Dark Flight by Lin Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

Rhona arrived, the body had been dragged ashore. Josh Baird, the man who’d spotted it in the water, had taken it for one of the recently returned seals, with its head missing. He’d been shocked when he learned the truth.
    McNab had an incident tent erected as near to the bank of the Kelvin as was sensible, given the tidal nature of the river. The slippery surface squelched under Rhona’s feet, the smell a pungent mix of decaying vegetation and river silt. She was grateful for the wellies she always kept in the boot of the car.
    This same tributary flowed below her laboratory window. She had stood on many of the numerous bridges that criss-crossed it, weaving a path through the famous Kelvingrove Park. This was the first time she had seen where it eventually ended, swallowed up in its greater cousin, the River Clyde.
    An inner and outer cordon had been secured around the incident tent, a constable on the outer cordon logging everyone coming in and out of the crime scene.
    Rhona signed in and approached the tent, hoping Bill was already there; but the tent was empty apart from McNab.
    When he saw her, his stern expression didn’t change, although the way he said her name irritated her. ‘Dr MacLeod.’
    ‘Where is it?’
    He stood to one side, revealing the object on a metal table. A shock wave ran through Rhona. She had expected horror, but not this.
    The small black naked corpse was limbless and headless, just as Josh had suggested. She stepped closer, drawn by disbelief.
    The legs had been sawn off at the top of each femur; the arms at the upper humerus. The head had been parted from the body cleanly, perhaps with one stroke. Rhona examined the genital area. The torso was male although the genitalia had also been sliced off.
    The final mutilation was a diagonal cross carved in the centre of the small thin chest.
    Rhona did a quick mental calculation. The skin had whitened and was heavily puckered. Such a degree of maceration meant the torso could have been in the water between twelve hours and three days. Which meant it could be Stephen.
    She let the thought wash over her that all the time they’d hoped, searched and prayed for the little boy, he was already dead and in the water.
    The torso showed no sign of hypostasis. No blood had followed the law of gravity and sunk to the blood vessels in the lower part of the body. There were no livid patches so no blood had coagulated. The boy’s blood, she realised with horror, had been drained from his body, prior to his immersion in the river.
    McNab handed her an evidence bag. Inside was a pair of blue boxer shorts. ‘He was wearing these when we pulled him in.’
    ‘That’s it?’ she asked.
    ‘That’s it.’
    If the torso turned out not to be Stephen, then a pair of shorts might help them identify the kid, but it was a long shot. And as far as she knew there had been no reports of a missing black boy, apart from Stephen. Scotland didn’t have a large black population, but it was easy enough to travel across the border from England.
    ‘You think it’s Stephen Devlin?’ McNab asked.
    ‘We’ll know soon enough.’
    One thing she could prove was whether this torso was related to Carole Devlin. Rhona had a gut feeling it was not. Maybe it was just a strong desire for it not to be Stephen. She didn’t know. But the feeling was powerful. And if the torso wasn’t Stephen, that meant they had a child murder
and
an abduction to deal with.
    McNab hovered close by as she took tissue samples. He’d not given her any cause for concern since his return to active duty, but there was something about this pregnant silence that unnerved her. He had always been chatty before. That’s what she’d first liked about him. When their relationship had moved into the sexual arena, his attitude remained the same. It had somehow led her to believe he felt the same way about their relationship as she did. When she broke it off, his reaction had thrown her completely. The easy chat