Dear Departed Read Online Free PDF Page B

a mist dissolving. The solid reality that you walked on was in fact no more than a thin sheet of ice, through which you might fall at any moment into the black water of oblivion beneath.
    Everything this girl had, had been taken from her in the name of conceit. All Slider could do was to find the killer and hope to see him punished. He was glad now that Porson wanted it. It was his case now. He would find the killer. The really depressing thing was that even cornered, caught, accused, charged, tried and sentenced, the murderer would probably never really see the enormity of what he had done. What had they done to themselves as a society to have bred a person who would kill to get his name in the papers?
    He pulled his mind back to the scene. ‘I wonder why there’s no blood on the footmark. You’d have thought with all thisstabbing going on he’d have stepped in at least some of it, especially as he wouldn’t have been able to see it.’
    ‘Just lucky, I suppose,’ Atherton said. ‘Our first problem is going to be identifying her.’
    ‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘People don’t go out jogging with their passport and driving licence in their pockets.’
    ‘People don’t go out jogging with pockets,’ said Atherton.

CHAPTER TWO
Close Enough for Jazz
    The CID room was quiet, with most of the troops still at the scene, helping with the search for blood, bloodstained clothing, and a murder weapon. Speed was of the essence. There was constant pressure on the police to reopen a cordoned-off area.
    Slider was in his room making a start on the paperwork when the gorgeous DC Kathleen Swilley, always known as ‘Norma’ on account of her machismo in the field, came in. She was an expert in martial arts, could kick the eyebrows off a fly at five paces, and bring a man to his knees by use of just a forefinger and thumb. Or, indeed, without them, Slider reflected.
    ‘Nothing so far, boss,’ she said. ‘Everyone in the park’s had a preliminary interview and they’re starting on the bystanders. And I’ve put in an enquiry to the traffic department about any parked car or MTI activity for this morning. The SOCOs are still going over the ground looking for more blood. The body’s been taken away now.’
    ‘Is that the deceased’s effects?’
    ‘Yeah. No help with her ID, though.’ She put them down on the desk and went through them with him. The little purse on the victim’s belt contained nothing but a Kleenex tissue and a set of door keys – one Yale and one deadlock – on a ring whose tag was one of those articulated metal fish. That, and her gold medallion, were the only personal items they had to go on.
    ‘We got some good lifts off the Walkman,’ Swilley said. ‘Presumably the victim’s. We’re waiting for her tenprint to compare. I’ve run them through records but there’s no previous.’
    The medallion turned out not to be St Christopher after all, but St Anthony. An unusual choice,’ Slider commented. ‘It may help to confirm her identity once we know it.’
    ‘Ditto for the door keys,’ said Swilley. ‘So what’s a St Anthony medal for, boss?’
    ‘He’s patron saint of the poor and afflicted, I think,’ Slider said. ‘And lost things. And travellers.’
    ‘I thought that was St Christopher?’
    ‘It’s not exclusive. And some people think St Christopher didn’t exist.’
    ‘The things you know,’ Swilley marvelled.
    Slider sighed. ‘What I don’t know is how to ID our victim without trawling through the neighbourhood with a mugshot. And I really hate doing that when the only mugshot I’ve got is taken from the corpse.’
    ‘It’s early yet. Someone may miss her and come forward,’ Swilley said. ‘The report of the murder’s going to be in all the noon bulletins. If someone hasn’t turned up to work …’
    While Slider was contemplating this slender possibility, Atherton came in, back from the scene. ‘No clothes or knives as yet,’
he reported. ‘There were eight cigarette