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

blue gaze making me quail slightly. And what I looked like with my hair fighting to frizz up in the humidity, I didn’t like to imagine.
    ‘We might be lucky this time,’ he said. ‘I can’t think he’s not on the system somewhere. He’ll have been arrested for something before. An assault at the very least. You don’t go out one day and start doing this to women for fun.’
    ‘Could explain why he started up all of a sudden,’ Inspector Saunders added. ‘If he was in prison, I mean.’
    ‘I’ve got people checking with probation officers across the south-east to see if the attacks ring any bells. No joy so far.’
    ‘Come and have a look at the scene,’ Inspector Saunders said. ‘Maeve, what was I going to do with you? What about some house-to-house?’
    Better than the cordon. I nodded enthusiastically.
    ‘Go and see if you can scare up anyone who heard or saw anything suspicious.’ She turned and stared at the terrace of houses opposite, at the rows of blank windows and the oneor two that were filled with curious faces. ‘Start with the ones who could have seen into the yards. Maybe we’ll get a break.’
    * * *
    ‘I’ve already spoken to your colleagues.’
    ‘Yes, I know. Your neighbours said.’ I wasn’t the first police officer to trawl along the row of houses, as it turned out. The heavyset man in front of me who was currently glaring at me, his face puce with rage, was not the first person to be cross about it either. Number Thirty-Seven, also known as the perv Sadie Grey had dismissed as a potential witness. I was
not
going to get flustered and run away just because he was angry. I was doing my job. ‘I’m just following up to see if anything else has occurred to you.’
    ‘In the half hour I’ve had to myself since the last time you lot bothered me, no.’ He was wearing shorts and a striped short-sleeved shirt that was hanging open, framing a taut, grey-furred belly that I didn’t want to look at. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d seen all evening, but it was on the list.
    ‘I noticed you were upstairs when I rang the doorbell. I saw you in the front window. You must have a pretty good view of the yards from up there.’
    ‘So what?’
    ‘So if you happened to look out of the window earlier – around half past eleven or thereabouts – did you see anyone?’
    ‘I didn’t look out earlier. I was watching telly.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Did you hear anything unusual? Screams or noises that might have been a fight?’
    ‘Nothing. I had the sound turned up and it was noisy.’
    ‘Could you look at this e-fit for me and tell me if you recognise the man in it?’
    Inspector Saunders had ordered a stack of copies of a photofit one of the Croydon victims had helped to create and they had arrived just as I started to work my way along the street. It looked a lot like a generic dangerous white male to me – down-turned mouth, long thin nose, small eyes and heavy brows – but at least I had something new to offer the neighbours. I handed one over to the man, who glanced at it.
    ‘No.’ He started to give it back to me, then stopped. ‘Hold on.’
    I waited a few seconds. ‘Anything?’
    ‘I’m not sure. I couldn’t say.’
    His anger was fading, I noticed, and with a sinking feeling I knew why. I had taken off my stab vest when the crime-scene technician was swabbing it, and left it in the back of the car. My white cotton shirt was so thin that it was practically see-through, especially on in hot weather. It clung, and revealed far more than I would have liked. And Number Thirty-Seven had just noticed.
    He cleared his throat. ‘It was a martial arts movie. Thai. I spend a lot of time in Thailand now that I’m retired.’
    I bet you do
.
    ‘Okay. Well, thanks for talking to me.’
    ‘Sorry I was short with you, love. All of this fuss and bother. Not what we’re used to round here.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    ‘Do you want to come in? Talk for a bit? Have a cuppa?’
    ‘I