Out of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

again so soon if everything had been going splendidly.
    He peered at my face. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
    ‘This?’ I fingered my bruises and abrasions. ‘A stone wall hit me.’
    He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It did a good job. Maybe you’re not cut out for work as a private eye?’
    ‘Thanks, Bill. So what have you got on the bodies?’
    ‘Forensics have come up with some info in the path lab.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Two female bodies. One male.’
    ‘Well done, them!’
    He ignored my sarcasm, probably because he was used to it.
    ‘Ages range between twenty-five and thirty-three. They also say they’re all foreign.’
    ‘Ethnic descent, you mean, or…?’
    He shook his head. ‘Foreign. They didn’t grow up here. The male is, or was, Chinese. The females are both from somewhere in Eastern Europe. Ukraine or Poland, probably.’
    ‘How can they tell?’
    ‘Something to do with chemicals in the body. You grow up on Teesside, you’ll have bits of steel and slag in your DNA, I expect. Grow up in China, and you have rice grains, and whatnot.’
    I shook my head. ‘That right?’
    ‘Something like that. You’ll have to ask the boffins, if you want to know more.’
    ‘Boffins, eh? You still have them?’
    ‘More than ever. What we really need, though, is more boots on the ground.’ He inspected his mug and added, ‘Good coffee, this.’
    ‘Thanks. It’s good to know I can do something right in your book.’
    ‘Tch, tch! Such sensitivity.’
    I thought about what Bill had just said. So they were truly exotic bodies. Not what you would normally expect to find on the beach in Port Holland. Mind you, the world is on the move as never before. Plane loads of Africans arriving every day. Plane loads of Brits off to Oz and Spain. And that’s without even counting the people going on holiday. I bet if I asked him, Jimmy Mack would say it was madness. And I might even agree with him.
    ‘Could they have come off a ship?’ I asked. ‘Could forensics tell you that?’
    ‘Unlikely, I’m told. The bodies had been in the water a while. There were signs of damage from …’ He paused, looked up at me and winced, adding, ‘I don’t think I want to go fishing anywhere near Port Holland again for a while.’
    ‘But why not off a ship?’
    ‘That’s more to do with the coastguard than forensics. The currents in the area are all wrong, apparently. Bodies dumped offshore wouldn’t have come into Port Holland. They would have hit the beach a lot further south.’ He shrugged. ‘So they say anyway.’
    Bill had been doing his homework. No wonder he looked even more shagged out than usual. Despite what he’d said for openers, he’d made a lot of progress in the past twenty-four hours. I was impressed. He had obviously persuaded various people to drop what they were doing and move this case to the top of their in-trays. Perhaps it was the lure of possible new Volvos that had done it.
    ‘So what’s your take on this now?’ I asked.
    He shook his head. ‘Early days, Frank. Early days. I take it you know nothing more?’ he added hopefully.
    ‘Not a thing.’
    Was that a lie? I wasn’t sure.
    ‘It’s probably either drugs trafficking or people trafficking,’ Bill added with a sigh. ‘That’s what I’m thinking. But we’ll have to be a lot further down the road before we can say for sure.’
    ‘Keep an open mind,’ I advised. ‘It doesn’t have to be either of those possibilities.’
    He snorted and shoved his mug across for a refill. ‘OK, big detective. What else could it be?’
    ‘I don’t know. Arms trafficking?’
    ‘That’s a point. I hadn’t thought of that one.’ He frowned. ‘Catterick’s not far away, is it?’
    It wasn’t. Catterick, in North Yorkshire. The army’s biggest base. It would be full of everything lethal you had ever heard of, and more besides.
    ‘There was a quartermaster type there that got done for flogging Nato rifles the other year, wasn’t there?’ I