Dead Level (The DI Nick Dixon Crime Series Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

It was an old cottage with low ceilings, which made for a short flight of stairs. Jane counted twelve. She hesitated at the bottom.
    ‘Can we go up?’
    ‘Yes, there’s nothing on the stairs,’ said Watson. ‘Keep to the plastic though.’
    Jane was standing on the top step before Poland noticed her. He was still kneeling over the body, with his back to the stairs.
    ‘Hello, Jane,’ he said, looking over his shoulder.
    ‘Hi, Roger,’ replied Jane. She stepped over his legs and onto a steel plate on the landing. ‘D’you know DI Janice Courtenay?’
    ‘No,’ replied Roger, rocking back onto the balls of his feet and standing up.
    Janice nodded without looking up. She was now standing on the top step, staring at the naked body of Elizabeth Perry lying face down on the landing. Her hands had been wrapped in plastic bags, sealed at the wrists, but it was the knife wounds that Janice was staring at. Two in the side of the neck and four in her back. A trail of congealed blood led across the wooden floor to the bannister and off the edge of the landing.
    ‘They missed the carotid artery in the neck,’ said Roger, ‘so this looks like the fatal one.’ He was pointing at a stab wound in the left side of Mrs Perry’s upper back. ‘Probably straight through to the heart but I’ll need to open her up to confirm.’
    Janice turned, pushed past Donald Watson and ran back down the stairs. Then she followed the approach path back out into the lane, her heels clicking on the metal plates.
    ‘Give me a minute,’ said Jane.
    She caught up with Janice in the car park. Janice was leaning on the bonnet of her car with her left hand and vomiting into the undergrowth.
    ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.’
    ‘What’s up then?’ asked Jane.
    Janice vomited again.
    ‘You must have seen a body before?’
    ‘And more besides,’ replied Janice. ‘I dunno. I wasn’t feeling well before we came out.’
    ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
    ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’
    ‘Out on the piss last night?’
    ‘Not really,’ replied Janice, shaking her head. ‘I just felt a bit sick, that’s all.’
    Jane sighed.
    ‘Look, it’s my first murder as a DI. All right?’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘And it would have to be this one. We’ve even got the chief constable turning up. Not to mention every journalist within a three hundred mile radius.’
    ‘You’re doing fine. Stop worrying,’ said Jane. ‘Now, let’s get back in there. We’ll tell ’em you’ve got a hangover.’
    Jane took a packet of mints out of her handbag and passed it to Janice.
    ‘Here, have one of these. Dog breath.’
    ‘Thanks!’
    They walked back along the lane and Janice stopped outside the tent.
    ‘You won’t . . .’
    ‘Of course, I won’t,’ replied Jane.
    ‘Sorry, bit of a hangover,’ said Janice, walking back up the stairs. Jane was following behind her.
    ‘Christmas piss up, was it?’ asked Watson.
    ‘Something like that.’
    ‘I’m almost ready to move her,’ said Poland, standing up. ‘Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. is the answer to your question, but I’ll confirm that.’
    ‘Anything else?’ asked Janice.
    ‘No defensive injuries but there’s bruising on her upper arms, so it looks as though she was restrained at some point. There are some fibres under her fingernails too.’
    ‘Where was she killed?’
    ‘There’s blood spatter in the bedroom,’ replied Watson. ‘It’s on the wall by the door. From the height, she was stabbed in the neck in there and then came out here and collapsed.’
    ‘She was still alive here, there’s no doubt about that,’ said Poland. ‘So, she came out here, collapsed, and then was stabbed in the back four times.’ Poland turned to Jane. ‘For good measure, as Nick would say.’
    Jane rolled her eyes.
    ‘All this is to be confirmed, of course,’ continued Poland.
    Watson turned around and pointed to a small circle of spray paint on the wooden floor behind him.
    ‘We