BEYOND EVIL. Neil White

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter Six

      Sheldon’s heartbeat was drumming fast again as he skipped up the stone steps to the Lancashire Express offices. Tracey Peters was behind him, walking with a crime scene investigator. There was a uniformed officer in a fluorescent green jacket by the corner of the building, someone’s arm around her. Further along, on a low stone wall, there were people gathered in a huddle.

      The newspaper was produced from a large millstone building on the road that sloped down into the valley. It reported on the towns and villages along the Yorkshire border, with courtroom stories and council meetings, road crashes and summer fetes, its articles padded out by items pulled from the internet. Whenever they got a story that was big in Oulton, its base, the paper ran it for as long as people were still interested, and sometimes even beyond.

      As Sheldon got near to the large double wooden doors at the top of the steps, someone stepped in front of him. Sheldon recognised him as Jim Kelly, the newsdesk editor, a man in his fifties who smelled of cigarettes and dressed like a journalist cliché, from the grubby blazer to his crumpled cords.

      ‘Inspector Brown, I was hoping it would be you,’ Kelly said, sweeping his greasy flick of hair over his head.

      Sheldon stopped. He’d had press attention in the past, not much of it supportive, with the Express at the heart of it. ‘I hope this isn’t some kind of trick to get a quote,’ he said.

      Kelly smiled. ‘It’s better than that, follow me,’ and he headed into the building, Sheldon walking quickly to keep up.

      ‘Seeing as though you’re here, Inspector,’ Kelly said, over his shoulder, ‘have you got anything I can print?’

      Sheldon didn’t answer. Kelly had never been kind to the police in his reporting, and so he wasn’t going to get any special favours.

      Kelly shrugged and just kept on walking. Sheldon thought he could see the trace of a smirk.

      There were no people left inside, just small clusters of desks and computer monitors, the walls lined with framed front pages. The chairs were pulled untidily away from desks, as if people had left quickly. Their footsteps echoed as they walked, the ceiling high and arched, the building an old Methodist chapel converted fifty years earlier.

      Kelly must have seen Sheldon looking at the empty office, because he said, ‘We thought they ought to wait outside until you’d finished.’ He pointed towards a desk at the end of the room, facing out so that it looked over all the others and towards the door. Kelly’s desk. There was a white cardboard box on it, like a cake box. ‘It was handed in at the front desk, in a plastic bag.’

      ‘Who delivered it?’

      ‘I don’t know. We don’t have someone at the front all the time. It was left on the desk, that’s all I know.’

      Tracey went to the box first, but then let the investigator get in front so that he could take some photographs. Once he had finished, he stepped aside to let Tracey get a proper view.

      ‘There’s something written on it,’ she said.

      Sheldon looked at Kelly, who nodded and said, ‘The face of greed. Has a certain sort of message to it, don’t you think? A great headline.’

      ‘Did СКАЧАТЬ