The Kill by Jane Casey Read Free Book Online Page B

brushed past me. It was quiet inside the tent, and hot from the lights that stood around the car. Colin Vale was deep in conversation with the crime-scene manager. The SOCOs had mostly finished with the car – a shattered Ford Mondeo – and its occupant, so we had it to ourselves. Derwent stalked towards the car, nodding to Pete Belcott, who stood to one side with his arms folded. I didn’t even bother to acknowledge Belcott. He routinely ignored me, after all. Anyway, I had better things to do, like keeping up with Derwent. The animal side of his personality was in abeyance, temporarily, while the incisive investigator took control, and he’d expect me to be just as focused as he was. So I stopped looking at him and looked at the victim instead.
    More precisely, I looked at what was left of him. He was a mess, slumped in the seat like a blood-soaked rag doll, his arms limp by his sides. His face had slid down, unmoored by the damage to the top of his skull, and I couldn’t actually tell how he would have looked in life. I could see he had been wearing a fleece over his uniform, as most uniformed officers did after a shift. Police officers weren’t allowed to wander around in uniform off duty, but there was no point in changing out of it when you were going home to bed.
    Bed. I imagined Hammond’s wife, safe under the covers. She was probably asleep. She wouldn’t have noticed yet that Hammond’s side of the bed was empty, the sheets cold. She wouldn’t know that he was never coming home. Once or twice, when Rob had been late home after a surveillance job had dragged on, I’d woken and wondered where he was, if he was all right. Worry had soured my relationships before now as boyfriends discovered I might not be on time, I might come home injured, or I might not come home at all. It was extremely unusual for police officers to die in the line of duty, but it happened. It was a possibility for all of us, all the time. And maybe that was why I had been hanging back. It was all too easy to see myself, or a friend – someone I loved – in the blood-soaked car. I felt the need to know kick in, like a long-suppressed craving. Finding out what had happened to Hammond suddenly seemed like the only thing that mattered.
    ‘Two shots.’ It was the familiar corncrake voice of the pathologist, Glenn Hanshaw. His face was drawn in the bright lights that shone on the car. Tall and thin, he was never exactly robust, but he looked ill. Then again, no one looked their best at that time in the morning. ‘The weapon was probably a rifle, but ballistics will be able to tell you more about it. The first shot hit him in the chest. The other took the top of his head off, but he was already dead.’
    You didn’t need a medical degree to know that the fist-sized hole in the man’s chest would have been a fatal wound. I didn’t say that, though. Dr Hanshaw took himself too seriously for that.
    ‘Overkill,’ Derwent said. ‘Maybe it’s personal.’
    He peered in through the shattered windscreen at the body slumped in the passenger seat. The second shot had effectively exploded Hammond’s skull, showering the inside of the car with bone fragments and pink matter that had once been his brain – everything that had made him who he was. It made a fine old mess when it was splattered across glass and upholstery, all the same. I went to the driver’s side where someone had left the door hanging open. I crouched down and played the beam of my torch over the seat, the steering wheel, the floor of the car. There was plenty to see and more to think about, and I stayed there for a couple of minutes before I became aware of movement behind me. I glanced around to see Godley, with Chris Pettifer and Dave Kemp standing beside him.
    ‘Nice of you to join us,’ Derwent said, grinning at Pettifer. He looked deeply chagrined to be the last to get there.
    ‘Some of us drive with due care and attention.’
    ‘Careful. The boss got here first.