The Death Pictures Read Online Free Page B

to investigate, let alone get a conviction. What was the current statistic? About six per cent of complaints of rape led to a successful prosecution? Not for him. Two out of two.
    But he’d have to be careful. He couldn’t risk another warning, or a closer look at how he’d solved the other cases.
    In the first, it’d just been raised eyebrows from the other detectives and a friendly word in the ear from the Assistant Chief Constable. He could still hear the shouting and screaming in the bar and feel the fist flying into his face, his skin splitting under its clubbing impact.
    ‘We won’t go too deeply into why he assaulted you, eh?’ Hawes had said, an arm on his shoulder in the quiet of a corner of the police station car park. ‘We won’t ask why you happened to fancy a drink in that very same pub he was in. We won’t go into his claims that you’d been following him all day and he lashed out at you in frustration. No one would believe the word of a rapist, would they, eh? We’ll just think it was good luck that you happened to be in the same pub as our prime suspect and he was drunk enough to have a go at you. We’ll overlook our frustration at not being able to take a DNA sample from him because he’d committed no crime. Up until he attacked you that is, eh? We’ll forget how fortunate it was that we could finally take a swab after we’d charged him with the assault. It was just down to luck that it matched the sample taken from the woman he’d raped. No one in the force would ever dream of suggesting you pushed him into attacking you so we’d have grounds to get some DNA from him, eh?’
    Adam rubbed at his right eyebrow and the tiny scar Mick Barwick’s fist had left. He was a squat, powerful man and it had meant four stitches. But it was a price worth paying. He’d gladly exchange it for Barwick’s twelve years in prison.
    The other case had brought a formal warning. WPC Radcliffe was young and keen and had been up for the operation, but Adam had stupidly forgotten to get the required approval from the Assistant Chief. An oversight, he’d assured the raging Hawes as he stood to attention in his office. It was a detail lost in the intensity of the hunt for their man. Just an oversight, nothing more.
    Hawes wasn’t mollified, nowhere close. Jo Radcliffe had been badly shaken by Hill’s attack on her in the park, he ranted. It didn’t matter that there were cops in the bushes, waiting for him and that he’d been arrested before he could do anything more than grab her. It was unacceptable to compromise the safety of an officer without approval from the highest level. DCI Breen would consider himself formally reprimanded and nothing like it would ever happen again.
    That was the only stain on his service record, Adam thought, and he’d gladly take it. Neil Hill had got 14 years. They could prove he’d committed two rapes and suspected him of another couple of attacks. That was enough for the judge. A reedy man in his mid 20s with an odd smell of damp, Hill was a classic inadequate who’d never had a girlfriend. He picked only on very thin young women and used masking tape to strap his victims’ hands together as he raped them. He’d developed a way of working and had got a taste for it.
    He’d have attacked again unless they’d caught him, again and again. Adam allowed himself to relive the memory of how he’d twisted and jammed Hill’s arm behind his back, dislocating his shoulder. How he’d enjoyed the cracking sound and the man’s agonised scream, how it’d tempted him to push the arm just a little harder. He’d expected to feel some guilt, even a little shock at himself, but jubilation was all that came.
    The door swung open, banging into the white wall, juddering on its hinges. Rachel flinched, her eyes widening, looked helplessly across at Adam as though pleading for protection. A young, white-coated doctor stood in the doorway.
    ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he said sharply,