Chapter 1

I'd lived in fear of this place , its spooky electric surroundings, the woodland surrounding it gave it space for anything to hide,anything large and nasty, and a child's imagination was fertile ground for fear and an anxious prickling ran down my neck.

I'd started sweating ever since we came in through the hole in the old rusty chain fence.The same hole we used to gain acess to this place as children, when we played here for 'dares'.

The old Admarilty gardens.The last user must have died years ago, since the dockyard at Chatway closed in the early 80's. The gardens were large and now very unkempt,but at their peak were well cared for and manicured.The Admiralty house was a tall, wooden structure, with a brown-planked and wide frontage.

There was a gently sloping roof, with wooden slats on it, so that you could climb up and view the docks.these lead onto a flat piece of roof. From the roof, was a ladder,which lent against a tall tower, and at the top of the tower was the lamp of the lighthouse.Now I climbed the thirteen rungs up this ladder,looking closely at the chips of stone in the concrete as I climbed, trying to calm my jangling nerves.I climbed up and faced the rusty safety railings which surrounded the glass of the lamp.

When I was a child,nobody in our gang had ever been brave enough to get past this stage,but the last occupants left years ago now,and now was my job to open this glass door and enter, despite everything I knew and all my intuition telling me not to.

It was autumn, and the brown leaves in the garden were like islands in the long autumnal grass on the front lawn. The last warmth of summer had just been lost when the body was discovered in this lighthouse. Murdered, only a few days ago. I'd been recalled from another job - local knowledge they said - but I knew the rumours about the lighthouse and wasn't surprised a body had been found here - it wasn't the first one after all.

I climbed slowly back down the ladder, to the flat roof and shakily down the slats to the ground.It wasn't a pretty sight in there, and the smell had been strong.I was lucky this wasn't high summer, i thought, as I emptied my stomach behind the hedge.

"Have you finished in there , Partidge?"  shouted the chief.

Always one for subtlety, the chief had done it again, and I came out, red-faced and sweating,wiping my mouth with a handkerchief.   ' What'dya think?' said the chief, firing questions like a machine gun.

"Dunno" I retorted, trying to think ."Whoever did that was a sikko, and no mistake" I said.

later, I asked forensics and the doctor who did the postmortem for some guidance.

I found out that unsurprisingly, the motive for the attack had been sexual, and that the sexual attack had turned into murder.

"DNA test everything, the clothes, the lot" I ordered, but the lab guys just laughed. "Standard procedure today grandad"

At least the doctor was less sarcastic. "She died three days ago, perhaps four, a week at the outside. We'll do a potassium test on the eyeball to see exactly when." I thanked her,and asked if she knew how the murder was commited.

"Asphixiated with a chord, strangulation. We found the chord close by."

I nodded. Now I remembered the notes in the file, I knew that, but my  memory was slipping away from me.

Prologue

I was working in Essex when the chief called.

"We have a murder in Chatway for you, Partridge.You're a local man, so the ball's in your court. I can't tell you who the victim is,only where she lived. Her parents want no publicity,so keep it quiet.The local press will play ball, so no cock-ups.The family name is Green."

"Not the mayor's family,by any chance, chief is it?" I asked

The chief had put the phone down, so I was guessing.

I phoned her parents, but I was going to have to find out the hard way.

Why all the secrecy, I thought?

When I saw her parents, I knew my guess had been correct. But I hadn't guessed the whole truth.

Tanya Gren was a candidate for the Local beauty Queen. Indeed, she was a former Miss Kent. I never made the connection until it was too late.

I drove to Kent,back thirty years, to home.

I knew this could be the last case I did. Illness had taken its toll.

"You're too bloody good" My lover said "But nobody's irreplaceable!"

How ironic.Try telling that to Tanya Green's parents