Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) Read Online Free PDF Page A

her a little and I could see that her skirt hadn’t been red originally: it was soaked in what seemed to be her own blood. One of them unfolded a foil blanket and laid it over her. That was for shock, I remembered. My brain was moving sluggishly. I was struggling to form thoughts.
    ‘She’s moaning. Is she awake?’ the inspector asked.
    ‘No. Just in pain.’ The more senior paramedic was a tough, thickset man in his forties with the name DAVIS stencilled on his uniform.
    ‘What did he do to her?’ Inspector Saunders’ face was grim.
    ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’ He jotted a note on the back of his hand; they all used their gloves as notebooks. To the victim, he said, ‘Sorry about this, love, but we need to see where you’re bleeding.’
    He lifted her skirt gently, his crewmate standing behind him to shield the woman from the rest of us. I heard him swearing, very quietly. ‘Give us a dressing, Laura. Where’s the doctor?’
    ‘On her way,’ his crewmate said. ‘Two minutes.’
    ‘I’m not moving her until the doctor’s had a look.’ He leaned back so he could see the inspector. ‘I’m no expert, but whoever did this used something to cut her.’
    ‘A knife?’
    ‘A broken bottle?’ I suggested, thinking of the one I’d see under the bin, and the glass on the ground.
    ‘Could have been.’
    ‘Is it bad?’ the inspector asked.
    ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. She’s been ripped apart.’
    I turned away at that, breathing shallowly so I didn’t allow my body the opportunity to heave up everything I had eaten that day. I was clenching muscles I didn’t even know I had. For something to do I went to check under the bin, my torch between my teeth. I braced myself on my hands and the toes of my boots, trying not to touch the ground more than I had to. Looking at it directly, my torch shining right at it, I could see blood on the bottle.
    ‘Found it?’ Inspector Saunders asked.
    I stood up and dropped my torch into my hand. ‘Think so.’
    ‘Leave it for the SOCOs.’
    I hadn’t been planning to touch it, but I nodded. The other officers drifted towards us.
    ‘Stop. Stand back,’ Inspector Saunders said. She took the torch out of my hand and shone it on the ground at our feet, at the puddle of liquid I’d noticed before. ‘Look at that. What do you make of that?’
    ‘I thought it was from the bins,’ I said weakly.
    She leaned down and sniffed. ‘That’s beer. And blood.’ The light moved towards my foot. ‘And these bits of meat – those are from the victim.’
    ‘From her—’
    Inspector Saunders nodded meaningfully. ‘This is where he did it.’
    Behind me, I heard the sound of retching and was too horrified to think of looking to see who had lost his composure.
    ‘All of you, you’re going to have to let the SOCOs check your boots. Clothes too, Maeve.’ The torch played over my legs, my chest. ‘Did you roll around on the ground?’
    ‘I was trying to reach her.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got bits of her all over you.’
    I swayed as darkness slid up the side of my vision. Someone took my arm and gently drew me back away from the blood and the horror and the victim’s moans of agony, around the corner so I couldn’t see anything any more.
    ‘I’m all right,’ I said from a long way away. ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘Yeah, you are.’ Gary Lovell’s face was suddenly close to mine. ‘You’ll be okay. Just stay there. Wait for the SOCOs.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘Don’t move.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You did a good job.’
    I nodded, staring at the corner of the building. I could hear Inspector Saunders giving orders and, in the distance, sirens approaching at speed.
    ‘This is going to be big,’ Gary said, before he loped off.
    It took me a second to understand that he was excited, which was almost exactly the opposite of how I felt. I wondered if that made me a better cop than him, or worse, or just the same.

3
    I got over it, after a while. I stopped