The Isis Covenant Read Online Free PDF

enjoyed it.’
    The doctor nodded wearily and returned to the woman victim as the two detectives set off to inspect the rest of the house. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ The question was to no one in particular, but Fisher joined him beside the body and crouched at his side as he inspected the dried blood on the woman’s forehead. ‘There’s something here.’ He removed a pen and notebook from inside the coverall. ‘See, you can just make out the faint outline of the wound. It’s not like any natural cut or slash I’ve seen before.’ He drew a rough sketch on a page of the notebook. ‘See? A circle within a horizontal oval.’
    ‘Some kind of message? A gang symbol?’
    ‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll have a clearer picture when I get her cleaned up.’
    Fisher nodded and got to her feet.
    ‘Such a nice family. What did you say their name was?’
    Zeller turned. ‘We didn’t.’
    Fisher looked back at the cosy domestic surroundings that had been turned into a scene of mass slaughter.
    ‘Hartmann.’

V
    ‘OBVIOUSLY WE’LL KEEP an eye on you, sir, but I’m afraid there’s no question of full-time protection officers or anything like that. Not with the budgets the way they are.’
    ‘I suppose they’re all too busy clubbing with Fergie’s brood?’
    Jamie’s attempt at humour didn’t go down too well with Detective Sergeant Shreeves, the personal security adviser who had arrived at his tiny Old Bond Street office a week after Lotte Muller’s report landed on some poor, unsuspecting copper’s desk at New Scotland Yard.
    ‘Perhaps you should be taking this a little more seriously, Mr Saintclair.’
    Jamie picked up the piece of paper he’d just been given. ‘If it’s so serious why am I not being offered something more substantial than glaringly obvious advice?’ He read: ‘
Try not to go out alone. Stay away from places that are potentially dangerous. Be careful when answering the door
. For Christ’s sake, this will be a bona fide Mafia hitman. He won’t knock on my door and ask for Jamie Saintclair, art dealer of this parish. He’ll be waiting outside the office with a bunch of flowers and a smile and before I know it he’ll have clipped me with a 9 mm disguised as a bloody daffodil.’
    ‘I think you’ve been watching too many
Godfather
movies, sir.’ The plain-clothes officer from the Met gave the hint of a smile.
    ‘Surely there must be something else. Witness protection?’
    ‘If you want to call yourself Neville and live the rest of your life on a housing estate in Hull and never see your nearest and dearest again, I’m sure that can be arranged. They tell me packing fish can be a very rewarding profession.’
    Jamie cringed at the thought. In any case, he didn’t have any nearest and dearest. His grandfather, his last living relative, had been murdered a year earlier, less than twelve months after the death of his mother. He had never known his father. Correction. He didn’t even know his father’s identity. For the first time it hit him that if – for Christ’s sake, please make it if – he died in the nearish future, they’d be able to hold his wake in the nearest phone box. He could count his real friends on the fingers of one hand. By the time Sarah heard, it would be too late to come back from Boston for the funeral even if she wanted to. Gail, his part-time secretary, currently sent window shopping to ensure a bit of privacy in this cupboard that posed as a corporate headquarters for Saintclair Fine Arts, took on an entirely new significance. She at least would mourn him properly. Samantha would come along out of curiosity to see who else he’d been shagging – God, he hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed – and that was about it. His lawyer, a few people he hadn’t seen since Cambridge, and Perry Dacre and his ilk to shed a few crocodile tears …
    He looked up to see the other man studying him with a look that might have been sympathy. ‘Maybe it would be a good