Read Online Stop Dead by Leigh Russell - Free Book Online Page A

one side his face was white and intact. With curiously angular features, he looked like an android. As Geraldine approached she saw a deep weal on his left temple surrounded by a bruise that extended from the edge of his straight eyebrow to disappear beneath his hair. But that wasn’t what held her attention.

    ‘Oh my God, what happened to him?’ Sam asked.
    ‘This was a vicious attack,’ Miles replied quietly. ‘The attack began with an injury to the side of the head.’
    He pointed to the gash on the victim’s temple.
    ‘It may appear superficial, but the internal damage is considerable, a single blow inflicted with considerable force at close range. It would probably have been enough to stun the victim, if not knock him unconscious. And after that – as you can see – the victim was severely battered.’
    No one spoke for a few seconds as they stared at the dead man’s pulverised genitals, a mess of bloody flesh.

    ‘That’s disgusting,’ Sam muttered at last.
    Her voice sounded thick and slurred, as though it was an effort for her to move her lips.
    ‘There was a hell of a lot of blood in the car where he was found,’ Geraldine said. ‘Would it all have been the victim’s or –’
    It seemed too much to hope the killer might have left his DNA at the scene.
    ‘The blow to his head might well have knocked him out, or at least it would have dazed him for a few seconds, but he was still alive when the other injuries were inflicted. I can’t imagine he would have remained conscious for long and the shock and blood loss would have finished him off pretty quickly even if he’d weathered the blow to his temple. But between the two injuries that could well account for very extensive bleeding,’ Miles told them.

    There was another pause.
    ‘I daresay you already know a great deal about the victim. He was well nourished, worked out or exercised regularly, and looked after himself. My first impression was that we were looking at a man in his mid-fifties, but closer examination suggests he was past sixty.’
    Geraldine said Henshaw was sixty-five when he died.
    ‘Can you give us an estimated time of death?’
    ‘Sunday night between ten thirty and eleven thirty.’

    Sam had been staring in horror at the victim’s injuries.
    ‘Why on earth would anyone do that? The killer must’ve really hated the victim, so he must’ve known him.’
    ‘Some hatred,’ Geraldine muttered.
    ‘At any rate, the killer must have known him,’ Sam insisted. ‘If you ask me it was a jealous rival who did this. Either Henshaw was sleeping with the killer’s wife, or the killer was sleeping with Henshaw’s wife. Nothing else explains this.’
    She pointed at the victim’s mutilated genitals.
    ‘It’s an act of revenge. And if it’s Henshaw’s wife they were fighting over, there’s money at stake as well.’
    ‘That’s two possibilities certainly,’ Geraldine agreed cautiously, ‘but it’s just guesswork.’

    A sulky expression crossed Sam’s face as Geraldine continued.
    ‘All we can say with any certainty so far is that his name was Patrick Henshaw, he was sixty-five, married, with no children that we know of.’
    ‘He was a heavy drinker,’ the pathologist told them. ‘He’d been drinking shortly before he was killed. I’ve not got the toxicology report yet but I could smell it on his breath and his stomach contents. He’d eaten a couple of hours before he died – steak and salad – and he’d been drinking too. I’m pretty sure I smelt beer and I’d hazard a guess at whisky too.’
    ‘OK, we’ll check his credit card payments, see if we can find out if he was on his own that evening.’

    ‘What was the actual cause of death?’
    ‘That was a nasty wound on his head. Resultant internal bleeding would probably have caused permanent damage, if it hadn’t in itself proved fatal, but as for the actual cause of death, that was blood loss, compounded by shock.’
    He nodded his head in the