Broken Mirrors by CS Duffy

Author:CS Duffy [Duffy, CS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CS Duffy
Published: 2019-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

The outdoor swimming pool was covered up for the winter, the large fenced off area flat with thick snow. I'd guessed that if a body had been posed near Skanstull it would have to be in the area between Ringvägen and the water, a little way back from the heavily trafficked junction. Hoping to avoid Henrik or Nadja spotting me, I'd run down to the water at the other side of the bridge, then jogged back under the cycle path, passing the boat club with its rows of silent boats trapped in ice, and the outdoor gym. In the summer it was buzzing round here with sunbathers and joggers and swimmers, but now the silence was almost palpable.

The main sidewalk that ran between the leisure centre and the outdoor pool was guarded by uniformed officers, but I clambered up a treacherously icy pathway at the other side, past the little red allotment cottages that peeked out from beneath pristine snow. I finally got high enough to be able to see the crime scene flooded with silver light and paused, breathing heavily, sweating in my thick coat as I watched the now horribly familiar hive of activity.

A group of Scene of Crime officers carried a white tent across the open space, but just before they unfurled it, I caught a glimpse of the victim. The woman — I was almost positive it was a woman, though at such a distance it was difficult to be certain — was upright like the others, but she lurched heavily to one side. Was she in some kind of leaning pose — dancing? Yoga? — or had she simply fallen over?

The tent went up and I swore under my breath as she was hidden from view. I was almost sure she had fallen. Not fallen, in fact. Collapsed. Her neck was horribly bent as though her head was too heavy to support; one arm had been pointed high, but the other just flopped at her side, as though she were a puppet whose strings had broken.

The other two had been so flawlessly posed. The killer was slipping. Had they rushed this time, failed to dose the body with quite enough freezing chemical to achieve the full statue effect?

My thighs were burning from crouching in the snow, so I stood up, hoping that I was far enough away to escape attention. There probably wasn't much else I could see now that the tent was up, I thought, realising that feeling in my toes had departed several minutes earlier. I should go, write up my notes on this latest development. I'd passed on what I knew to the police, it was up to them to take action on it.

Then I heard a noise and I froze, icy chills trickling down my spine.

I wasn't alone up here.

A footstep, crunching through snow, just behind me. This path was too steep to be heavily used in the winter, the snow had been undisturbed when I'd scrabbled my way up. Behind me was only allotments, the nearest apartment buildings a good twenty, thirty metres away.

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