The Colour of Death Read Online Free PDF

magically appeared on the walls, worktops and floor as a ghostly blue glow.  By highlighting these indelible bloodstains the Luminol acted like the building’s conscience, revealing how on more than one occasion this apparently spotless kitchen had been used as a slaughterhouse.  He followed one trail of glowing blood spatter and, in his mind’s eye, saw Linnet dragging one of his victims into the back yard.  More glowing stains led to stairs in the corner of the room.
    “Did you kill them all, George?”
    Linnet made a sudden move toward him and one of the police escort yanked at his cuffs, snapping his arms behind his back.  Linnet winced in pain and Fox winced with him, feeling the cuffs cut into his wrists, the tendons stretch in his shoulders.  Fox quickly averted his eyes — a protective gesture he had perfected over the years.
    He was seven when he first realized he was the only kid in school who experienced the physical sensations of pain whenever he witnessed another being touched or hurt.  Years later his hyperempathetic condition would be given a name but at the time the other kids had just assumed he was plain weird and laughed at his discomfort when watching anything violent, even cartoons on TV.  As a boy in England he had wanted only one thing:  to fit in and belong.  But after the death of his parents and sister, and leaving everything he knew in England to settle in the States, he’d stopped trying to fit in and accepted he would always be on the outside looking in.
    He moved to the stairs in the corner of the kitchen and descended into the basement.  There were no CSI down here yet; they were all in the kitchen or out in the back yard digging up the newly laid wooden deck.  As soon as Fox saw the refurbished basement he knew instinctively that this was Linnet’s private den.  Rows of books lined one of the wood-paneled walls:  cheap bodice-ripping romances with lurid covers, telling stories in which red-blooded men tamed wild women called Storm or Tempest.  Not what most people would expect on a serial killer’s reading list but it fitted the profile of a weak, inadequate man who could only court — and conquer — women in fantasy.
    Or with a weapon.
    His eyes moved to the locked case next to the books.  It contained at least five assorted rifles and handguns, and three serrated hunting knives arrayed in ascending order of size.  At the far end of the basement was a leather couch facing a plasma television screen.  Beside the screen was a stack of pornographic DVDs and a display case of stuffed animals:  chipmunks, raccoons and squirrels.  No doubt caught, killed and stuffed by Linnet himself.  Studying the stuffed animals and weapons, and mentally revisiting similar cases, Fox could guess what Linnet had done with the girls:  he had brought them there, released them into the wild and hunted them down.  But where were his trophies?  Looking around the room Fox noticed something odd.  Although the basement was directly beneath the kitchen…
     
     
    “We’ve got something.  There’s something here.”  The tired voice calling from outside sounded angry but triumphant.  Fox hurried back upstairs.  Through an open window he could see more police in boiler suits and white antibacterial masks standing on the wooden deck in the back yard.  The middle planks had been prized open like the ribcage of a whale, revealing a trench beneath.  He frowned, strode past Linnet an went outside.  The air was warm and he could already smell the decomposing fruits of their digging.
    Detective Karl Jordache was standing with his team, looking into the trench.  He patted a colleague on the right shoulder and Fox felt it on his left shoulder as strongly as if Jordache had patted him.  The detective beckoned to Fox and removed his mask.  He had a strong Roman nose, thick dark hair streaked with gray, and quick brown eyes that missed nothing.  “Hey, Nathan, look what we got here.”