T 4EJ
www.allisonandbusby.com
Copyright © 2004 by S
TUART
P
AWSON
First published in hardback by Allison & Busby in 2004.
Published in paperback published in 2005.
This ebook edition first published in 2012.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1171–0