American Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

indicated and he watched his ankle submerge slowly beneath dark freezing water. The other two cops stared at Harper.
    Harper started to pick his way towards the body. He reached the rock as Hernandez’s light flashed across her face. The light from the officer on the right spread out across her side. It was a horrific sight. She was a young woman in her early twenties. Her skin was white as alabaster. Her naked body lay flat on its back, her hands wired together on her chest as if in prayer, her legs raised and spread wide apart. Her feet and ankles had been jammed into two rock crevices. All over, wet petals stuck to her skin and the rock. Harper picked one up from the rock and turned it in his hand.
    He looked closely at the body, careful not to touch or move anything that might be evidence. He was working out the sequence, trying to spot the small things that didn’t quite fit. The woman’s hair was short and scruffy, her face thin, with well-defined cheekbones. Harper leaned in and looked more closely. His flashlight moved slowly over the corpse. Ten minutes was all he gave himself. He knew he didn’t have long before the coroner arrived to take the body off the rocks, so he pulled himself back up to the bank. He stood and faced the two officers who hadn’t moved. ‘Why are you still hanging around here? Haven’t you got something to do?’
    ‘Before we take orders, let’s see your shield, Detective,’ said Cob with a sneer. ‘You ain’t got no ID showing. Maybe you ain’t a detective at all.’
    Harper turned to the poor woman who’d been executed on the cold rock, probably screaming her lungs out where no one could hear. The killer didn’t have any human feelings at all and now Officer James Cob wanted to bust his balls.
    Harper walked across to Cob and stood face to face. ‘You want to know who I am?’
    ‘Yeah, and what you’re doing here.’
    ‘And what I’m doing here, is that right?’
    ‘Yeah. You’re so quick, you should be a detective.’
    ‘I’m nobody but I’m here to find out why this woman was attacked.’ Harper felt his back teeth lock together.
    ‘Personally,’ said Cob, ‘I’d say she was asking for it, going out dressed like that. She ought to wear a little more, wouldn’t you say?’
    ‘You think, do you?’
    ‘She ain’t got much on,’ said Cob.
    ‘You want to know what it feels like to be down on those rocks, Officer?’ Harper reached, quick as a rattlesnake, and snapped his big hand round Cob’s wrist. His eyes stared hard.
    ‘Get the fuck off me!’ Cob shouted.
    ‘You think it’s funny that a woman’s been raped and executed?’
    ‘No. I was ... Come on . . .’
    Harper pulled Cob’s arm hard and shoved him down towards the corpse, flicking his leg across the officer’s weight. Cob fell hard on to the muddy bank, a look of stark panic on his face. He was badly winded and Harper still had his wrist in a vice-like grip.
    ‘Doesn’t feel like you’re sorry, Cob.’ Harper dragged Cob towards the edge of the bank.
    ‘What the fuck are you doing, you madman?’
    ‘Have a look at her face, Cob. Do you think it’s funny? Do you think it’s funny what he did? Look at her, you animal.’
    Cob, with his face in the cold dirt, stared down at the result of hatred and violence jammed on the rock.
    ‘You think your girlfriend or mother would think this is so fucking amusing?’
    ‘Please, man.’
    ‘How fucking sorry are you, Cob?’
    ‘Very sorry. Very, very sorry.’
    Harper released Cob. ‘Don’t ever talk like that about a victim, you asshole.’ He twitched and strode off over the grassy bank, taking huge strides, his black coat flapping behind him.
    Cob rose from the mud, his back sodden, his wrist aching. He looked at the three officers, Hernandez ankle deep in water, Lees pale at the edge, Poulter back down from his vantage point.
    ‘You fucking nutcase, Cob,’ said Poulter.
    ‘What? Who the fuck was that guy?’
    ‘You don’t know? That was