Cold Grave by Craig Robertson Read Free Book Online Page B

was for the benefit of Kenny and Dazza, this time it was genuine. The horror of the girl lying there, broken and eaten, revolted her.
    ‘She had these wee pink gloves on that poked out the end of the jacket sleeves,’ Heneghan continued. ‘It was only the gloves and her long hair that let you know she was a lassie. Her hair had been blonde but it was all dirty with being on the ground for so long.’
    Heneghan drew breath to take a long sip of his tea and Narey could see that it was more than just the exhilaration of telling his story. The man was seeing the girl again in his mind’s eye and it was affecting him all over again.
    ‘But for all that, it was the head that was the worst,’ he continued. ‘I couldnae stop looking at it. It was like a magnet. It was all smashed in above her right eye. There was this big gaping hole and you knew right away it hadn’t been done by any animal. Well, not one with four legs. Some bastard had clubbed her head till it was caved in. She was just . . . broken into bits.’
    Heneghan’s voice trailed off but Narey wasn’t for giving him much time to get over the image that plagued him. She wanted to share it, to see it. Tony’s taste for the ghoulish had infected her, it seemed.
    ‘And there was nothing there that looked like a murder weapon?’ she asked the barman. ‘No log or stick or piece of metal?’
    Heneghan’s eyes suddenly narrowed and he looked at her warily.
    ‘You a reporter?’ he asked sharply.
    ‘Christ, no,’ she retorted. ‘I prefer to be able to sleep at nights and look at myself in the mirror. It’s my job, Bobby. I’m a good listener and I know how much it can help people to share their problems. Go on, please.’
    The man weighed it up before going on with his tale.
    ‘No, no weapon. Nothing that looked like it might have been used to batter her. We searched right enough and so did the police later but there was no sign of anything. And no one had been on the island since October. Excepting when the lake was frozen, of course.’
    ‘So you called the police right away?’
    ‘Well, we had to get the boat back to the mainland and we called from the hotel. We didnae have mobile phones back then. I said I’d take the boat if Tam waited with the body but he told me to get to fu—. He said no, he wasn staying there himself. Said the body wasn going anywhere so it was okay for us both to go back. The cops were there about an hour and a half later. Took us two trips on the boat to get them all over. Madness it was.’
    ‘So what did they think had happened?’ she asked him, waiting for the answers she already knew.
    ‘Well,’ he closed in conspiratorially. ‘That’s the weird bit. They reckoned she’d walked across the lake when the big freeze was there and never made it back across. Spooky, eh?’
    Narey nodded, encouraging him.
    ‘Were you there when the lake was frozen, Bobby?’
    ‘Not working, no, but I’d gone over to see what it was like. There were thousands of people. It was like the lake was covered in them. I didnt walk over to the island though. I’d been over it on the boat often enough that I knew how much water was under that wee bit of ice. If the girl had walked over to the island, on her own or with someone else, then no one would have noticed. Anyone could have done anything to her.’
    ‘Who do you think did it, Bobby?’
    Heneghan glanced back at the bar.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Have you heard people say that the girl was from a gypsy family?’
    ‘Aye, but I think it’s a load of rubbish.’
    She held her breath for a second, hesitating.
    ‘Did you ever hear of a guy called Laurence Paton?’
    He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, newly suspicious. His answer was firm.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Look, I don’t want to be rude but you ask a lot of questions and I need to get back to work. I don’t know anything, right? And I don’t know if I’ll ever stop seeing that poor girl’s