Golden Mile to Murder by Sally Spencer Page B

sergeant was the sort he’d had with Bob Rutter?
    The landlady returned. ‘If you’d like to follow me,’ she said, mounting the stairs.
    On the first landing was a long, narrow corridor. ‘Down here,’ the landlady said, but when both Woodend and Paniatowski started to follow her, she quickly added, ‘No, not you, madam. Just the gentleman.’
    Most of the doors along the corridor were closed, but two of them, right next to one another, were open, and inside Woodend could see freshly made beds. The landlady had been planning to put the two police officers in adjacent rooms, he thought – but that was before she had realised one of them was a woman.
    â€˜That’s your room,’ Mrs Bowyer said, pointing to the second of the open doors. ‘The toilet and bathroom are at the end of the corridor. There’s hot water between seven-thirty and nine-thirty, then again between seven and nine in the evenin’. Breakfast is at eight, dinner at twelve and tea at five-thirty. Guests are asked to refrain from smokin’ in bed. Thank you.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ Woodend replied, but Mrs Bowyer was already on her way to shepherd Paniatowski to a part of the house where she would be safe from his evil clutches.
    Woodend threw his battered carpet bag on to the bed, watched it sink into the lumpy mattress, then lit up a Capstan Full Strength. If it weren’t for sex rearing its ugly head all over the place, his job would be a lot easier, he thought. But then, remembering how often the sexual element had played a part in the cases he’d investigated, he realised that without it he probably wouldn’t have a job at all.

Eleven
    T he Gay Paree Theatre stood on a street corner halfway down the Golden Mile. It was shaped like an upended domino, and had a rickety platform jutting out from it at about six feet above ground level. For most of the time, the double doors at the end of the platform were closed and the platform was empty, but as the evening wore on – and the children were safely tucked up in bed – the place came to life.
    There were two people on the platform at that moment – a man and a woman. The man, dressed in a cheap, flashy suit, was standing. The woman, a brassy blonde woman in a peach-coloured beach robe – and who knew what else,
if anything
, underneath? – was sitting on a chair next to him. On the pavement below stood a couple of dozen men and a few couples. The single men showed marked signs of interest in what was going on. The ones with their wives or girlfriends were doing their best to feign a lazy indifference.
    The man on the platform held up a crudely made and crudely painted black wooden box.
    â€˜And now, before your very eyes, ladies and gentlemen, I will perform an incredible feat of magic,’ he said.
    But none of the men were looking at him, because the brassy blonde had just – slowly and deliberately – crossed her legs.
    â€˜I put the box over my partner’s head, like so,’ the man continued.
    He slid the box in place. The front of it projected out at least six or eight inches past the blonde’s face, so that its edge was poised over her bosom.
    â€˜And now,’ the man said, producing a long-bladed knife, ‘I will insert this dangerous weapon right into the box – so far that it will come out on the other side. This is a piece of magic, ladies and gentlemen, which calls for the utmost concentration – and I would be grateful if you would maintain complete silence until it is finished.’
    Woodend, standing in the middle of the pack below, shook his head in wonder.
    Complete silence?
    With the trams thundering past on the other side of the road?
    With the noise of the amusement arcade to their left and the amplified shouts of the bingo callers on the other?
    Or perhaps the ‘magician’ just meant the complete silence of the people standing in front of the platform.