A Bleeding of Innocents Read Online Free PDF

he did a responsible job she had expected someone mature and self-confident. Instead he seemed little more than a boy, a blue-eyed, fair-haired boy. He was a pretty thing, even with his face grazed and tracked with tears. Perhaps that was why Kerry, who was a nurse and may have been drawn to helplessness, had married him. It could have been a marriage made in heaven, one of those improbable pairings that succeed beyond all expectation because they give both parties what they need most.
    The other possibility was that the partnership had failed so utterly that one of the parties to it had disposed of the other with a shot-gun.
    A possibility was all it was. Page did not look like a violent man, but if her years in CID had taught her nothing else they had warned her not to judge by appearances. Mild-mannered little men did occasionally murder their wives, and big hectoring bullies were capable at times of astonishing tenderness. Liz hoped she was a fair judge of human nature but knew it was more important to be a punctilious collator of evidence. So she asked him what happened.
    His sky-blue eyes flickered. ‘I – already—’
    â€˜Yes, I know,’ she said, her voice reassuring. ‘But it’s helpful for me to hear it first-hand. There’s no rush, take your time. Tell me what you did from, say, tea-time onwards.’
    David made their meal. He enjoyed cooking. When they were in town, between his flights and Kerry’s shifts they had trouble making their off-duty hours match and tended to snatch food as and when they could. But at the cottage David assumed responsibility for their evening meal, immersing himself in recipes and ingredients.
    This Saturday evening he made chicken paprika. When it was done they left the washing-up in the sink and sprawled, gently burping, in front of the log fire. They had no television at the cottage. At the end of an hour David suggested a little healthy exercise but Kerry thought they should go for a walk first. They drove to the local beauty spot, an elevated viewpoint in a bend of the River Arrow, and walked down to the water-meadows. It was dark but the night was clear, the moon painting the lush grass silver. They strolled for a time, then returned to the car and just sat, looking out over the river, watching the moon take a slow dive into the trees on the opposite bluff. Kerry had seemed half asleep, leaning against him with her head on his shoulder.
    He did not know how long they sat there. Twice he suggested heading for home but Kerry was comfortable, enjoying the quiet and the moon-silvered view. So they went on sitting, hardly speaking, close and comfortable and happy.
    Then, in a second or two, everything changed for ever. A man walked in front of the car and the waning moonlight gleamed on something long and slim cradled in his arms. He looked at them through the windscreen. Kerry sat up. The man raised the gun and shot her in the face, and she toppled slowly sideways, resting on her husband’s shoulder in death as she had in life.
    He did not believe Kerry made a sound. He himself cried out in horror, and pushed his wife’s bloody head aside as if it were something vile and alien, not someone he loved.
    Beyond the crazed glass he saw the black eyes of the gun pan slowly across the car until he was staring into them. He knew nothing about guns except that shot-guns commonly fired two cartridges. He was very afraid. He whimpered.
    The gunman regarded him levelly, without speaking, for perhaps half a minute: thirty seconds, each of them spun out impossibly long and thin, in which David Page did not breathe, dared not move, felt the presence of death beat in his face like the wings of a bird, felt a scream building within him.
    Then the man – it was a man’s voice – said, quite quietly, almost gently, ‘No, not you.’ Then he walked away.
    For minutes longer David sat paralysed in his car, behind his broken windscreen, beside