Read Online The Death List by Paul Johnston - Free Book Online

a look at that.”
    Turner steeled himself and went closer.
    “Both removed with a sharp instrument,” Redrose said. “You see here? Optic nerves cleanly severed.”
    “Where are they?” Oaten asked.
    “Good question. They appear to have been taken as trophies, though you’ll have to wait for the autopsy for confirmation. They might have been rammed down the throat.”
    “I see what you mean about it being a first,” the chief inspector said. “I’ve seen bodies in churches before and I’ve seen mutilations, but not both together.”
    The pathologist stood up and gave them a triumphant grin. “I haven’t finished.” He lifted up the head again and pointed to the mouth.
    “What is it?” Turner asked. “I can’t see anything.”
    Karen Oaten leaned closer. “There’s something projecting from the teeth.” She raised a latex-covered finger. “See, Taff? It looks like a piece of paper in a clear plastic bag.”
    “Precisely,” confirmed the medic.
    “Can you get it out?” Oaten asked.
    “You’ll have to wait for the—”
    “Let me rephrase that.” She gave him a stony glare. “This is a particularly vicious murder. Time is of the essence if we’re going to catch the killer. Please remove that piece of evidence.”
    “Very well, Chief Inspector. On your head be it.” Redrose took a retractor from his bag and used it to open the dead man’s jaws. A neatly folded square of paper about three centimeters across in the small bag fell onto the palm of Karen Oaten’s hand. “Well caught, madam.”
    She ignored him, going over to the SOCO leader. “I need this opened and bagged,” she said.
    A few minutes later she and Turner were looking at an unfolded piece of white copy paper in a clear evidence bag. A line of words had been laser-printed on it.
    “‘What a mockery hath death made of thee,’” Oaten read aloud. She glanced at her sergeant. “What is that? The Bible?”
    “Don’t ask me,” Turner replied, raising his shoulders. “I skipped chapel every time I could.”
    “We’ll run it through the computer,” the chief inspector said. “All that stuff’s in digital form now.”
    “Sounds like someone really had it in for this Father Prendegast,” Turner said.
    Karen Oaten looked back at the mutilated body on the altar. “I think we already knew that, Taff,” she said, shaking her head at him slowly.
    “Yeah,” he said, feeling his face begin to glow, “I suppose we did.”
     
    The two heavily built men came over the ridge in the gloom, five meters between them. The last of the sun had disappeared into the clouds over the Atlantic and it was chilly on the moor—chilly enough for the hardiest walker to have headed back to the warmth of civilization hours ago. A damp wind was coming off the sea. Upland Devon was as unforgiving as ever.
    “Anything, Rommel?” the man on the left said in a low voice.
    “Fuck all, Geronimo,” his companion grunted, checking the luminous compass on his right wrist. “According to the coordinates you worked out, we should have found him by now.”
    The first man looked around stealthily. He was wearing muddy camouflage fatigues. “To hell with this,” he said, drawing his combat knife from the sheath on his belt. “I’m not having him do us again.” The honed blade glinted in the light of the full moon that was rising in the east.
    “Wolfe’s never been caught, Geronimo.” Rommel wiped moisture from his crew-cut hair. “Not by anyone.”
    “There’s always a first time.”
    “And it’s not tonight,” came a voice from behind them.
    The two men spun on their heels. Rommel’s arm was grabbed and the knife chopped from it in a practiced karate move. He was jerked round to face Geronimo, a blade at his throat.
    “Game over,” said the assailant with a dry laugh. He released his captive and pushed him forward. “Christ, guys, I could hear you coming a mile off.”
    “Bollocks,” Geronimo said, twisting his lips beneath a drooping