Chapter Ten
STERLING’S WIFE WAS at work when they called, as she had been on the day of the murder. They found Les Sterling in his vest with the racing blaring out on the television. There was no sign of his two sons.
The house, as they walked through from the hall, had an uncared-for air. Even Rafferty, not usually one to notice such things, couldn’t help but see the dust thick on the skirting boards and the plentiful spiders’ webs draped from the ceiling corners. Clean clothes were piled in heaps on the arm and back of the worn settee waiting for someone, presumably Mrs Sterling, the only working member of the family, to take them upstairs and put them away.
Sterling had a stack of betting slips and several empty lager cans on the table beside his chair into which he slumped immediate
