Max Wolfe 02.5 - Fresh Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

cuts to the hands and arms. Some bruising on the neck and upper arms, indicating he was forced on his back before the chop wound was inflicted.’ The tall Norwegian frowned at the twin black scars of Vic’s rictus grin. ‘Because the chop wounds on either side of his mouth are visible, it looks like two separate blows. But the roof of his mouth was almost cut open so we can say with some degree of certainty that the mechanism of death was a single chop from a long, sharp, heavy blade.’
    ‘Not a knife?’ Flashman said.
    Elsa shook her head. ‘That’s a twelve-inch wound.’
    ‘So we’re looking at a meat cleaver or some sort of sword,’ Flashman said.
    ‘Like a cutlass,’ I said.
    ‘That’s a possibility,’ Elsa said. ‘A cut that deep would need to have some weight behind it.’
    There was silence in that freezing room.
    ‘You’re on leave,’ Flashman finally said, not looking at me. ‘I’m sorry about this intrusion, Dr Olsen.’ Elsa shrugged and smiled. Flashman still didn’t look at me. ‘And this is not your investigation, DC Wolfe. You were walking your dog and you found the body and that’s where your involvement begins and ends.’ Finally he looked at me. ‘So what are you doing here?’
    ‘I have a lead, sir.’
    He nodded. ‘Dog lead, is it?’
    His MIT chuckled with the ingratiating canned laughter of a studio audience.
    ‘I apologise – again – for the interruption, Dr Olsen,’ Flashman told Elsa. ‘Please carry on.’
    ‘The facial wound didn’t kill him,’ Elsa said. ‘It caused a massive haemorrhage but he never had the chance to bleed to death.’
    She had opened the dead man’s ribs with the kind of pruning shears that you can buy in any garden centre and now she pointed at the Y-shaped incision that started at his shoulders. ‘Cause of death was a myocardial infarction,’ she said.
    ‘A heart attack,’ I said. ‘They scared him to death.’
    DCI Flashman did not look at me or speak to me or show any sign that he knew of my existence until we were back in the changing room, taking off our scrubs. And that was when he gripped me by the shoulders of my blue scrubs and slammed me hard against a metal locker.
    His face beneath his hairnet was red with fury.
    ‘Don’t you ever embarrass me like that again, Wolfe.’
    He was far bigger and stronger than me. But I brought my hands up between his arms and then out and over, and his grip fell away easily. He didn’t try to grab me again.
    ‘I’m not trying to embarrass you, sir.’
    He ripped off his hairnet. His MIT stood behind him, ready for the word to chuck me out. But Flashman inhaled deeply.
    ‘Let’s have it,’ he said. ‘Your lead.’
    ‘There’s a new little team who have been waving around a cutlass in Chinatown.’
    Flashman nodded. ‘And you think they might have topped Vic Masters?’
    ‘I don’t know. But I think it’s far more likely than the lead you’re pursuing. This old beef Vic Masters had with Alfie Bloom. He’s a sick old man. I looked him up.’
    ‘On Facebook? Twitter?’
    ‘On the Police National Computer, sir. Alfie Bloom’s in a care home.’
    One of Flashman’s DIs bristled. ‘Leafy Lanes is a retirement community!’
    Flashman placed a big meaty paw on my shoulder.
    ‘Alfie Bloom is not a sweet little old man, Wolfe. He has a history of extreme violence. He did a life sentence for murder. And he might be in a retirement community but he’s been known to go for a bit of a wander. And Alfie Bloom detested Vic Masters. So I wouldn’t rule him out, Sherlock.’
    ‘Sir, I can see you have to do a trace, interview and eliminate on him, whatever his age. But most recently the beef between Alfie Bloom and Vic Masters has been a literary feud.’
    Now he was angry.
    ‘They’re not Gore Vidal and Norman fucking Mailer! They hated each other for fifty years! They went at it more than once! Bottles, glasses – whatever was lying around. Mad Vic once threw a fish tank at Mad