Bloodline-9 Read Free Page A

watched as what remained of Emily Walker was moved, saw the hand flop back across the leg as it was lifted and turned in one slow, smooth movement. Saw those strands of hair that were not caked in blood fal away from her face as she was laid down on her back.
    ‘Cheers, lads.’
    Hendricks worked with a good team. He insisted on it. Thorne remembered one CSI in particular - back when they were content to be cal ed scene of crime officers - handling the partial y decomposed body of an old man no better than if it were a sack of spuds. He’d watched Hendricks pushing the SOCO up against a wal and pressing a heavily tattooed forearm across the man’s throat. He couldn’t recal seeing the two of them at the same crime scene since.
    The cameramen stepped forward and went to work. When they’d finished, Hendricks mumbled a few preparatory notes into his digital recorder.
    ‘How much longer, Phil?’ Thorne asked.
    Hendricks lifted one of the dead woman’s arms; began bending back the fingers of a fist that was closed tight. ‘Hour and a half.’ The thick Manchester accent stretched out the pathologist’s final word, flattened the vowel. ‘Two at a push.’
    Thorne checked his watch. ‘Right.’
    ‘You on a promise or something?’
    Thorne did his best to summon the right expression, something conspiratorial and devilish, but he wasn’t sure he’d managed it. He turned to see where Detective Sergeant Dave Hol and had got to.
    ‘She’s got something in her hand,’ Hendricks said.
    Thorne turned back quickly and bent down to get a closer look, watched as Hendricks went to work with his tweezers and lifted something from the victim’s fist. It appeared to be a smal square of plastic or cel uloid, dark and wafer thin. Hendricks dropped it into an evidence bag and held it up to the light.
    ‘Piece of film?’ Thorne asked.
    ‘Could be.’
    They stared at whatever was in the bag for a few more seconds, but both knew they would only be guessing until the Forensic Science Service laboratory had finished with it.
    Hendricks handed the bag over for the evidence manager to log and label, then careful y fastened polythene wraps around both the victim’s hands before moving further up the body.
    Thorne closed his eyes for a few seconds, let out a long breath. ‘Can you believe I had a choice?’ he said.
    Hendricks glanced up at him. He was kneeling behind the victim’s head and lifting it so that it was resting against his legs.
    ‘Brigstocke gave me the option.’
    ‘More fool you.’
    ‘I could have let Kitson take it.’
    ‘This one’s got your name on it,’ Hendricks said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Look at her, Tom.’
    Emily Walker was . . . had been early thirties or thereabouts, dark hair streaked with a little grey and a smal star tattooed above one ankle. She was no more than five feet tal , her height emphasising the few extra pounds which, judging by the contents of the fridge and the magnet on the door that said ‘ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE HUNGRY?’, she was trying to lose.
    She wore a thin necklace of brown beads and there was a charm bracelet around one wrist: dice, a padlock, a pair of fish. Her shirt was denim. Her skirt was thin cotton, the same pil ar-box red as the varnish on her toenails.
    Thorne looked across at the sandal that had been circled on the lino close to the fridge. At the decorative bottle a few feet away, with what looked like balsamic vinegar on the inside and blood and hair caught in a few of the glass ridges on the outside, and beyond, to the light stil winking on the front of the washing machine. His hand drifted up to his face, fingers moving along the straight, white scar on his chin. He stared until the red light began to blur, then turned and wandered away, leaving Hendricks cradling Emily Walker’s head and talking quietly into his Dictaphone.

    ‘There is nothing holding the plastic bag in position over the victim’s head. Assume that the kil er kept it in place around the