Still Waters Read online

  ‘I’m sure you’ll let Simon down lightly, Caffy,’ Fran said, taking one last look at the offending corner.

  ‘The trouble is,’ she replied, starting down the ladders more nimbly than they dared, and betraying none of the fear she admitted to, ‘that in his condition even lightly might be too harsh.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The fifth-floor room was so neat it might never have been occupied. But it was certainly meant to have been. There were baskets and vases of red roses everywhere, even in the marble-walled bathroom. Two near the door had been tipped over, as if someone had blindly run past them. Puddles were only just spreading.

  An unopened bottle of vintage champagne was still chilling in a bucket beside the bed, though the ice had begun to melt. A couple of expensive chocolates lay coyly on the pillows.

  The heavy curtains had been drawn, but had been tugged slightly apart. They shifted and heaved, driven by the wind. The glass door opening onto the balcony was ajar, despite the sudden burst of rain, which would soon soak into the carpet.

  Blue flashing lights were already strobing over the car park below. The slanting rain might have made them look more like lights on seaside rides. Instead, it rendered them even more cold and clinical.

  The brightwear of the men and women scrabbling diligently in their intermittent illumination – someone would soon send for incident tape and floodlights – turned a harsh green. As for the blood from the shattered body they were attending, that too a far from natural colour, it was already trickling into the drains and sewers to be borne, via the new and expensive sewage plant that Ofwat had forced upon Invitaqua, to the sea.

  About the Author

  Prize-winning short-story writer JUDITH CUTLER is the author of nearly thirty novels, including the successful crime series featuring Fran Harman, police woman extraordinaire. Judith has taught Creative Writing at Birmingham University, and has run writing courses elsewhere, including a maximum-security prison and an idyllic Greek island. She now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband, fellow author Edward Marston.

  www.judithcutler.com

  By Judith Cutler

  The Chief Superintendent Fran Harman series

  Life Sentence

  Cold Pursuit

  Still Waters

  The Josie Welford series

  The Food Detective

  The Chinese Takeout

  The Tobias Campion series

  The Keeper of Secrets

  Shadow of the Past

  Scar Tissue

  Drawing the Line

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  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2008.

  This ebook edition first published in 2014.

  Copyright © 2008 by JUDITH CUTLER

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  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 978–0–7490–1628–9