The Isis Covenant Read Online Free PDF Page A

lifeless pyjama-clad bodies. ‘I think probably not. That came later. They would have started with the father. Just a little light grilling with the blow torch to loosen him up. He must have known by then there was no escape, that no matter how long he held out he was going to die. He should have talked.’ She turned to the woman, still splayed obscenely against the frame. ‘But we know he didn’t, because then they used the wife as leverage. He had to watch and he knew she was screaming at him inside to tell them what they wanted. Anything to save her from what they were doing. But he didn’t.’
    ‘Or he couldn’t.’
    She nodded slowly. ‘Because he didn’t know what it was they thought he knew.’
    ‘Jesus, the poor bastard.’
    ‘That was when they gave him the full works.’ She stepped in front of the scorched figure and crouched, inspecting the areas of carbonized flesh. What kind of human being would burn a man’s balls off? ‘The kids were their last chance to get what they wanted. They brought them in, eldest first, baby of the family – his favourite? – last. They must have known they didn’t need to use the blow torch, the threat would have been enough. But they did, and that,’ she paused to chew on the thought until it turned into a conclusion, ‘that, and the fact that the woman’s breast has been cut off, makes one of them a sadist. Because it was gratuitous. First they tortured them, so he could feel their pain, then they questioned him. And when he didn’t answer, they killed them. One by one.’ She looked down at the matted blond curls of the eldest of the four dead children, a slim girl just beginning the transformation to womanhood. ‘By smashing their skulls in with a hammer.’
    ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Detective.’ They turned to find the precinct’s medical examiner struggling into his coverall in the doorway. ‘A floater at the bridge,’ he said in explanation.
    Fisher raised an eyebrow. Someone being found dead in the water at Brooklyn Bridge was so common it was hardly worth mentioning, and certainly no excuse for holding up an investigation into six homicides.
    The examiner saw the look and shrugged. ‘Politics. Son of a city councillor.’ He switched on a digital recorder and moved quickly to the bodies, making his first brief inspection and at the same time speaking into the slim plastic rectangle. ‘First-degree burns on all four child victims, but initial inspection shows the cause of death to be blunt-force trauma to the skull. Adult female has suffered similar burning to the thighs, breast and stomach, left breast removed by a sharp instrument, probably …’ he bent to inspect the wound ‘… with a serrated edge. Also some evidence of sexual interference, but I won’t be able to confirm that until I carry out the autopsy. Again, her injuries would not have been enough to kill her.’ He frowned and inspected the area around the woman’s neck, which was hidden by her dark hair, then rose and did the same with the strung-up body in the centre of the room. When he was satisfied he turned to Fisher. ‘At first I reckoned they must have had their throats cut, and in a way I suppose they have, but it looks as if the major muscles, arteries and veins of the throat and neck have been severed by some kind of ligature. Whoever did it has come close to decapitating the victims.’
    ‘A garrotte?’
    He stared at her. ‘Why, yes, I suppose that’s right. A garrotte. Probably made of some kind of very narrow gauge wire.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve never come across anything like it. These people had knives, certainly, probably guns. Why would somebody use such a primitive weapon when they had other, more efficient tools at their disposal?’
    Fisher bit back the comment that it was her job to speculate on the how and the why, not his, but Zeller answered what had been a rhetorical question.
    ‘To make a point.’
    Fisher shook her head.
    ‘Because he