The Domino Killer Read Free Page A

a shirt, sleeves rolled to just below the elbows, as if he’d been dragged to the cameras straight from an interrogation. Behind his back, people scoffed that he’d created the look on the way to the exit. If cases went wrong, he sent someone else along, disowning the bad results as if he’d never been involved. He was an expert in presenting himself, though, always smart, his tan just right, his hair dark and well-groomed, his shirts tight enough to show the work done in the gym.
    They walked along the grass together in silence. The crime scene investigators ahead were working on the path, where small numbered stickers were being photographed. Blood spots, Sam guessed. There were more white suits ahead.
    Sam pointed to the streets visible alongside the park. ‘That might be a good place to start. Even if it was too dark to see anything, any screams or shouts might give us a quicker time of death.’
    They slowed as they reached the group of crime scene investigators clustered around the body. More photographs being taken, more numbered markers pointing out spots of blood on the path, and what looked like footprints, some tread pattern visible.
    Sam let out a long breath.
    It was a man’s body, there was little doubt about that, from the clothes and hands and the size of the feet. From the neck down, he looked respectable. Dark suit, patent black shoes, yellow silk tie. From the neck up, however, there wasn’t much to see. Blood had congealed on the concrete in a wide pool and the head was distorted, like a punctured football, caved in, the dull grey of brain matter showing through the gleaming white of his skull.
    ‘Another one,’ Sam said.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Brabham said.
    ‘Nothing really,’ Sam said, realising he’d just sparked Brabham’s interest. A series would make the news. ‘We’ve got another murder at the moment, that’s all. A teacher stabbed by the canal in Mossley. Respectable middle-aged man, on his own in a quiet spot one evening. Discovered by a dog-walker in the morning.’
    ‘But stabbed?’ Brabham said. ‘They might not be connected. This is different.’ And he pointed towards the dead man.
    ‘It certainly is,’ Sam said, looking at the blood and brains pooled on the floor. ‘And it’s going to get messy when they take him away. What do we know so far?’
    ‘About him? Nothing much,’ Brabham said. ‘There’s no wallet in his jacket, so it could be a robbery gone wrong.’
    ‘Do you think so?’ Sam said, gesturing to the bouquet. ‘Robbers grab and run, they don’t stamp and kill. Robberies are spontaneous. This seems different.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘The flowers,’ Sam said. ‘He was waiting in a park for a romantic meeting and ended up dead.’
    ‘He could have been robbed as he was waiting?’
    ‘So why didn’t the person he was meeting call it in? Even if it was extramarital, there would have been something – a scream or an anonymous call.’
    ‘Those were my thoughts,’ Brabham said, nodding to himself.
    Sam tried not to roll his eyes. That was Brabham’s other skill: adopting ideas as his own.
    ‘Why here, though?’ Charlotte said. ‘His suit doesn’t look cheap, so he could afford something better than here.’
    ‘The wedding ring,’ Sam said, pointing. ‘Look around. We’re a hundred yards into the park. He wasn’t meeting his wife here, that’s for sure. It wasn’t about the romance; it was about the privacy, as seedy as it is.’
    ‘The robbery could be a disguise, then,’ Charlotte said. ‘A jealous husband?’
    ‘Or even his own wife,’ Brabham said.
    ‘Which makes it well planned,’ Sam said.
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Frenzied makes it look random, spontaneous, but if he was lured here it was exactly the opposite: planned.’
    Brabham nodded to himself. ‘That makes the victim even more important. Who is he and why was he here? And we know which way the killer went.’ He gestured along the path they had just