Read Online Blood Substitute by Margaret Duffy - Free Book Online

enough, Superintendent, to let me have a copy of the case notes contained in this. And the pictures of those characters that you sent to the Met.’
    â€˜Certainly,’ Reece said. ‘You can have them right now. Will you visit the scene where Morley’s body was found?’
    Patrick nodded. ‘Yes, probably straight after we leave here. Not that I would presume to discover anything that your people have missed. We find it helps, that’s all.’
    â€˜There’s a map marked with the exact location in the file. I’ll get that copied for you as well.’
    â€˜You’re not very good at hiding your feelings,’ Patrick explained when we were on our own. ‘That’s why I didn’t want you to see anything that might possibly be the work of James’s father. He’d know, just by looking at you, that you were upset and an abomination had taken place.’ He added, ‘But I’m glad you didn’t see them for your own sake, too. I almost threw up.’
    â€˜But you must have seen all kinds of ghastly sights when you were a serving officer,’ I said, actually quite shocked at how it had affected him.
    â€˜I did, but in time of enemy action your real concerns are tactics, your responsibility for the living, and you learn to concentrate on all that. The worst things were the bomb disposal people who got it wrong when I was in Northern Ireland.’
    The media descriptions of the finding of the body in ‘woodland near Bristol’ appeared to be inaccurate and after wending our way along country lanes we found ourselves bouncing over rough ground and scrubland on the edge of a rubbish tip near Bradley Stoke, the second time the place had featured that morning. Patrick was doing the navigating – we were at the correct grid reference but at the follow-your-nose stage – and we duly topped a slight rise and headed down towards what was indeed a small wood. Incident tape was stretched between some of the trees, creating a restricted area. There was no sign of any police presence now but the ground was churned up from the recent movements of vehicles.
    As we went downhill, now on a track of sorts, the ground became wetter. I could see that it was very dark within the wood, water glinting in a couple of places where light penetrated the leaf canopy and, when the engine was turned off, the sound of a trickling stream could be heard. But this was not an attractive place, the air sour with the smell of rotting rubbish on the nearby tip, the thin grass yellow and sickly-looking. The stream, looking more like a polluted run-off, was a strange grey, almost metallic colour and in the small pools that had formed revolved large blobs of revolting yellow scum.
    Neither of us spoke as we left the car and walked down to the edge of the trees. Over to our right seagulls circled in the dusty air above the tip and excavators growled somewhere out of sight in the distance. Huge piles of topsoil had been dumped right up to the trees and I could see a day, soon, when this little wood would be buried for ever.
    We ducked under the tape and entered, pausing to allow our eyes to accustom to the gloom. The spot where Morley’s body had been found was quickly obvious; the vegetation, such as it was, in a shallow ditch flattened and bruised with a kind of greasy sheen to it, footprints everywhere. I knew that when investigations had ceased all traces of murder would be removed and wondered why no one was here to prevent incursions by the curious or ghoulish. Then I saw that there was indeed a police presence; a patrol car just visible through the trees over to the left. It appeared that we might have arrived by the ‘scenic’ route. Surely they had heard us.
    â€˜Say nowt,’ Patrick whispered. ‘It would be polite to go over and say hello but …’ His voice trailed away as he crouched down on the edge of the ditch from which arose the smell of