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Birch’s footsteps echoed through the corridor, her heels making a clop-clop sound like horses’ hooves. She was on the first floor, in the Hairdressing department: on either side she glimpsed rows of white sinks and fat black chairs through the training-room doors. All silent now. The light in the corridor was dimming, and no electric lights had yet been switched on. She glanced at her watch: almost six. She’d been here nine hours. Detective Chief Inspector McLeod was downstairs in the refectory, and he’d drawn all available personnel to him, like moths to a bare bulb. Birch had slipped away from the back row of the briefing after a while: he wasn’t saying anything she didn’t know, and she’d have to suffer through a private audience with him later, anyway. She needed a few minutes’ peace. And it was peaceful up here, though the strong smell of industrial disinfectant hung in the air. Birch stopped walking. Beside her, running along the wall up to about waist height, there was a patch of painted plaster that was lighter than the rest. It was about a metre and a half long. Metal fixings and chewed plastic rawl plugs jutted out of the patch at intervals. There was a rectangle of tape on the floor here, and a number marker-penned onto the waxed surface inside it. This was where the radiator had been. This was where Leanne Lawrie, the ninth victim, had fallen, and been found. )
Addendum 25th July : Congratulations to Claire Askew on making the shortlist in both categories that she has been nominated for.

 

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A New Year, and a new opportunity to revive my efforts to review the CWA Dagger nominees.  This time I’m going to be sampling titles submitted by publishers for the awards, ahead of the longlist announcements in May. My new job with its hour or so of commuting has given me more reading time (and the more sociable shift patterns have also helped.)  There will be (I hope) occasional diversions back to previous winners and other acquisitions from Alton’s excellent second-hand bookshop.

 

‘Terrible news, isn’t it? They’ve fenced off half the bank, Mick White says, though you can’t see it from here. Police teams, sniffer dogs, them white tent things … though what good they think that’ll do now, I don’t know. Whatever’s buried there, it’s been out there in the wind and rain long enough, from what Judy Wallace’s old man said. Her it was that found it, and to hear Mick’s account, their dog snapped it right in half at the elbow, brittle as a stick. Between that and the salt, I don’t suppose there’s much left of it now.’ )

 

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