The Trespasser Read Online Free Page A

yet?’ I ask. Cooper is the pathologist. He likes me better than he likes most people, but he still wouldn’t have stuck around: if you’re not at the scene when Cooper shows up to do the preliminary, that counts as your problem, not his.
    ‘Just left,’ Sophie says. She has one watchful eye on her techs. ‘He says she’s dead, just in case we missed that. Her being right next to the fire messed with the rate of cooling and the onset of rigor, so time of death is dodgy: anywhere between six and eleven yesterday evening.’
    Steve nods at the table. ‘Probably before half-eight, nine. Any later, they’d’ve started eating.’
    ‘Unless one of them works an odd shift,’ I say. Steve puts that in his notebook: something for the floaters to check out, once we have an ID on the dinner guest. ‘The call came in as injuries from a fall. Did Cooper say whether that’d fit?’
    Sophie snorts. ‘Yeah, right. The special kind of fall. The back of her head’s smashed in, and the injury looks to match the corner of the fireplace; Cooper’s basically sure that’s what killed her, but he won’t say so till the post-mortem, just in case Peruvian arrow poison or whatever. But she’s also got abrasions and a major haematoma on the left side of her jaw, a couple of cracked teeth – probably a cracked jawbone too, but Cooper won’t swear till he gets her on the table. She didn’t fall on the fireplace from two angles at once.’
    I say, ‘Someone hit her in the face. She went over backwards, smacked her head on the fireplace.’
    ‘You’re the detectives, but that’s what it sounds like to me.’
    The woman’s nails are long and cobalt blue, to match her dress, and perfect: not one broken, not one even chipped. The pretty photography books on the coffee table are still nicely lined up; so are the pretty glass whatsits and the vase of purple flowers on the mantelpiece. There’s been no struggle in here. She never got a chance to fight back.
    ‘Cooper have any clue what he hit her with?’ I ask.
    ‘Going by the bruise pattern,’ Sophie says, ‘his fist. Meaning he’s right-handed.’
    Meaning no weapon, meaning nothing that can be fingerprinted or linked to a suspect. Steve says, ‘A punch hard enough to crack her teeth, it’s got to have banged up his knuckles. He won’t be able to hide that. And if we’re really in luck, he’s split a knuckle, left DNA on her face.’
    ‘That’s if his hands were bare,’ I say. ‘A night like last night, chances are he was wearing gloves.’
    ‘Inside?’
    I nod at the table. ‘She never got as far as pouring the wine. He hadn’t been here long.’
    ‘Hey,’ Steve says, mock-cheery. ‘At least it’s murder. Here you were worried we’d been hauled out for someone’s granny who tripped over the cat.’
    ‘Great,’ I say. ‘I’ll save the happy dance for later. Cooper say anything else?’
    ‘No defensive injuries,’ Sophie says. ‘Her clothing’s all in place, there’s no sign of recent intercourse and no semen showed up on any of her swabs, so you can forget sexual assault.’
    Steve says, ‘Unless our fella tried it on, she said no, and he gave her a punch to subdue her. Then when he realised what was after happening, he got spooked and did a legger.’
    ‘Whatever. You can forget completed sexual assault, anyway; is that better?’ Sophie’s only met Steve the once. She hasn’t decided whether she likes him yet.
    I say, ‘Attempted doesn’t play either. What, he walks in the door and shoves his hand straight up her skirt? Doesn’t even wait till they’ve had a glass of wine and his chances are better?’
    Steve shrugs. ‘Fair enough. Maybe not.’ This isn’t him diving into a sulk, the way a lot of Ds would if their partner contradicted them, specially in front of someone who looks like Sophie; he means it. It’s not that Steve has no ego – all Ds do – just that his isn’t tied to being Mr Big Balls all the time. It’s tied to