The Couple on Cedar Close by Anna-Lou Weatherley

Author:Anna-Lou Weatherley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786814982
Publisher: Bookouture

Thirty

Call me kinky, but there’s something about the sight of Vic Leyton in her scrubs that sort of does it for me. Or perhaps it’s just the woman herself? I’m somehow always pleased to see her, even if I know she’s the kind of woman who likes nothing more than to be elbow-deep in the guts of the dead.

‘Detective Riley,’ she greets me cordially with that Mona Lisa smile of hers. It’s the kind of smile that suggests she’s in on a joke that you don’t get, like she knows something you don’t, which to be fair, she mostly does. ‘Thank you for being so prompt.’

‘Well, given your tone of voice on the phone, it sounded quite urgent.’

‘Death is always urgent, Detective,’ she replies wryly, giving me the once-over. ‘You look a little tired, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Your observation skills are second to none, Ms Leyton,’ I reply graciously.

‘It’s Miss Leyton, actually,’ she corrects me in that enigmatic way of hers as she removes her bloodied latex gloves and goes for a fresh pair, snapping them on to her hands.

I cast my attention to the body on the slab: Robert Mills’ body. His white/blue toes are poking out of the end of the green sheet and I can see the hairs on them. Dead feet. It still turns my stomach to see a cadaver, no less one with hairy toes. And thank God. It’s not something I ever want to get used to.

‘Well, Dan,’ she says, almost jovially, ‘let’s start at the beginning.’

‘It’s as good a place as any.’

Vic pulls back the sheet and I stare down at the corpse on the slab. He’s a mass of stitches and wounds, like he’s been handmade by a seamstress. The wound on his neck has been stitched shut as best as possible but even after Vic’s meticulous attention to detail, you can still detect the brutality of the killer’s work on him. The image of his gaping wound flashes up in my mind; the bubbles of yellow sebaceous fat, tissue, bone and gore trying to escape from it. I find myself taking a deep breath.

‘The clothes he was wearing, the T-shirt, it showed vertical distribution of blood on it. It was a deep, very deep, obliquely placed, long incision on the front side of the neck. The left end of the injury started below the ear at the upper third of the neck and gradually deepened with the severance of the left carotid artery.’

‘His throat was cut,’ I say, simplifying it.

Vic gives another enigmatic smile. ‘The injury is compatible with a homicidal throat severance made by a right-handed person from behind after restraining the victim’s head.’

‘Right-handed?’

‘Yes. The weapon used was a sharp blade measuring approximately 8 inches long, in keeping with the murder weapon found at the scene.’

I stare at Robert Mills’ face. From the neck up he looks perfect, untouched, almost peaceful. He didn’t see it coming, did he? I think. It’s probably just as well.

‘So, the perpetrator sprung him from behind, pulled his head back and sliced his neck open?’

‘I’d say so, yes.

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