Snow Storm by Robert Parker Page A

cartons told a story. This was a takeaway plating-up
room. Nothing more. Clearly the maid had quite an uphill battle
every morning. He wondered if she could be in the frame. Had he
perhaps made her clean that chandelier too many times?
    He tiptoed across the now
sticky red hall and found a dining room to the other side, table
set in anticipation of something, though the cutlery looked to have
gathered some dust.
    He carefully climbed the
creaky oak staircase to the first floor and made his way into what
must be the master bedroom. As in the case of the formal sitting
room below, this sat on a rounded turret like section of the
building, which faced south and got the best of the light owing to
the vast semi panoramic window. This room seemed opulent in
contrast to the others. A large amount of gold leaf and an almost
over the top collection of neo-classical sculpture was on display,
quite out of character with the rest of the house. An en-suite led
off the bedroom. There were more flat screens in here. Burke found
a remote by the four poster bed, switched the largest one on and
was immediately accosted by the image of himself staring back from
beside the bed. Interesting.
    There seemed to be no way
of playing anything back at hand, so he would leave it with the
forensics guys on the way out.
    The rest of the house
again seemed fairly standard: another four bedrooms three of which
had en-suites and all of which looked like they’d been decorated by
someone looking to sell the place. There appeared to be an attic
but no one had the key. He would see about getting hold of that
along with the laptop later.
    “ Any sign of
security cameras Doc?” He asked as he creaked
downstairs.
    “ Give us
time, Jim,” Brown replied.
    He was now leaning over
the recently de-chandeliered remains of what Burke realised was a
red dragon-kimonoed victim, picking up what appeared to be
fragments of shattered skull with a pair of tweezers and placing
them on sample containers of some sort.
    “ I haven’t
heard anything about any additional ones besides the ones on the
front gate. That’s not to say they’re recording ones anyway, may
just be a type of intercom with no storage.”
    “ Might not
want to have a record of comings and goings.” Burke
agreed.
    “ Didn’t
matter in the long run I suppose.”
    “ No.”
    “ You might
want to look at the hardware upstairs though.”
    “ Really, how
so?”
    “ Well it
seems our boy had his boudoir wired for playback. Couldn’t find any
kind of storage though.”
    “ Kinky.” The
good doctor replied scratching one of his many chins. “Might be
with that laptop we’re missing.”
     
    ********************
     
     
    He called in
at home on the way back to the station, hoping to cadge some kind
of food now Rachel was up and about.
    The letter had arrived
this morning, amongst the usual flotsam and jetsam issued by the
banks and everyone else that was encouraging him to spend
money.
    He left the bank
statements in their envelopes as usual. And rifled through to the
bottom of the pile. This one only caught his attention because of
the fact it had nothing on it and must have been dropped off by
hand, probably some kind of leaflet he thought. But the envelope
seemed wrong, too expensive.
    He tore it open and
pulled a letter from inside; cheap printer paper, inkjet printer,
times new roman font.
    Dear
Inspector Burke,
    Sometimes
it’s best just to bury the dead.
    You might
want to think about new arrivals instead of overdue
departures.
    Regards
    A concerned
observer
    What the fuck? Who? How
dare they? How could they?
    “ What’s up?
Energy bill gone up again?” Rachel asked.
    He hadn’t seen her. He
wondered how much of his reaction she had seen. “Something like
that,” he replied, pocketing the letter and the envelope, knowing
it would be of practically no use. “I’m feeling the heat anyway.”
He smiled, hoping that would suffice.
    Rachel smiled
back but with a questioning