Brock And Kolla - 09 - Spider Trap Read Free Page A

live rail on his way over. He was lucky there was someone on the railway footbridge who saw him and phoned for help. Rush hour train services out of Blackfriars were disrupted for hours.’
    ‘Did he survive?’
    ‘Last I heard he was in a coma. The weird thing was that when they got him to hospital they found something very strange in his pocket.’
    ‘What was that?’
    McCulloch paused—for effect, Kathy thought. ‘A human jawbone,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Yes.We’ve no idea where it came from.We’re checking where he went down there.Want to take a look?’
    They walked over to the group, some of whom were pulling on rubber boots. McCulloch spoke to one of them, and together they set off along the laneway leading to the footbridge. From the middle of the bridge they had a clear view down over the scene of the previous evening’s drama where the snow, lightly dusted by another fall during the night, was churned up all over the area where Adam Nightingale had made his crossing.
    ‘We think he came down the embankment over there,’ the officer pointed,‘and got part-way onto the wasteland.That’s what we’re looking at now.’
    They saw two dark figures stooping over an area of trampled snow. One of them looked up and waved. A moment later the officer’s radio crackled. He listened for a moment then turned to McCulloch. ‘They think they’ve found something, Skip. Maybe you should see for yourself. You’ll need boots.’
    They got them from the van, then followed the uniformed man through the hole that the rescue team had cut in the fence and climbed down to the side of the tracks. They tramped along the edge of the ballast, breath steaming in the cold air, then turned into the waste ground along a path trampled in the snow. The two men ahead looked up and moved to make space for them to see what they’d found. At first Kathy thought it was just a piece of smooth grey stone buried among the debris of frozen leaves and earth. Then she made out a pattern of dark lines wriggling across its surface, very like the suture lines on the dome of an old skull. McCulloch squatted down and swept loose material away, then stopped and sat back on his haunches. Two eye sockets stared up at them from the frozen ground.
    ‘Well,’ he grunted and brushed off another lump of dirt, exposing a small neat hole punched through the forehead.
    ‘Well, well.’ He looked at Kathy and said,‘Your boss’ll love this.’

    Actually it was hard to make out what Brock’s reaction was to the find. He came straight away to see for himself, and dismissed McCulloch’s suggestion that they might hand it over to someone else to deal with. Instead, he arranged for DI Bren Gurney to come down from Queen Anne’s Gate to take charge of the site, and insisted that Dr Mehta, the forensic pathologist working on the two murdered girls, should also deal with this case. ‘Keeps things simple,’he said.‘Don’t want anyone else under our feet.’
    Kathy, meanwhile, made her way back along Cockpit Lane to the local police station, where McCulloch had arranged facilities for the investigation.As she came to the area closed off to traffic for the markets,she heard a loud throbbing bass rhythm behind her and turned to see an electric-blue Peugeot convertible approaching. The front window slid down, ragga music booming out, and a beefy brown arm followed, draped with a large assortment of gold jewellery. The hand formed itself into the shape of a pistol, aimed at a young man tending the first of the stalls, who gave a quick flash of bright white teeth before the car roared away down a side street.
    The goods on sale in the market were cheap and cheerful, the kind of things that a poor neighbourhood most needed—children’s shoes and clothes, toiletries, parkas, CDs, plastic buckets, cutlery, gloves, small electrical appliances. Almost all the customers were West Indian,the traders too,rubbing their hands and stamping their feet to keep warm as