Play Dead Read Online Free PDF

seconds.
    A smile lifted his pointy beard. ‘Oh, Inspector, only you could find a body here.’
    ‘Keats, how about you just—’
    ‘Does she know?’ Keats asked Bryant.
    She caught her colleague’s quick shake of the head.
    ‘Know what?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh, excellent,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now, let me see our victim.’
    Kim looked to her colleague for clarification.
    ‘Bryant…?’
    He held up his hands. ‘I’m gonna go find coffee. You’re going to need it.’
    She had the sudden feeling that everyone had been told a joke and she was the only one not to get it. She couldn’t help thinking it had something to do with the two consultants now standing in the middle of the field.
    She shrugged and then turned to the professor. ‘I need to ask you to leave the area.’
    ‘I understand. It’s a crime scene. I’ll go and check on my other visitors.’
    Kim took the protective footwear being offered to her.
    ‘So, Detective Inspector—’
    ‘Keats, don’t even start with me today. This was supposed to be a reward,’ she said, snapping on blue gloves.
    They often bickered at a crime scene. He called it banter. She called it a pain in the arse. Last year, Keats had lost his wife suddenly after thirty-five years of marriage. The loss had hit him harder than he’d allowed anyone to see. But she had known. And so she let him have his fun. Now and again.
    The technicians worked around her and she blocked out the surrounding chatter. For a moment Kim was as still as the body. Everything faded away as she focussed her senses on the woman before her. The only thing that mattered was the clues she still held. Anything other than the victim disappeared from her mind as she allowed her gaze to start at the partly exposed feet.
    The woman’s toes peeked from gladiator sandals with two strap fastenings above each ankle. Only one of the straps of each sandal was tied.
    The skirt was long and flowing, a gypsy skirt formed of vertical patterns up to the elasticated waistband. Kim took a closer look. The skirt rested just above the sandals all the way around, as though placed with care. A lilac vest top with thin straps showed the absence of a bra. The slight frame didn’t require one. A simple chain with a gold cross hung below the neck, falling on the breastbone.
    Her arms were placed a couple of inches away from her torso. The wrists were barely discernible from the rest of her arms. A thin strap of white showed where her watch should have been on the left wrist, but it was the right wrist that caused Kim to pause.
    A perfect line encircled the wrist and a graze had removed some of the skin from the top of the hand. Kim needed no more information to deduce the mark and the graze were from the presence of handcuffs.
    Her heart beat faster for just a few seconds as her eyes lingered on the injury. She remembered how that same red ring had looked on her own six-year-old hand. The memory of soreness from the scraped skin passed fleetingly through her, causing her to rub the top of her own hand. Sometimes she needed to remind herself that it was long gone; although new flesh had grown and healed it away she would still be able to draw its shape back onto her skin twenty-eight years later.
    She shook her head to release her mind from the past.
    Her gaze travelled up to what used to be a head. The skull was distorted as though someone had taken a bite out of it like an apple. Dried blood covered every inch of the skin and had formed rivulets over the woman’s jaw and down her neck. The right-hand side of her hair was coloured red from blood and the left was blonde. Kim guessed it was where she had turned her head slightly into the ground to try to avoid the blows.
    The nose appeared to be pointing to the left. The flesh would have swollen immediately upon impact. Injuries inflicted after death didn’t swell, indicating the victim had been alive during the beating.
    ‘What the…?’ Kim said, leaning down. Her attention