Piece of My Heart Read Free

corn flower painted on her right cheek.
    There was nothing more Chadwick could do until the Home Office pathologist arrived, which should be very soon, McCullen had given him to understand. Standing, he scanned the ground nearby but saw only rubbish: KitKat wrappers, a soggy International Times , an empty pouch of Old Holborn rolling tobacco, an orange pack of Rizla cigarette papers. It would all have to be bagged and checked out, of course. He sniffed the air–moist but warm enough for the time of year–and glanced at his watch. Half past eleven. It looked like being another fine day, and a long one.
    He turned his gaze back to the others. “Anybody recognize her?”
    They all shook their heads. Chadwick thought he noticed a little hesitation in Rick Hayes’s reaction.
    “Mr. Hayes?”
    “No,” said Hayes. “Never seen her before.”
    Chadwick thought he was lying about not recognizing the girl, but it would keep. He noticed a movement by the stage and looked to see Naylor coming back with a tray and, following shortly behind him, a nattily dressed man who seemed to be about as happy to find himself walking across a muddy field as Chadwick had been. But this man was carrying a black bag. The pathologist had arrived at last.
    October 2005
    Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks hit the play button, and after the heartbeats, the glorious sound of “Breathe” from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon filled the room. He still hadn’t got the hang of the new equipment yet, but he was finding his way around it slowly. He had inherited a state-of-the-art sound system along with a DVD player, forty-two-inch plasma TV, forty-gigabyte iPod and a Porsche 911 from his brother Roy. The estate had gone to Banks’s parents, but they were set in their ways and had no use for a Porsche or a large-screen TV. The first wouldn’t last five minutes parked outside their Peterborough council house, and the second wouldn’t fit in their living room. They had sold Roy’s London house, setting them both up nicely for the rest of their lives, and passed on the things they couldn’t use to Banks.
    As for Roy’s iPod, Banks’s father had taken one look at it and been about to drop it in the waste bin before Banks rescued it. Now it had become as essential to him when he went out as his wallet and his mobile. He had been able to download the software and buy new chargers and cables, along with an adapter that allowed him to play it through his car radio, and while he had kept a great deal of his brother’s music library on it, he had managed to clear a good fifteen hours’worth of space by deleting the complete Ring cycle, and that was more than enough to accommodate his meagre collection at the moment.
    Banks headed into the kitchen to see how dinner was getting along. All he’d had to do was remove the packaging and put the foil tray in the oven, but he didn’t want to burn it. It was Friday evening, and Annie Cabbot was coming over for dinner tonight–just as a friend–and the evening was to be a sort of unofficial housewarming, though that was a term Banks hesitated to use these days. He had been back in the restored cottage for less than a month, and tonight would be Annie’s first visit.
    It was a wild October night outside. Banks could hear the wind screaming and moaning and see the dark shadows of tree branches tossing and thrashing beyond the kitchen window. He hoped Annie would make the drive all right, that there were no trees down. There was a spare bed if she wanted to stay, but he doubted that she would. Too much history for that to be comfortable for either of them, although there had been moments over the summer when he had thought it wouldn’t take much to brush all the objections aside. Best not think about that, he told himself.
    Banks poured himself the last of the Amarone. His parents had inherited Roy’s wine cellar, and they had passed this on to him, too. As far as Arthur Banks was concerned, white wine