Funeral in Blue by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

in Runcorn’s face that it affected him the same way.
    The police surgeon was a dark, stocky man with a voice like velvet. He shook his head as soon as he saw Runcorn. “Too soon,” he said, waving a hand. “Can’t tell you any more than I did this morning. Think I’m a magician?”
    “Just want to look,” Runcorn replied, walking past him towards the door at the other end of the room.
    The surgeon regarded Monk curiously, raising one eyebrow so high it made his face lopsided.
    Runcorn ignored him. He chose not to explain himself. “Come on,” he said to Monk abruptly.
    Monk caught up with him and went into the room where bodies were kept until they could be released to the undertaker. He must have been in places like this all his professional life, although he could remember only the last five years of it. It always knotted his stomach. He would not like to think he could ever have come to such a place with indifference.
    Runcorn moved over to one of the tables and pulled the sheet off the face of the body, holding it carefully to show only as far as the neck and shoulders. She was a tall woman, her flesh smooth and blemishless. Her features were handsome rather than beautiful, and the bones of her cheek and brow suggested her eyes had been remarkable, and now her lashes stood out against the pallor of her skin. Her thick hair was tawny red-brown and lay about her like a russet pillow.
    “Sarah Mackeson,” Runcorn said quietly, keeping his face averted, his voice catching a little as he tried to keep emotion out of it.
    Monk looked up at him.
    Runcorn cleared his throat. He was embarrassed. Monk wondered what thoughts were going through his mind, what imagination as to this woman’s life, the passions that had moved her and made her whatever she was. Artists’ models were by definition disreputable to him, and yet whatever he meant to feel, he was moved by her death. There was no spirit, no consciousness in what was left of her, but Runcorn seemed discomforted by her closeness, the reality of her body.
    A few years ago Monk might have mocked him for that. Now he was annoyed because it made Runcorn also more human, and he wanted to retain his dislike for him. It was what he was used to.
    “Well?” Runcorn demanded. “Seen enough? Her neck was broken. Want to look at the bruises on her arms?”
    “Of course,” Monk replied curtly.
    Runcorn moved the sheet so her arms were shown, but very carefully held it not to reveal her breasts. Without wishing to, Monk liked him the better for that, too. It didn’t occur to him that it could be prudery rather than respect. There was something in the way Runcorn held the cloth, the touch of his fingers on it, that belied the idea.
    Monk bent and looked at the very slight indentations on the smooth flesh, barely discolored.
    “Dead too quickly for it to mark much,” Runcorn explained unnecessarily.
    “I know that,” Monk said. “Looks as if she fought a bit.” He picked up one of the limp hands and looked to see if she might have scratched her killer, but none of the nails were broken, nor was there any skin or blood underneath them. He put it down and looked at the other, finding nothing there either.
    Runcorn watched him silently, and when he had finished, pulled up the sheet again and walked over to the next table. He lifted the sheet from the face and shoulders of the woman there.
    Monk’s first reaction was to be angry that Runcorn had made such a disturbing mistake. Why couldn’t he have been careful enough to have got the right body? This could not be Kristian Beck’s wife. She was very slender, and must have been almost as tall as Kristian. Her cloud of dark hair was untouched by gray, and her face, even without the spark of life in it, was beautiful. Her features were delicate, almost ethereal, and yet haunted by an element of passion that remained even now in this soulless place with its damp air and smells of carbolic and death.
    He did not care in the