Dangerous Games Read Online Free PDF Page B

…’
    â€˜You have to choose your battles, lad,’ Woodend interrupted. ‘You have to save your energy for when the fight really matters – an’, at the moment, this one doesn’t.’
    â€˜I see,’ Beresford said.
    He didn’t, of course, Woodend thought. But the longer he worked with the team, the more he would understand that what sounded like a surrender was in fact no more than common sense.
    â€˜What impressions do you have of the killer, so far?’ he asked the team in general.
    â€˜He’s a careful thinker,’ said Bob Rutter. ‘He plans things out well in advance.’
    â€˜What makes you say that?’
    â€˜The fact that he picked that particular bridge.’
    â€˜Somethin’ special about it, is there?’
    â€˜Yes, I think there is. Or if not ‘special’, something that makes it
different
to all the others.’
    â€˜An’ what might that be?’
    â€˜It’d be easier to
show
you what I mean than to tell you,’ Rutter said. He produced a map of Whitebridge from his pocket, and spread it on that section of the table which was free of drinks. ‘The canal enters the town here, and leaves it here,’ he said, tracing out the blue line with his finger. ‘Between those two points, it’s crossed by six road bridges, which means that if the killer wanted to hang his victim from a canal bridge, he had half a dozen choices.’
    â€˜That makes sense,’ Woodend agreed.
    â€˜Locke Bridge is close to the Locke housing estate, and takes a lot of foot traffic as well as vehicles,’ Rutter continued. ‘Taylor Bridge has Taylor
Street
on both sides of it, and the same could be said of that. But what’s Hulme Bridge surrounded by?’
    â€˜Factories and warehouses,’ Woodend said.
    â€˜Exactly. If the killer had chosen Locke Bridge, there’d always have been the chance of him being spotted by a late-night dog walker. If he’d chosen Taylor Bridge, he could have been seen by someone who couldn’t sleep, and just happened to be looking out of their bedroom window. But by choosing Hulme Bridge, he could be pretty sure that between midnight – when the last customers of the local pubs had all finally gone home – and six o’clock in the morning – when the first workers started to turn up – he’d have the area to himself.’
    â€˜You might well be right about that being the reason he chose Hulme Bridge, rather than one of the others,’ Monika Paniatowski said. ‘But what I don’t see is why he needed to choose
any
bridge at all?’
    â€˜Meanin’ what, exactly?’ Woodend asked.
    â€˜His aim was to kill Terry Pugh, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜That’s a fair assumption, given the damage he did to the back of Pugh’s skull.’
    â€˜In which case, the moment he’d struck the blow, he’d achieved all he’d set out to do, hadn’t he? So why do any more than that? Why not leave Pugh where he met his death?’
    â€˜Perhaps because that particular location might have given us some clue as to who the murderer is.’
    â€˜All right then, why not drive out to the moors and dump the body there? Or simply weigh it down with bricks and throw it
into
the canal? What I’m really saying is, why would he even consider the risk involved in hanging Terry Pugh from the bridge?’
    â€˜A fair point,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Maybe this killer regards his victim in much the same way as Bradley Pine’s killer regarded him. You remember what happened to Pine, don’t you?’
    The team all nodded.
    Pine had been found on a lay-by, with his mouth smashed to a pulp, and his stomach slit open. Beresford had been sick, and even Monika Paniatowski had looked slightly queasy. So the sight of that particular corpse was not something that any of them were likely to forget in a hurry.
    â€˜So you think