He Died with His Eyes Open Read Online Free Page B

papers and tapes and so on.'
    'Why? Is it interesting?'
    'You're a cold-hearted bastard,' I said. 'What he taped you could listen to for a thousand years and have no pity for him.'
    'Cut out the Shakespeare,' he said. 'I've got a conference at ten for a million-pound breaking-and-entering. Anyway, did I play any of them? Did I have time? You're joking.'
    'I'll make you wish you never had,' I said, 'if I don't get better cooperation from you than this.'
    'Are you threatening me?'
    'Yes,' I said. 'Less of the casual cut and thrust, slap and tickle— more dedication to fact, like we learned in police college, week two.'
    'Okay, okay. Is that it?'
    'It is this time. But we're supposed to be one solid force.
    'That's why it's called a force,' I said. 'And the next time you just throw any old unverified blag off on me over a case I'm handling, you might just have a stumble on your next flight to the top.'
    He said incredulously: 'Are you telling me? Me? A chief inspector?'
    'Yes, I'm telling you,' I said. 'Murder outranks rank, so watch your step.'
    'Why don't you watch your blood pressure, Sergeant?' he said, and put the phone down.
    I looked at the dead receiver for a while. Before going out, I thought some more. It wasn't a routine killing—not a skinhead rolling and mugging job. Hatred—evil that Staniland had evoked in someone—had caused those deliberate, frightful injuries. Earlier in the morning I had heard on one of Staniland's tapes:
    You can go on for a long time explaining what life means to people, but do you still not understand that you're never going to get out of this alive? The question is, though, how are you going to die? Everyone has to face that. The problem is, how to do it consciously, deliberately, plan it up to the last moment, and record everything. The best thing would be if I could record what happened at the last moment, and after that moment. But someone else will have to fill that gap—if its ever filled.
    I played that part again. For a moment I wondered if he meant suicide. But however Staniland had met his death, it certainly hadn't been that way. Besides, I didn't think that that was what the passage meant. I reviewed what little I knew; the salient point was that he hadn't been killed where he was found. He couldn't have walked. It always came back to murder. As if by telepathy, the pathologist rang. 'I've done the autopsy.'
    'Well?'
    'His blood group is O negative... Look, what I really want to say is that he was even worse hurt than we thought when he came in. Both legs were broken, not just one—a fracture of the left kneecap, he couldn't have walked on it, as well as the multiple fracture of the right tibia. There's bruising to the medulla too, something I missed at first. Dislocation of the left shoulder, third and fourth ribs cracked on the same side.'
    'Christ, what did they do?' I said. 'Drop him from a building? An aircraft?'
    'No, no,' said the pathologist, 'it was a beating all right. I'd say you were still looking for that hammer, though the ribs and the kneecap might have been a kicking. Someone had a go with a knife, too; there's a long gash up his right arm that would have had to be stitched. So, hammer, knife and the boot—there would have had to be at least two of them, you can bank on that.' He stopped for breath.
    'Anything else?' I said.
    The man coughed. 'Well, lab tests show that he didn't die very quickly.'
    'I'm listening.'
    'They started with the fractures at the extremities, the fingers and hand, then the legs. Then he was hit in the right eye—it was nearly closed, you remember—there was extensive bruising. Then there was the knife wound. It looks to me as if it was thrown, the knife. Probably a flick-knife or kitchen— heavy, at any rate—say a twelve-centimetre blade. They, er, rather worked him over.'
    'What actually killed him?'
    'Oh, the blow to the brain, frontal lobe, without a doubt. Loss of consciousness aggravated by extensive bleeding. The