Deadly Focus Read Online Free PDF Page B

a face and continued to make up her pocket book.
    ‘The Super says good luck, and we’ve to keep him updated,’ Dylan remarked sarcastically as he hung up. ‘For all the blasted good that does.’
     
    Mortuaries never seemed to be modernised in Dylan’s experience, definitely nothing like the ones he saw on TV. Harrowfield mortuary was an old ivy-laced, detached building in the hospital grounds. The interior was even less inviting. It felt grubby. Jen had once asked him to describe the smell, but he couldn’t find the words. The odour seemed to be rejected by his body as if he shouldn’t inhale it. However today it hit him the minute he entered. He could taste warm metal and smell rotting flesh, old garbage, and an abattoir on a balmy day. He reached in his coat pocket for his extra strong mints and popped one into his mouth. Dylan had learned never to go to the mortuary without them. He walked down the corridor past the curtained window of the viewing room. The room where families got one more opportunity to see their loved ones, albeit laid out on a trolley. It was glossed up as formal identification, but in reality it resulted in the outpouring of emotion, the chance to say goodbye. Ironic that in something as terminal as death people still needed closure. Dylan walked across the vestibule to the upstairs office. He’d spent hours at this place over the years, too many, he reckoned. He took a deep breath, as once again he knew he’d have to put on his professional mask of the man in charge for the others. The young rookies in attendance didn’t need to see his repugnance. He had to look after them, reassure them, consoling them that at least they got to walk out, not many people did. Dylan knew that downstairs at the rear of the building was the old marble examination table with its fluorescent light hanging above it like the light above a snooker table. In the adjacent room there were fridges three tiers high, where the bodies were kept.
    Les, the mortuary assistant, was in the office already, dressed in his coverall, wellingtons and plastic green apron.
    ‘I might have known it’d be you disturbing us, Dylan,’ he said as he switched the kettle on. ‘You’re like the grim reaper these days.’
    Dylan laughed. ‘You’ll never be out of work while I’m working, Les. I don’t seem to be able to go to bed these days without someone calling me out to a body.’
     
    Judith Cockroft, the pathologist, appeared as the clock struck eleven.
    ’Glad to see it’s not only me that’s run ragged, Dylan.’ she said. Then, on seeing his facial injuries she added, ‘You can tell me how you got that as we progress.’
    ‘I wish I got paid as much as you though, for my pain.’
    She smiled broadly at him as she took off her coat, hung up her bag and started to put on her green suit and apron, washing her hands, and tying her gown as she talked. ‘So, what ‘ave you got for me today?’
    Dylan outlined the circumstances of Daisy’s disappearance and then moved onto the body of the small girl. He told her about the position of the body, the bag over her head and the missing fingertip.
    ‘Daisy had long red hair. It can be seen beneath the carrier bag and we don’t have another missing girl in the area,’ he said.
    ‘Seems highly likely then.’ She sighed deeply.
    DC John Benjamin nodded to Judith, Les and Dawn as he entered the room with Vicky in tow.
    Dylan placed his coffee on the floor at the side of his chair as he sat and took his policy book from his briefcase.
    ‘The arrangements have been made for the scene to be protected,’ John said, sitting down beside him. ‘The underwater search team are ready to look in the reservoir for the clothing like you asked, sir.’
    ‘Thanks for that, John,’ Dylan said as he put his pen to paper.
    Coffee consumed and suited up, they went down to the examination room to be met by the sight of the young girl’s body on the table.
    ‘It’s Daisy,’ said Dawn in