The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid Read Free Book Online

wild, forming a chaotic halo round her head, and her big grey eyes had blue shadows underneath them. She’d always been slim; now she was tending towards skinny, her veteran waxed jacket taking on new vertical creases where there was no longer flesh to fill it. Her jeans were unusually loose on her, the denim pooling at her knees and inner thighs.
    ‘I know I was dubious about him leaving cold cases just because we’re together, but he’s really got stuck in to this Murder Prevention Team. Apparently, there’s been some research that indicates that men who are violent abusers tend towards petty criminality in other areas of their lives. Like, they don’t pay their TV licence, they drive their cars without insurance, they run red lights, they shoplift. The kind of shit people do to prove to themselves they’re not just another brick in the wall.’ Karen pulled a bottle of Aussie red out of the wine rack and unscrewed the cap. ‘So Phil’s team is developing this strategy where they try to take the abusive partners out of reach of the victims by putting them under the microscope and hitting them with every little infringement. Sometimes they get enough to put the bastard behind bars. Other times, they just harass the bastards to the point where it’s easier to walk away and go and live somewhere else.’
    ‘Isn’t that simply shifting the problem somewhere else?’ River picked up the glass that Karen had poured for her. She sniffed it, sipped it then nodded once. ‘Nice.’
    ‘Yeah. But hopefully somewhere that also has the same policies in place. The idea is that they eventually get the message that abusing their partners means they’ll be abused themselves in a slightly different but very uncomfortable way. Plus sometimes the team gets enough to put them behind bars, which means they’re right out of the equation in a way that spares the victim having to give evidence about what he did to her.’
    ‘And does it work?’
    Karen shrugged. ‘Phil thinks it saves lives.’ She took a large bag of salty-and-sweet popcorn out of the cupboard and tipped it into a bowl. ‘But more to the point: tell me about my skeleton.’ Once they’d bagged and tagged the remains, River had taken them to the mortuary. Karen had left her to it. In her experience, people got on better with the things they were best at if you left them to it. Looking over their shoulders never improved the quality of the work. While the forensic scientist had examined the body, Karen had focused on the recent history of the John Drummond, trying to establish who had had access and when. It would have been a thankless task at any time, she suspected, but on a Saturday afternoon and evening, it was damn close to impossible. All she’d been able to establish were denials. Nobody had made regular use of any part of the building for a dozen years, not since a charity involved in organising outdoor adventure training for deprived inner-city teenagers had moved out. Nobody had squatted the building. Nobody from the security company nominally charged with its preservation from harm would admit to having ever climbed the stairs. Nobody associated with the school back in the mists of time had been reported missing. Most importantly, her quest to find anyone who knew anything about free-climbing the John Drummond had gone cold. Fraser Jardine’s pal had his phone turned off and until he got back to them, that tantalising line of inquiry was going nowhere. All those negatives. Now she was gagging for something positive.
    River crunched a mouthful of popcorn to annihilation. ‘It’s a male. And he died from a small-calibre gunshot wound to his forehead. Beyond that, much of what I can tell you is best-guess at this point. I’d guess he was murdered because of the site of the entry wound.’ She pointed to a spot above her right eyebrow. ‘I’ve never seen a suicide shoot himself there. The temple. The roof of the mouth. Once, right between the eyes.