Bloodline-9 Read Online Free PDF Page A

this occasion.
    When he had finished, Louise said, ‘I know what you’re doing, and there’s real y no need.’
    ‘No need for what?’ Thorne asked.
    ‘To remind me there’s people worse off than I am.’
    Two hours later, as unobtrusively as possible, Thorne reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and checked to make sure that it was switched to SILENT .
    ‘I think we’re ready.’
    There were times when you real y didn’t want a mobile going off.
    The mortuary assistant drew back the sheet and invited Emily Walker’s husband to step forward.
    ‘Are you able to identify the body as that of your wife, Emily Anne Walker?’
    The man nodded once and turned away.
    ‘Can you say it, please?’
    ‘Yes. That’s my wife.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    The man was already at the door of the viewing suite, waiting to be let out. It was customary, after the formal identification, to invite the next of kin - should they so wish - to stay with their loved one for a while, but Thorne could see that there was little point on this occasion. Suffocation could do as much damage to a face as a blunt instrument. He couldn’t blame George Walker for preferring to remember his wife as she had been when she was alive. Presuming, of course, that he wasn’t the one responsible for her death.
    Thorne watched Walker being led down the corridor by two uniformed officers - a man and a woman. He saw the slump of the man’s shoulders, the arm of the female officer sliding around them, and remembered something Hol and had said the day before: ‘ I’ve got no bloody idea what’s happening inside their heads . . .’
    As if on cue, Dave Hol and came strol ing around the corner, looking surprisingly perky for someone about to attend a post-mortem. He joined Thorne just as Walker was turning on to the staircase and heading slowly up towards the street.
    ‘I know you said you wanted him in later for a chat,’ Hol and said. ‘But I reckon we can leave it a while.’
    ‘Oh, you do?’
    ‘He’s stil al over the shop, and we should real y let him have a bit of time with his family.’
    It was at such moments that Thorne wished he had to ability to raise one eyebrow, like Roger Moore. He had to settle for sarcasm. ‘I’m listening, Sergeant .’
    Hol and smiled. ‘We got a result with the curtain-twitchers.’
    ‘Let’s have it.’
    ‘Old bloke across the road claims he saw someone coming out of there an hour or so before Emily’s husband got home.’
    ‘And he’s sure it wasn’t Emily’s husband.’
    ‘Positive. He knows George Walker by sight. The bloke he saw had a much narrower build, he says. Different colour hair, too.’
    ‘You got him knocking us up an E-fit?’
    Hol and nodded. ‘Gets the husband off the hook, you ask me.’
    ‘I wasn’t,’ Thorne said. ‘But it’s a fair point. We’l have him in tomorrow.’
    A door opened halfway along the corridor and a familiar-looking, shaved head appeared around it. ‘In your own time,’ Hendricks said.
    Thorne nodded and loosened the tie he’d put on for the identification.
    Hol and wasn’t looking quite so chirpy as they walked towards the open door.
    Other places had different arrangements, but at Finchley Coroner’s Mortuary a narrow corridor ran between the Viewing Suite and the Post-Mortem Room, so the bodies could be moved quickly and privately from one to the other. From soft furnishings and a comforting colour scheme to a white-tiled room with stainless-steel units where comfort of any description was in short supply.
    However much its occupants could have done with some.
    Hendricks and Hol and caught up a little, having been too busy for chit-chat the night before. Hendricks asked after Hol and’s daughter, Chloe, about whom he seemed to know more than Thorne did. Thorne found this rather depressing. He hadn’t exactly been holding his breath when it came to Hol and and his girlfriend choosing a god-father, but there had been a time when he’d sent presents