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A Change of Circumstance

Susan Hill
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Fifty-Nine
  61. Sixty
  62. Sixty-One
  63. Sixty-Two
  64. Sixty-Three
  65. Sixty-Four
  66. Sixty-Five
  67. Sixty-Six

Cover

A Change of Circumstance: A Simon Serrailler Case
Images
Images

One

January, and Christmas vanished without trace. The pavements of Starly village were greasy under a day of drizzle and there was an unhealthy mildness in the air.

A police patrol car, a dark grey saloon with ‘Doctor’ on the windscreen and Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler’s silver Audi were all parked on double yellow lines outside the Chinese pharmacy. Crime scene tape was stretched across a side entrance that led to the flat above the shop with a uniform constable standing by the gate to keep back the prying public of two teenagers straddling their bikes and smoking ostentatiously.

The pathologist in the upstairs room with Serrailler was one he did not know, a completely bald man with white eyebrows and lashes. He was also a man of few words.

‘Overdose?’ Simon said.

A nod.

‘Can you say when, roughly?’

A shrug.

‘And you’ll know more when you get him on the table, yes, OK. What’s happened to forensics?’

The doctor ripped off his gloves with the particular tearing sound that always set Simon’s teeth on edge, and swung his rucksack onto his back. The older ones still carried bags.

‘Heroin.’ His tone said everything.

The body was hunched forwards, syringe still hanging from his arm. His age had been put somewhere between seventeen and twenty.

‘It’s everywhere.’

The pathologist glanced up at a New Age poster half peeling off the wall.

‘Love. Light. Peace,’ he read aloud before he left.

Serrailler’s phone beeped.

Bypass closed. Rerouting – eta 25 minutes.

But he was used to being alone with dead bodies.

The room was filthy, damp, with bare boards, the corpse the purple-brown bruise colours of a Francis Bacon painting, but at least there was not yet the rotten-sweet smell of death. The boy had a shaven head, dirty feet, was wearing a soiled vest and shorts. His skin had erupted in sores and boils among the thicket of tattoos, his eyes were half closed, his mouth hung open, and he was emaciated, but his skull was well shaped, his fingers long and, in spite of their filth, delicate.

Serrailler felt anger, at the waste of life, anger, despair and disgust, but the feelings were impersonal, and about the squalor of the scene not about the young man whose body was now such a revolting mess. It had not always been like that and, whoever he was, he had been, in the phrase, ‘somebody’s son’.

On a first quick search there had seemed to be nothing in the room to identify him, or to confirm that he had lived here – indeed, that anyone had, none of the usual signs of habitation even of the most basic kind, no sofa, table, crockery or kettle, no bedding. No bed.