Little Face Read Online Free PDF Page B

use,
the ones you swore you'd never resort to.
    `We've all arrested him a couple of times. Anyway, you wanted the
story so here it is: December 2000. I can't remember the exact date, but
it was a Friday night. Laura Cryer left work late-she was a scientist,
worked at Rawndesley Science park for a company called BioDiverse.
She went straight from the lab to her mother-in-law Vivienne Fancourt's house, where her son Felix was. She parked just inside the gate,
on that paved bit, you know?'
    Simon nodded. He had set himself the task of sitting still for as long
as it took Charlie to fill him in. He thought he could do it.
    `When she walked back to her car ten minutes later, Beer tried to
mug her. He stabbed her with a bog-standard kitchen knife-one
clean slice-and left her to bleed to death. Ran off with her Gucci
handbag, minus the strap, which we found by her body. Cut by the
same knife. Vivienne Fancourt found the body the next morning.
Anyway, we struck lucky on the DNA front. Beer left so much hair at the scene, we could have made a wig out of it. We ran the DNA profile and there was a match. Step forward, Darryl Beer.'

    Charlie smiled, remembering the satisfaction she'd felt at the time.
`We were glad to be able to bang him up, useless junkie scrote that he
is.' She noticed Simon's frown. `Oh, come on! In the two weeks before
Cryer's death, Vivienne Fancourt had phoned the station twice to
report a young man loitering on her property. She gave us a description that was Darryl Beer to a tee-dyed pony-tail, tattoos. He was
questioned at the time and denied it. Said it was her word against his,
the cocky little shit.'
    `What was he doing there?' asked Simon. `The Elms is in the middle of
nowhere. It's not as if there's a pub or even an all-night garage nearby.'
    `How should I know?' Charlie shrugged.
    `I'm not saying you should know. I'm saying it should bother you
that you don't.' Simon was regularly amazed by the lack of curiosity
displayed by other detectives. All too often there were aspects of cases
about which Charlie and the others seemed happy to say, `I guess that'll
have to remain an open question.' Not Simon. He had to know,
always, everything. Not knowing made him feel helpless, which made
him lash out.
    `Did Vivienne Fancourt see Darryl Beer on the night of the murder?'
he asked Charlie.
    She shook her head.
    `The two times she saw him, where in the grounds . . . '
    `Behind the house, on the river side.' She had seen that one coming.
    `Nowhere near the scene of the murder. And most of the physical evidence we found was on the body itself, on Laura Cryer's clothes.
Beer couldn't possibly have left it during a previous visit. Because, obviously, that possibility occurred to us just as it occurred to you.' There
was a bitter edge to her voice. `So you can stop thinking of yourself as
the lone genius amid a cluster of morons.'
    `What the fuck is that supposed to mean?' Simon wouldn't be told
what to think, not by anybody.

    `I would have thought it was unambiguous.' Charlie sighed. `Simon,
we all know how good you are, okay? Sometimes I think you'd actually prefer it if we didn't. You need to have something to grate against,
don't you?'
    `Why was there so much hair? Did Cryer pull it out? Did she struggle?' Fuck all that psychological bullshit. Simon was interested in
Laura Cryer and Darryl Beer. Really interested now. He wasn't just
asking in order to avoid an explosion. He still had that twitch in his
right knee.
    `Or else the fucker's got alopecia. No, he tried to snatch her handbag. She fought for it, probably more than he'd anticipated. She must
have done, or it wouldn't have ended in a stabbing, would it?'
    `You mentioned tattoos.'
    `Love and hate on his knuckles.' Charlie mimed a yawn. `Not very
original.'
    `So, you arrested him,' Simon prompted. As if by speeding up her
account he could find Alice quicker.
    `Sellers and Gibbs did. As soon as they heard about Vivienne