Lifeless - 5 Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Mark Billingham
interesting.'
Hol and believed that about Thorne, if he believed anything. If interesting meant unpredictable and stubborn. If it meant refusing to admit that you might be wrong. If interesting meant determined, and vengeful, and knowing the difference between right and wrong whatever the poxy rules said. And refusing to suffer fools. And possessing the kind of passion that would always make something happen. A passion that Dave Hol and, whatever other people might want him to do and be, would have kil ed to have even the tiniest fucking bit of...
He thought about his father. A man who died a sergeant at sixty.
Having done just enough.
McEvoy shrugged and her eyes dropped back to her screen. Back to
the computerised catalogue of suffering and death from which the
two of them were supposed, hopeful y, to come up with some answers.
Hol and had believed that relatively, London could not be that violent a city and that their search would not be overly time-consuming.
He had been wrong on both counts.
Looking for murders committed on the same day had sounded
fairly straightforward, but Thorne was not a man who did things by half. Both time-frame and search criteria were broadening al the time. McEvoy and Hol and had begun by looking for strangulations first and then widened things from there. They couldn't rule out assaults as they might be the work of the same man who had now perhaps graduated to ful -blown murder.
Even discounting domestics and gang-related attacks, it was a big jobl To check thoroughly, to go back far enough to find a pattern - if indeed there was one - was going to take time.
Hol and looked up at the clock. Another twenty minutes and they
could cal it a night. He tried to picture Thorne in a stetson and cowboy boots but the image wouldn't stick.
Thorne was too dangerous to be a figure of fun.
Johnny Cash made good music to read post-mortem reports by.
This, after al , was someone who once famously sang about shooting a man just to watch him die. Whether this was big talk or just a very bad case of boredom, he sang as if he knew a great deal about death. Thorne wondered, as he read the words Phil Hendricks had used to describe the manner of Carol Garner's death, how much he real y knew. Now, the man with a voice like the long, slow tumble towards hel was singing about flesh and blood needing flesh and blood. Thorne certainly didn't require it, but the proof was there on his lap, right in front of him - the proof that sometimes, flesh and blood needed to destroy flesh and blood, too.
The body of the second victim, Ruth Murray, had been examined by another pathologist. Whorne had seen the initial report which confirmed strangulation as the cause of death and revealed that tissue had been removed from beneath the victim's fingernails for DNA-testing. He wasn't going to get too excited just yet. It sounded promising, but he would wait to see what Hendricks had to say once he'd carried out a second PM.
Thorne had once thought strangulation, as ways of dying went, to be a fairly soft option. It could surely not be as terrible as being repeatedly stabbed or bludgeoned. It was certainly not on a par with drowning, or suffocating or swal owing bleach.
He'd thought this, until he'd read his first PM report on a victim of manual strangulation. In many ways, the use of the bare hands to throttle - the flesh on flesh - made it the very worst type of kil ing. There was no weapon to separate kil er from victim. In most cases the victim would lapse into unconsciousness quickly, but the damage inflicted could be massive, often leaving the victim as bloody and bruised as if they had been attacked with a hammer.
Carol Garner had died from asphyxia due to the compression of the
carotid arteries, her body displaying virtual y every classic trait consistent with violent strangulation.
The eyes were open, the eyebal s distended, the corneas and skin
around the eyes showing signs of haemorrhage. The neck was a
Hol and believed that about Thorne, if he believed anything. If interesting meant unpredictable and stubborn. If it meant refusing to admit that you might be wrong. If interesting meant determined, and vengeful, and knowing the difference between right and wrong whatever the poxy rules said. And refusing to suffer fools. And possessing the kind of passion that would always make something happen. A passion that Dave Hol and, whatever other people might want him to do and be, would have kil ed to have even the tiniest fucking bit of...
He thought about his father. A man who died a sergeant at sixty.
Having done just enough.
McEvoy shrugged and her eyes dropped back to her screen. Back to
the computerised catalogue of suffering and death from which the
two of them were supposed, hopeful y, to come up with some answers.
Hol and had believed that relatively, London could not be that violent a city and that their search would not be overly time-consuming.
He had been wrong on both counts.
Looking for murders committed on the same day had sounded
fairly straightforward, but Thorne was not a man who did things by half. Both time-frame and search criteria were broadening al the time. McEvoy and Hol and had begun by looking for strangulations first and then widened things from there. They couldn't rule out assaults as they might be the work of the same man who had now perhaps graduated to ful -blown murder.
Even discounting domestics and gang-related attacks, it was a big jobl To check thoroughly, to go back far enough to find a pattern - if indeed there was one - was going to take time.
Hol and looked up at the clock. Another twenty minutes and they
could cal it a night. He tried to picture Thorne in a stetson and cowboy boots but the image wouldn't stick.
Thorne was too dangerous to be a figure of fun.
Johnny Cash made good music to read post-mortem reports by.
This, after al , was someone who once famously sang about shooting a man just to watch him die. Whether this was big talk or just a very bad case of boredom, he sang as if he knew a great deal about death. Thorne wondered, as he read the words Phil Hendricks had used to describe the manner of Carol Garner's death, how much he real y knew. Now, the man with a voice like the long, slow tumble towards hel was singing about flesh and blood needing flesh and blood. Thorne certainly didn't require it, but the proof was there on his lap, right in front of him - the proof that sometimes, flesh and blood needed to destroy flesh and blood, too.
The body of the second victim, Ruth Murray, had been examined by another pathologist. Whorne had seen the initial report which confirmed strangulation as the cause of death and revealed that tissue had been removed from beneath the victim's fingernails for DNA-testing. He wasn't going to get too excited just yet. It sounded promising, but he would wait to see what Hendricks had to say once he'd carried out a second PM.
Thorne had once thought strangulation, as ways of dying went, to be a fairly soft option. It could surely not be as terrible as being repeatedly stabbed or bludgeoned. It was certainly not on a par with drowning, or suffocating or swal owing bleach.
He'd thought this, until he'd read his first PM report on a victim of manual strangulation. In many ways, the use of the bare hands to throttle - the flesh on flesh - made it the very worst type of kil ing. There was no weapon to separate kil er from victim. In most cases the victim would lapse into unconsciousness quickly, but the damage inflicted could be massive, often leaving the victim as bloody and bruised as if they had been attacked with a hammer.
Carol Garner had died from asphyxia due to the compression of the
carotid arteries, her body displaying virtual y every classic trait consistent with violent strangulation.
The eyes were open, the eyebal s distended, the corneas and skin
around the eyes showing signs of haemorrhage. The neck was a
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