Corpse in Waiting Read Online Free PDF Page B

started chatting her up and calling her darling how would you react?’
    â€˜I’d kill him,’ James responded grimly. ‘Oh – right, I see what you mean.’
    All discussion on the matter then had to cease as Carrick’s team, led by his assistant, DS Lynn Outhwaite, arrived in a blare of sirens and other police designed-to-intimidate sound-effects. Carrick immediately sent the scenes of crime people upstairs to examine the head, directed a photographer to take pictures of the scullery and its larder door, in painstaking detail and close-up, before he too went upstairs and then, personally, set about opening it using the thing I had found in the drawer. This door was more firmly stuck but after about ten minutes of careful diligence on the DCI’s part it yielded.
    â€˜My prints are already on it, I’m afraid,’ I said as he grasped the door knob with a gloved hand.
    â€˜No point it having mine as well,’ he muttered.
    The glue’s sealing effect had kept in the stench. Everyone – there was quite an audience by this time – involuntarily jumped back as it hit us. This was just as well because the thing that toppled out and hit the floor with a sickening squelching thud landed on the spot where the toes of Carrick’s shoes had been a second earlier. The next few moments were only memorable for the reason that one of those watching from the back ran into the kitchen and threw up noisily into the sink.
    â€˜Oh, God,’ Carrick said thickly as dark-coloured fluids began to trickle across the ancient lino in our direction.
    The body, presumably headless, was wrapped in what appeared to be bedding; sheets and perhaps some kind of thin bedspread but the material was so stained it was almost impossible to tell exactly what it was. The feet stuck out from the bottom of the revolting parcel and were bare, bones and sinews visible through grey, oozing flesh. There were flakes of red polish still on the toe nails.
    I was absolutely sure about one thing: I did not want to be around when this nightmare was unwrapped.
    â€˜You needn’t stay,’ Carrick turned to me to say as though reading my thoughts. ‘I can catch up with you at home later.’
    â€˜We’re on holiday,’ I told him, forced to smile. ‘Come round to the hotel.’ I gave him the name of it and left, aware of his baffled gaze on me.
    House-buying now being on hold I walked back into the city centre, called in to the estate agents to tell them that that particular property was now a crime scene but I would proceed as soon as was possible. I then bought myself a sandwich and a small carton of fruit juice. Sitting in Queen’s Square to have my lunch I did a bit of thinking.
    I had to admit that my behaviour as far as Patrick was concerned had been a bit over the top. It was perfectly possible that because of recently having Mark my hormones were still all to hell. Did I have a horror of being no longer attractive, more like a milch cow than anything else? Of losing my figure and turning into ‘’er indoors’, a wife who was a fetter for, as that wretched woman had said, ‘a good-looking man’?
    â€˜Yes,’ I muttered. ‘That’s about the truth of it. I behaved like a cast iron fetter. A jealous and—’
    Patrick has never been to a fashion show in his life. This fact sort of clattered into my brain as I sat there, in truth everything in my mind overlaid with those images of putrescent flesh, bared teeth in rotting gums, the stinking remains in the two cupboards. Was it my imagination or had the stench got into my clothes and hair? I tried to repress the memories and concentrate on what had suddenly occurred to me but this somehow seemed wrong as the horror had once been a living human being.
    I could not. Suddenly I did not want anything to eat either.
    â€˜Boo,’ said a well-remembered voice, its owner seating himself at my