A Death Left Hanging by Sally Spencer Page B

powerful. He recalled, still a little guiltily, stealing for himself some of the pride that the workers took in knowing that the cloth they made covered the whole world.
    It had seemed to him then that anything so majestic was sure to go on for ever. He had, of course, been completely wrong. Even by the time Sam Woodend died – just a couple of weeks short of his fifty-second birthday – the mill had become a shadow of its old self. And now, a quarter of a century beyond that, the place stood empty against the skyline – a monument to its own former glory, a stark reminder that even the greatest empire in the world had been built on shifting sands.
    Not that the building was
quite
empty, he noted. For just as the corpse of a mighty beast will soon be invaded by scavengers, so too it was now possible to buy mass-produced Pakistani carpets, retread car tyres and second-hand furniture from the smaller businesses that had sprung up within the shell of the once-vast one.
    Woodend turned his back on the mill to face the streets that surrounded it – row upon row of terraced houses running in long, straight lines. They no longer served as the homes of mill workers, but the road names still reflected their golden past – Calcutta Street, Rawalpindi Row, Bombay Terrace. They, too, were living on borrowed time. Soon they would be gone – cleared away to make space for housing estates with every modern convenience.
    And a good thing too, the Chief Inspector thought – though he could not but feel a pang of regret for the sense of community that would, inevitably, be destroyed in the process.
    He walked to the end of one of these cobbled streets – streets built for clogs, not shoes with leather soles – and reached a pub called the Red Lion. It, at least, did not look much changed since the days when he himself had stood at the counter – puffing on a Park Drive and trying desperately to act as if he were eighteen. He pushed the door open and entered the public bar.
    As Bob Rutter drove around the corner, he saw his young-executive semi-detached house up ahead of him. In the earlier years of his marriage, it had not been unusual for him to find the house in complete darkness. It wasn’t that the place had been empty – Maria would invariably be waiting for him, with his evening meal bubbling away on the stove – it was simply that the electric light was neither a help nor a hindrance to his wife. But things had changed since the baby had been born. Now, looking up at the nursery window, he could see a night light burning.
    Maria was waiting for him at the front door. They kissed, then he followed her down the hall. She was so well aware of the obstacles in her own little kingdom, he thought, that anyone who had not met her before could be excused for assuming that she could see. He knew there had been people who’d never imagined that he would marry her once she’d gone blind. Perhaps she’d even thought it herself. But he’d never had any doubts. He’d loved her then, and he loved her still.
    â€˜Dinner will be about fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘I expect you’d like a beer first.’
    â€˜I’d sell my soul for one,’ he admitted.
    She brought his drink, then sat down next to him. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.
    She could always tell when he was troubled. ‘It’s just something Cloggin’-it Charlie said to me today,’ he admitted.
    â€˜What about?’
    â€˜Do
you
think I’m unfair to Paniatowski?’
    â€˜Unfair?’
    â€˜Perhaps that’s not the right word. Do you think I’m unduly antagonistic to her? Am I less tolerant of her than I would be of another sergeant?’
    â€˜Do you know any other female sergeants to
be
tolerant of?’
    He’d been thinking in terms of rank, not sex, and Maria’s comment took him by surprise. ‘Are you saying I’m against her