Blood Red by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Chapter Thirteen

Alarm

Mannering closed the door very softly and moved across to the still figure on the couch. He hardly needed to feel the pulse in the limp warm wrist to be sure that there was no movement. It looked as if Odell had been trying to get up when he had been killed.

The knife was still in the wound; a polished bone handle, looking clean and fresh, was jutting out.

Mannering drew back from the body, then glanced at the door. His fingerprints would be on the handle, but only there; he had learned over the years not to touch any part of a door. He went across, opened the door, and wiped the inside and the outside clean of prints. He had touched nothing else since he had come in this time, and if there were prints anywhere in the flat, they could be explained by his morning visit; fingerprints superimposed on others on the door handle couldn’t be. He put on gloves which he had been carrying, locked the door, turned, and stood very still, looking at the body, fleeting thoughts going through his mind, concerned more with consequences than with guilt.

Micky Odell looked quite ordinary in death. His features were slack and his mouth open a little, and the touch of the sinister had gone. At least he would never be able to give evidence against Rosamund to the police. Someone had made sure of that.

Theo?

The telephone bell startled Mannering. He turned his head towards it sharply. It went on ringing. A call for Rosamund? A call, which, if answered, would betray the fact that a man had been here about this time – a little after three o’clock in the afternoon. There were moments of almost startling silence between the ringing bursts. It went on and on. He moved towards it, taking out a handkerchief, and picked up the receiver: his voice sounded gruff, no one was ever likely to identify it as his.

‘Yes, hallo.’

He heard Lorna’s voice and Lorna was fooled, he could sense the way she hesitated before she said, ‘Is Mr Mannering there?’

He found himself looking at the back of Micky Odell’s sleek head, and smiling – because this was Lorna, and she wasn’t sure that he would answer.

‘Hallo, sweet. I haven’t lost the voice trick, then.’

‘I didn’t think—’ she began sharply, and then broke off, as if someone else was speaking to her. She soon came back on the line. ‘That was Tom. He wants to know if there are any special instructions, but—John, is Theo there?’

Mannering felt his pulse quickly. ‘Why should he be?’

‘His friend Charley Simpson just rang up to say that he’d slipped out of the Panorama again, and vanished,’ Lorna said. ‘There are several long distance telephone calls coming, and Charley wants him urgently. Is he there?’

‘No.’

‘I promised to ring all the places I could, to try to find him,’ Lorna said, and there was a frustrated note in her voice. ‘I really don’t know why we go to so much trouble for him; he—but never mind that! Have you seen him in the past hour?’

‘No.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.