The Blood-Dimmed Tide Read Online Free Page B

following the stream, Will.’ Somehow Madden found his voice. ‘You’ll come to me. And hurry. It’s going to pour in a minute.’
    As he spoke, thunder boomed out again like a great bass drum and the rain grew heavier. Madden glanced uneasily at the stream in which he stood. The ledge where the child’s body lay had been carved out of the bank by the water on some earlier occasion and there was no telling how fast it might rise again in the cloudburst that now threatened. Quickly he bent again to study the corpse, noting its position, attentive to details.
    The pale blue skirt bunched about the girl’s hips was smeared with blood, as were her white thighs. Livid marks that were turning into bruises showed on her small bare buttocks. The water where he stood was littered with loose stones and rocks and Madden supposed that one of them might have been used as a weapon. If so, it would be washed clean by now.
    Studying the position of the body, he realized that he was able to observe the full effect of the damage done to the girl’s face because her head was twisted around at what he saw now was an unnatural angle. It seemed likely that her neck was broken.
    Was this how she had died? He hoped so. The thought that she might have been alive and conscious when the stone was raised above her head was close to unbearable.
    ‘Ah, Christ… no!’
    Madden looked behind him. Will Stackpole’s tall figure had appeared through the bushes on the far bank. Water dripped from the constable’s heavy blue cape. His glance dwelt on the pathetic huddled shape revealed behind the drawn willow branches.
    ‘What did he do to the lass?’ He pointed. ‘Is that her face?’
    ‘Yes, it’s been smashed in. God knows why.’ Madden let the branches fall, hiding the corpse from sight. Pale beneath his helmet, Stackpole stood rooted. He seemed unable to take in what he’d seen. ‘There’s blood on the grass over there, Will.’ Madden gestured. ‘You’d better keep off it. That’s probably where she was killed. And raped, by the look of it.’ The words he chose, as much as the harsh tone in which they were spoken, served to jerk the constable back to a state of awareness. He listened to what Madden was saying.
    ‘We can either protect that patch, or try to cover the body. But we can’t do both.’
    Nodding that he understood, Stackpole looked up at the sky. Although the rain was increasing steadily, the full force of the storm was yet to break on them. He took the tarpaulin from under his arm. Unable to make up his mind, he looked from where the body lay to the grass at his feet and back again. A sudden gust of rain blew a shower of raindrops into his face.
    ‘What do you think, sir?’ His glance was pleading.
    Madden scowled in reply. ‘Well, the stream’s bound to rise, so we may have to move the body.’ He paused, turning the problem over in his mind. ‘Let’s cover that piece of grass,’ he decided.
    While Stackpole busied himself unrolling the canvas, Madden recrossed the stream, pausing to collect an armful of stones from the river bed which the two men then laid at the corners of the spread tarpaulin on which the rain now drummed steadily.
    ‘The Guildford police won’t find their way here. I’ll have to go and fetch them.’ Madden had to shout to make himself heard above successive peals of thunder, meanwhile struggling to put on his socks and shoes again, balancing first on one foot, then on the other. After standing for so long in the icy water he’d lost all feeling in his toes. ‘Keep an eye on that stream, Will. You won’t get much warning once the water starts rising.’
    He waited a moment longer to look around him, torn between the need for haste in summoning the detectives and the equally urgent task he had set himself of searching for any clues left behind by the killer, evidence that might be destroyed or washed away in the storm, which now broke in earnest upon them. As Madden stood there,