The Reaper Read Free Page A

recognised. People noticed the dog-collar before they looked at anything else. Without it, he could drive through the village in broad daylight and they would look straight through him.
    The young rector's leisure-time reading in forensic science provided him with the useful knowledge that when a body is moved after death the post mortem signs are not so reliable as pathologists once supposed. Hypostasis, the gravitational effect of blood cells, was once believed to show how the body was lying immediately after death, but more recent studies showed that secondary gravitation could take place. When a body was moved to a new position, the hypostasis relocated as well after a further few hours.
    He drove ten miles into Somerset around the town of Frome and out on the Shepton Mallet Road, the A361, stopping at the all-night filling-station. But not for petrol. As the bishop himself had remarked, Otis Joy was a wicked young man. He bought a copy of Men Only, and studied it for a time. Then he took it to a payphone and used the bishop's Visa card to call one of the sex lines advertised in the back pages. "Madam Swish, able with a cane" seemed a neat match for a bishop. He let the recording run on for a good ten minutes before hanging up. If the police were any good at their job, they would check the credit card statement when it came in. Marcus Glastonbury alive at 12:40 a.m. Alive and kinky.
    At Nunney, he left the main road for the country lanes, into an area he had once walked. The site he had in mind was a disused quarry, one of several around the village of Egford where the local stone was mined. This one had been left with a massive face of rock where the exposed carboniferous limestone could be seen tilted and folded under the more even Jurassic strata.
    It was pleasingly quiet out here. A fox crossed the lane, turning confidently to look at the car. Small, white moths swooped into the beam of the headlamps. He spotted the sign ahead saying Quarry: Strictly No Admittance. Pulled up and got out to pull the chain off the gatepost. Drove in and along a track rutted by heavy lorries. Up a steep incline to the highest point of the hill overlooking the excavation.
    This was it, then. He stopped and got out. There wasn't enough moonlight to see much, and certainly not the length of the drop. It didn't matter. He knew he was standing at the top of a sheer cliff at least a hundred feet high. He got in again and backed the car close to the edge, switched off, got out, opened the boot, pulled back the Wilton rug. He didn't enjoy sliding his hands under the torso and drawing it towards him in a macabre embrace. He hauled the thing out: awkward, back-straining work. With an extra effort he succeeded in taking the weight on his shoulder and staggering to the edge, where he first let the corpse flop on the ground for fear of falling over himself.
    He stood for a time, recovering his strength.
    Crucial things remained to be done. He replaced the credit cards in the pocket of the bishop's jacket. Rolled up the bloodstained rug. Removed his trusty little bike from the BMW and snapped it into shape. Moved the car away from the edge and parked it a few yards back with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. The suicide note, the Bible and Men Only would tell their own story on the passenger seat.
    One last effort, then.
    He bent down to roll the body over the edge, into the quarry. Grappled with the slack, solid bulk, sickening to the touch, and got a surge of relief when it tipped over. There was the satisfying sound of shifting rubble as it struck something far below. Then silence.
    This might have seemed the right moment to offer up a prayer, if not for the bishop, then for himself. Not so. He was more concerned about things on earth. With a leafy branch he swept away his footmarks.
    He rubbed his hands, got on his bike and rode off with the bloodstained rug. It ended up two miles away, face down and weighted with stones in the River