Gone to Ground Read Online Free Page B

a job here, you upped sticks and followed suit?"
    "Yes."
    "Really, then," Helen said, "you put yourself out for him quite a lot?"
    "I suppose so."
    "He was calling all the shots."
    McKusick shrugged.
    "Come on. You chucked in your job, found somewhere else to live and no sooner had you done all that then he turned round and said he didn't want to see you anymore."
    McKusick shook his head. "That's an oversimplification."
    "But it's what happened."
    McKusick didn't answer.
    "If that were me," Helen said, "if someone treated me that way, I'd be royally pissed off. To put it mildly."
    "So? What? I lost my temper and bashed him round the head? Is that what you're saying?"
    "Did you?"
    "Don't be ridiculous."
    "Is it ridiculous?" Will asked.
    "Of course it is."
    Will took a beat. "What made you think," he said, "that Stephen had been bashed around the head?"
    "I don't know. I don't know what happened, do I? You won't tell me."
    "Even so, bashed round the head, that's what you said."
    "And that's supposed to prove something?"
    "Let's see," Will said. "He could have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, gassed, strangled, strung out from a beam, anything."
    "Crucified," Helen suggested quietly.
    "But you chose beaten around the head," Will said. "I wonder why?"
     
    Will fetched two coffees from the machine and, despite the cold, he and Helen stood outside so that she could smoke a cigarette. For a moment, Mark McKusick had looked surprised when, after the usual warnings about not changing his address, not leaving the country and so on, they had told him he could go. They would, it was made abundantly clear, be wanting to speak to him again. He had looked over his shoulder not once, but twice, descending the shallow steps away from the station, as if half-expecting to be called back.
    "You still think he's lying?" Will asked.
    "Still?"
    "Play-acting, then."
    "Doesn't have to be the same thing."
    "No?"
    "No." Helen drew smoke down into her lungs, held it there, then, head averted, released it in a slow, blue-gray stream. "I mean you might behave in a certain way because you think that's what's expected of you, because you want to convince people of what you're feeling. That doesn't mean the feelings themselves aren't true."
    "And in this case? You think he's selling us a bill of goods?"
    Helen shrugged. "It's what salesmen do." She dropped the end of her cigarette to the ground, swiveled it flat with the sole of her shoe, and grinned. "But how the fuck should I know? You're the SIO."

Chapter 3
    STEPHEN BRYAN'S WALLET WAS FOUND IN A GREEN REcycling bin less than half a mile from where he had lived. Most of the contents had been recycled, certainly, only a creased five euro note and an out-of-date Tate membership card remaining. Of the laptop, there was still no sign and, without sending officers round to every car boot sale in the county and having them check assiduously on eBay, he doubted if there ever would be.
    The postmortem showed that Bryan's skull had been fractured in five places, as a result of having been struck numerous times by a wooden implement which seemed to have been wielded as a club. Several tiny splinters had been found embedded in his skull and were being sent for further analysis.
    Initial tests showed that the blood in the shower matched Bryan's and Bryan's alone. If he had fought back, there were no physical signs, no skin trapped under the fingernails of his hands as might then have been the case. It was as if, Will thought, Bryan's attacker had been able to take him completely by surprise.
    But how?
    Unbeknown to Bryan, had he gained access to the house and climbed the stairs, finding Bryan, naked and unsuspecting and at his mercy? There were no signs of forced entry, which suggested that, were this the case, whoever it was had been in possession of a key. The alternative scenario was that the murderer had been already in the house when Bryan went off to take his shower. Which in itself suggested something about the