As the Pig Turns - By M.C. Beaton Page 0,24

a hooligan inside all of us, thought Agatha.

Then she got rid of the tin cans. She drove carefully round to the cash machine, bumping over the ruts of frozen snow. Supermarket car parks were private property, and she had been told that if they cleared them themselves and someone slipped and fell, they would have to pay compensation. But if someone slipped and fell in the uncleared car park, it was their own bloody fault.

She parked in front of the cash machine. Beside the cash machine and beyond a stack of supermarket trolleys were two rides for small children. One periodically emitted bursts of supposedly childish laughter, but Agatha thought it sounded more like malicious elves watching someone come to grief.

She drew out a hundred pounds and was just tucking it away in her wallet when her eye caught what looked like a heap of clothes lying between the two small rides for children.

Why me? wondered Agatha. If that’s some drunk sleeping it off, I’ll need to get help for the poor sod.

She walked round the row of trolleys and bent down. Whoever it was was completely covered by a blanket. Agatha pulled the blanket away from the face.

The moon shone down. The hellish children’s voices cackled out. And Agatha stared down at the dead face of Amy Richards.

Inside the supermarket, although it was closed, she could see the shelf stackers at work.

She hammered on the glass doors. Faces turned towards her. A security man came to the door and waved at her to go away.

Agatha took out her notebook and printed in large letters: DEAD BODY IN CAR PARK.

Chapter Six

Agatha had to stop the security guard from trying to resuscitate Amy. ‘Leave her,’ she yelled, dragging him off. ‘Any idiot can see she’s stone dead. You’re tampering with evidence.’

Feeling sick and shaken, Agatha, who had phoned the police, heard the wail of sirens, and then police cars, marked and unmarked, poured into the car park. A grim-faced policewoman whom Agatha did not know began to question her and then said she was to go in a police car to headquarters and wait there to make a statement.

Agatha phoned her lawyer, a mild man called inappropriately Bill Sykes, and told him to meet her at headquarters. Agatha had previously used him to make out her will. He protested that he did not handle criminal law, to which Agatha snapped, ‘Then get down here and learn.’

Agatha ploughed on through the questioning with little help from her timid, sleepy lawyer. She had taken the precaution of summoning him, knowing well that the police would consider this one coincidence too far – that she had suddenly decided to dump trash in the middle of the night after watching Amy’s house and had conveniently found her dead body. Over and over her story she went while the asthmatic clock on the wall above her head wheezed out the minutes.

At last, she held up her hand. ‘Do you mind telling me how she died?’

Wilkes, who had been conducting the interview, scowled at her. A thickset detective sergeant by the name of Briggs asked nastily, ‘Don’t you know?’

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you,’ howled Agatha.

‘As far as we can gather, she was stabbed through the heart,’ said Wilkes.

‘What with?’ asked Agatha.

‘What do you think?’ asked Briggs sarcastically.

Mr Sykes, the lawyer, was tired. He found a reserve of bad-tempered courage he did not know he possessed.

‘Answer Mrs Raisin’s question,’ he snapped, ‘and stop wasting time with your bullying.’

Briggs looked as if a rabbit had just bitten him in the ankle. Wilkes said heavily, ‘Some thin-bladed knife, we think.’

‘Are you charging my client with anything?’ said little Mr Sykes, glaring through his thick glasses.

‘Not at this moment,’ said Briggs heavily.

‘Then you are free to leave, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mr Sykes, wrapping a long muffler around his neck. ‘Come along.’

‘Hold yourself ready for more questioning,’ Wilkes called after their retreating backs.

Outside the interview room, Agatha hugged the startled Mr Sykes. ‘Oh, well done. I am so tired, I didn’t know how to stand up to them, and believe me, that’s something that hardly ever happens to me.’

‘Where is your car?’ asked Mr Sykes.

‘I left it at the supermarket.’

‘I shall take you there. And,’ said Mr Sykes, quite overcome by the memory of his own bravery, ‘you can smoke if you like.’

When they got to the car park, a tent had been erected over the body. But all Agatha wanted to do was to get home and go