Murder in Mind Read Online Free

urge, knowing that, if she were dead, and her death was in any way suspicious, the police wouldn't be happy to find that he had tampered with their crime scene.
    Treading carefully, he approached, directing the torchlight over the woman's body toward her head. She was lying on her back, with one arm outflung and the other twisted under her, a long glittering earring trailing over her neck and into her blonde hair. A dark smudge of dirt or blood discoloured the skin of her cheek and, catching the light, her eyes gleamed half-open and still. With a sense of disbelief and a sinking heart, Matt recognised her.
    It was Jamie's girlfriend, Sophie.

2
    Steeling himself, Matt moved forward until he was close enough to reach down and press two shaky fingers against the cool skin under the girl's jawbone. There was no detectable pulse and, with rising dread, he noticed a thin trickle of blood running blackly from her ear. It brought back painful memories of the death of a fellow jockey, kicked in the head in a horrific fall. No breath issued from her slightly parted lips to warm the back of his hand and, feeling nauseous and a little panicky, he straightened up and reached into his pocket for his mobile phone. He wanted a paramedic – someone, anyone – who could tell him what to do.
    The phone lit up in his trembling hand as he slid it open but could find no signal in the gully by the river. Matt cursed under his breath and forced himself to think rationally.
    By his reckoning, it was getting on for ten minutes since he'd stopped the car by the bridge, so Sophie must have been lying at the bottom of the bank for at least a quarter of an hour. There had been no discernable warmth in her skin, but he didn't know how significant that was. It was a cold, windy night, and he had a fair idea that his own skin would have felt cool to the touch if he'd lain in this damp hollow for that long. Even so, there was no doubt in his mind that the girl was dead.
    He shone the fading torch on her face once more. It was criss-crossed with bramble scratches, as were her arms and bare legs. How had she come to be there? Although it was just conceivable that someone looking over the bridge parapet might have overbalanced, surely then they would have fallen into the river? From the position of her body, the possibility that Sophie's death had been accidental began to look exceedingly remote.
    Matt turned and regarded the bank up to the road, noticing for the first time a narrow path of smooth earth winding steeply upward through the tangle of briars and nettles. As he began the ascent, gritting his teeth against the pain in his ankle, he could hear the first sounds of a siren in the far distance.
    To Matt, who hadn't started it in very good shape, the night seemed to stretch on interminably.
    The first of the emergency services arrived, in the shape of a paramedic in a fast-response car, just as he scrambled up the last few feet of the slope and squeezed through the wire fence. Its occupant asked a few brief questions and made a call on his mobile phone before disappearing into the darkness at the side of the bridge, shining a powerful torch ahead of him.
    Feeling cold and shaky, Matt went to wait in Kendra's car, and he was there when, some minutes later, a bevy of sirens and flashing blue lights heralded the advent of two police cars closely followed by an ambulance.
    Suddenly the lonely spot was buzzing with activity, as the police officers donned their fluorescent-banded Day-Glo jackets and swung into action.
    Matt was approached by a young WPC who, after establishing the essentials, took him to sit in one of the police cars whilst she and her partner held a conversation over the parapet with the paramedic down below. A third officer secured the scene, reeling out a quantity of orange-striped tape around the bridge area and placing cones in the road. The ambulance crew, after consultation with the police, climbed back into their vehicle and drove