The Creeper Read Online Free PDF

Like a huge iron fist was wrapping itself round his ribs and squeezing as hard as it could. Squeezing the life out of him.
    He knew some officers who would have milked the situation, seen a doctor, taken paid sick leave with union backing. But Phil wasn’t like that. He had told no one, preferring to cope himself.
    But he hadn’t had one in months. Not since . . .
    Not since he and Marina had set up home together. Not since he’d became a father.
    But he still felt his body for the attacks. Braced himself for their return. Because it was only a matter of time until something happened, some dark trigger tripped and that iron fist would have him in its grip once more. Only a matter of time.
    But not today. And not now. Or at least not yet.
    Nick Lines, the pathologist, was examining the body in place. He called to Phil.
    ‘I’m about to turn her. Want to see?’
    Phil hurried back up the gangplank, on to the boat.
    Nick Lines was only slightly more animated and lifelike than the corpses he worked with. Stripped of his paper suit, and despite the warmth, he stood dressed in a three-piece suit, pointed shoes, his tie loosened at the neck. He was tall, thin and bald; his glasses, perched on the end of his nose, might have looked fashionable on someone else. He wore the kind of expression that might have got him a part-time job either as a professional mourner or the kind of character actor in horror films who warned teenagers not to stray off the path into the woods. This expression, Phil knew from years of experience, hid a razor-sharp intellect and an even sharper - and dryer - wit.
    Nick, together with a CSI, turned the body over.
    ‘Oh God . . .’
    ‘Hmm . . .’ Nick was masking any revulsion he may have felt by appearing to be professionally interested. For all Phil knew, he might have been.
    Phil pointed. ‘Are those . . . hook marks?’
    Nick peered at the back of the woman’s body. There were two huge wounds underneath her shoulder blades where something large and sharp had been gouged into her flesh.
    ‘Looks that way. By the way the flesh has torn, she must have been hung up to be tortured.’
    ‘Great.’ Phil felt his own stomach pitch. Emotions hurled themselves around inside him. Anger at what had been done. Revulsion. Sorrow. And a hard, burning flame in the pit of his stomach that made him want to catch the person who had done this. He stood up, turned away from the body. ‘So what have we got to go on, Nick?’
    Nick stood also. ‘Not a lot. Female, mid-twenties. Tortured, sexually mutilated, murdered.’
    ‘In that order?’
    Nick glanced at the body. ‘Your guess is as good as mine at the moment. But if I had to stick my neck out I’d say, judging by blood pooling and lividity, the sexual mutilation was carried out after the killing.’
    Mickey Philips and Rose Martin came onboard. Rose had her notebook in hand, open.
    ‘You’d better stand near the side, Mickey,’ said Phil. ‘In case you go again.’
    Mickey Philips was about to argue then got a look at the body. He moved over to the side.
    ‘Cause of death?’ asked Rose, her face rigidly composed.
    Nick shrugged. ‘Take your pick. Knife wounds, chain wounds . . . she was comprehensively worked over.’ He sighed and, for the first time that day, Phil saw genuine concern break through the man’s brittle mask. ‘And from the looks of it, whatever the weapons were, they’d been . . . augmented.’
    Phil fell silent, contemplative. He knew what that meant. Hammers. Nails. Razors. Blades. Julie Miller, if it was her, hadn’t died easily.
    Phil swallowed. ‘Time of death?’
    Nick looked round at the sky, back to Phil, a gesture that made him look like he was thinking but was more about regaining his composure. ‘It’s a hot day, Phil. Clearly, she was killed elsewhere and brought here. From what I can make out of the internal blood pooling and lividity in her body she was lying on her back for some time. Best I can do at the