Blood On the Wall by Jim Eldridge Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t stand them.’
    ‘And did she see these people … and this Drake … a lot?’
    Rena shook her head.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to know about them.’
    ‘How did she get involved with them?’ asked Taggart.
    ‘She just saw them doing some filming in the centre of Carlisle one day and got talking to them. They were making some kind of documentary by the cross in front of the tourist office.’ Rena gave a sour little laugh. ‘If Tamara saw anyone with a movie camera she’d start talking to them. She was a complete geek like that. Starstruck. I told her, most of these people are sleazy and undesirable and to be avoided.’
    ‘How closely did she get involved?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Rena shrugged. ‘She didn’t talk about them to me because she knew what I thought about them.’
    ‘Except for this person called Drake,’ probed Seward gently.
    Rena nodded.
    ‘And she only mentioned him to me once. She shut up when I told her what I thought about these so-called artist geniuses. They all die in poverty. What’s the point of that?’
     
    The crime scene was a mess. Tyre tracks and footprints on the grass around the tree where Tamara Armstrong had been found hanging. The grass beneath the tree was still stained, the red of Tamara’s blood now turning brown. The ground felt spongy beneath Georgiou’s feet.
    Bunches of flowers had been laid at the base of the tree, bearing cards with messages like ‘You were an angel’.
    ‘Check the cards on the flowers,’ said Georgiou. ‘See if we can trace who left them. Maybe chummy left one, just to be funny.’
    Tennyson nodded.
    ‘There’s not much here, guv,’ he said. ‘Tyre tracks from the vehicles that came to take the body away, footprints from uniform.’
    ‘Did you see it before it was messed up?’
    ‘Yes and no,’ said Tennyson. ‘Uniform were on to it first, then I gather there were a load of ghouls turned up to look. Uniform kept them away and put up screens, but that meant them walking all over the place.’
    Georgiou looked at the tree where Tamara Armstronghad hung upside-down while her killer cut her head off, and at the patch of dried blood beneath. This was the big difference with the murder of Michelle Nixon. Michelle had been murdered and her head cut off indoors, in a railway shed, out of sight of prying eyes. Tamara Armstrong had been killed and her head cut off here in the open, even though it had been in the darkness of the early hours of the morning. Anyone could have come by. What had caused the change in the MO? Maybe the killer needed more of a thrill? The chance of being caught? Like people who got an extra kick out of having sex in public places, doing it without being caught. Maybe it was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down to the police. See, I kill right out in the open and you can’t catch me.
    Oh yes I will, Georgiou promised himself grimly.

EIGHT
    S eward took a swig from the small plastic bottle of water and then put it back in the glove compartment of the car. God, it was hot! The water had been cold when she bought it an hour ago, now it was already lukewarm. She wondered if she ought to invest in one of those iced water bottles she’d seen advertised in the papers, a padded bottle holder with an ice cube in the bottom. No, she decided, she’d only forget to put it in the freezer every night.
    Beside her, in the parked car, Taggart was listening on her mobile, nodding and saying ‘Got it’ every now and then. Finally she said, ‘I owe you one, Nick.’ Then she hung up.
    Seward looked at her inquisitively.
    ‘A pal of mine,’ said Kirsty. ‘He teaches creative writing at the uni. A good guy.’
    ‘Does he know Drake?’
    ‘Not well,’ said Kirsty. ‘A different department. Enough to know his first name though. Eric Drake. Nick says he’s a bit of a poser.’
    ‘An opinion shared by Rena Matlock,’ commented Seward.
    ‘No, Rena said that everyone at the uni’s a poser,’