Dead Silent Read Online Free

Messages, Contacts and texted Clay: Eve, we have a point of entry, the back door of the house leading out from the kitchen. There are clear prints on the glass. If they belong to the killer and he has a record, he might as well have left his name and address.
    He pressed send and watched Price, in the hall, slip the glass into a plastic evidence bag and hand it to a constable at the front door.
    Stone walked into the front living room and looked around. With no pictures on the walls, an old-fashioned green velvet three-piece suite and a basic television set, it felt miserly.
    His phone vibrated. ‘Clay Msg’ with attachment. He opened the text and paused mid-breath. Not quite believing his eyes, he blinked and looked again.
    It was a picture of Leonard Lawson, under the ceiling light; dead, naked, hanging upside down like a slaughtered beast, hands and feet tied to the pole.
    Price entered the room with his brush and pot of fingerprint dust. ‘What’s wrong with your face?’ he asked.
    Stone turned the screen so Price could see it.
    ‘Upstairs, right now?’
    Stone nodded. ‘I guess we drew the long straws tonight.’ He looked at the photo again. ‘What’s that?’ he said out loud, noticing something he’d overlooked in the initial shock.
    ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Price.
    Stone zoomed in on a single detail around the old man’s torso, isolating it, making it bigger. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before. Have you?’

5
2.54 am
    Under the plain ceiling light, Clay took a series of photographs of Leonard Lawson’s body, with several close-ups of the spear on which he was impaled. The top end of a narrow dark-brown shaft stuck out from his shoulder. The central section of the shaft was buried inside his chest cavity and the top end with the bloody metal point protruded from the base of his back rib cage.
    ‘Ten to four,’ said Clay.
    ‘How do you mean, Eve?’ asked Hendricks.
    ‘If the top and the tip of the spear were the hands of a clock...’ She drew a large circle in the air, corresponding to the position of the spear. ‘It’s pointing at ten to four.’
    She looked at the point of the spear. Two roughly cut triangular sections of metal, soldered together, and the base of the triangle hammered into the wood on which it sat alongside small tacks.
    ‘It’s home-made but well made,’ said Clay, her heart sinking, the chance to follow up a massive lead through commercial producers as dead as dust. The shaft itself looked old, an offcut, and could have been plucked from a skip on the street by any passer-by.
    The metal point was streaked with lines of Leonard Lawson’s blood and a small pool of blood had dripped on to the worn carpet.
    ‘OK,’ said Clay to herself. ‘The bigger picture.’
    She walked to the bedroom door and looked at the room as a whole, in a stable light, from the point of view of someone entering.
    She was struck by the unmade double bed, its blankets and sheets bunched up near the foot, a pair of blue pyjamas folded neatly on the pillow. Her pulse quickened as she imagined the old man, stripped bare in his bedroom and knowing he was going to die. She imagined his terror, his confusion, and wondered sadly what his last conscious thought had been.
    In the alcove beside the double bed was an old-fashioned dressing table with a trio of mirrors. The right-hand mirror had been closed over to cover half of the larger central mirror, leaving the left-hand mirror free to reflect what it caught in the room.
    ‘Anything?’ asked Hendricks.
    ‘Yes,’ said Clay. ‘The left-hand half of the mirror is reflecting the torso of Leonard Lawson’s body, upside down, and the entire spear entering and leaving his body. Go and position yourself so that you can see what shows up in the open left-hand mirror.’
    Hendricks moved to the window.
    ‘I can see his head and his arms reaching up.’
    Clay moved towards the dressing table and carefully opened the right-hand mirror to