Art of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

known. You were contracted - supposedly on behalf of a great maestro - taken out of the country and forced to take part in porno art. But she didn't think this was anything like that. And even if it were, she would take the risk. Being a work of art meant accepting all the risks, all the sacrifices. She was more scared of being disappointed than of facing danger. She could accept falling into any trap except that of mediocrity.
     
    The toughest and most risky. The most important and ...
     
    All at once she felt as though her body was melting. She felt fluid, at one with the rain. She looked down at her feet and saw what was happening. She had forgotten she was still painted, and the raindrops were washing off all the white paint. As she walked along, she was leaving a trail behind her, a curving milky stream that flowed from her tracksuit on to the pavement of the Calle Velazquez, only to be quickly blotted out by the rain, as sharp and precise as a Pointillist painter. White, white, white.
    Little by little, as the water cleansed her, Clara grew darker.
     
     
    2
     
     
    Red. Red was the overwhelming colour. Red like a huge mass of crushed poppies. Miss Wood took off her glasses to examine the photos.
     
    'We found her early this morning in a wooded part of the Wienerwald,' the policeman said, 'about an hour's drive from Vienna. Two birdwatchers who had been studying the cries of owls raised the alarm. Well, in fact they told the uniformed police, and lieutenant-colonel Huddle called us in. That's what usually happens.'
    As the policeman spoke, Bosch passed the photos to Miss Wood one by one. They showed a grassy clearing, with beech trees and flowers, and the surprising presence of a flycatcher on the grass next to the pink blouse that had been torn to shreds. But everything was covered in red, including the slipper shaped like a teddy bear lying behind a tree trunk. There was a broad smile on the bear's face.
    'All these things scattered around ...' said Miss Wood.
    It was an enormous table and the policeman sitting opposite Miss Wood could not see what she was pointing at, but he knew exactly what she meant.
    'Her clothing.'
    'Why is it so torn and bloodstained?'
    'You're right, it is strange. It was the first thing that we noticed. Then we found bits of material stuck in her wounds, so we concluded that he cut her up with her clothes on, and tore them off later.'
    'Why would he do that?'
    The policeman wafted his hand in the air.
    'Sexual abuse, perhaps. So far we haven't found any evidence, but we're waiting for the forensic expert's final report. And anyway, people like that don't always behave logically'
    'It's as if ... it were on show, isn't it? All draped around for photos to be taken of it.'
    'Is this how she was found?' Bosch asked the policeman.
    'Yes, on her back with her arms and legs spread out.'
    'He left her labels on,' Bosch pointed out to Miss Wood.
    'So I see’ said Miss Wood. 'The labels are hard to get off, but whatever he used to make this kind of wound would have cut through them like paper. Has the tool been identified?'
    'It was electronic, whatever it was,' the policeman replied. 'We think it might have been a scalpel or some kind of electric saw. Each wound is a deep single cut.' He stretched his hand out across the table and tapped one of the photos closest to him with a pencil. 'There are ten of them altogether: two in the face, two in the chest, two in the stomach, one in each thigh, and two in her back. Eight of them forming crosses, so four crosses altogether. The two in the thighs are vertical. And don't ask me the reason for that either.'
    'Did she die from the wounds?'
    'Probably. I've already told you, we're waiting for the report from—'
    'Do we have an estimated time of death?
    'Taking into account the state of the body, we think it must have happened on Wednesday night, a few hours after she was driven away in the van.'
    Miss Wood was holding her glasses between the fingers of