The Trespasser Read Online Free Page B

getting stuff done, which is good, and to people liking him, which comes in useful and which I watch like hell.
    ‘Her phone show up?’ I ask.
    ‘Yeah. Over on that side table.’ Sophie points with her pen. ‘It’s been fingerprinted. If you want to play with it, go ahead.’
    Before we check out the rest of the cottage, I squat down by the body and carefully, one-fingered, hook her hair back from her face. Steve moves in beside me.
    Every Murder D I’ve ever known does it: takes one long look at the victim’s face. It doesn’t make sense, not to civilians. If we just wanted a mental image of the vic, to keep us reminded who we’re working for, any phone selfie would do a better job. If we needed a shot of outrage to get our hearts pumping, the wounds do that better than the face. But we do it, even with the bad ones who barely have a face left to see; a week outdoors in summer, a drowning, we go face-to-face with them just the same. The biggest douchebags on the squad, the guys who would rate this woman’s tits out of ten while she lay there getting colder, they would still give her that respect.
    She’s somewhere under thirty. She was pretty, before someone decided to turn the left side of her jaw into a bloody purple lump; no stunner, but pretty enough, and she worked hard at it. She has on a truckload of makeup, the full works and done right; her nose and her chin would be little-girl cute, only they have that jutting look that comes with long-term low-level starvation. Her mouth – hanging open, showing small bleached teeth and clotted blood – is good: soft and full, with a droop to the bottom lip that looks witless now but was probably appealing yesterday. Under the three blended shades of eyeshadow her eyes are a slit open, staring up into a corner of the ceiling.
    I say, ‘I’ve seen her before.’
    Steve’s head comes up fast. ‘Yeah? Where?’
    ‘Not sure.’ I’ve got a good memory. Steve calls it photographic; I don’t, because I’d sound like a tosser, but I know when I’ve seen someone before, and I’ve seen this woman.
    She looked different then. Younger, but that could have been because she had more weight on her – not fat, exactly, but soft – and a lot less makeup: careful foundation a shade darker than her skin, thin mascara, the end. Her hair was brown and wavy, done up in a clumsy twist. Navy skirt-suit, a touch too tight, high heels that made her ankles wobble: grown-up clothes, for some big occasion. But the face, the gentle snub nose and the soft droop of the bottom lip, those were the same.
    She was standing in sunlight, swaying forward towards me, palms coming up. High voice with a tremble in it, But but please I really need— Me blank-faced, leg twitching with impatience, thinking Pathetic.
    She wanted something from me. Help, money, a lift, advice? I wanted her gone.
    Steve says, ‘Work?’
    ‘Could’ve been.’ The blank face took willpower; on my own time, I would’ve just told her to get lost.
    ‘We’ll run her through the system, soon as we get back to HQ. If she came in with a domestic violence complaint . . .’
    ‘I never worked DV. Would’ve had to be back when I was in uniform. And I don’t . . .’ I shake my head. The searchlight sweeps of the techs’ headlamps turn the room sizeless and menacing, make us into crouching targets. ‘I don’t remember anything like that.’
    I wouldn’t have been itching to get rid of her, not if she’d been getting the slaps. The slit-open eyes give her face a sly look, like a kid cheating at hide-and-seek.
    Steve straightens up, leaving me to take whatever time I need. He raises his eyebrows at Sophie and points to the rectangle of light coming through the kitchen door. ‘Can I . . . ?’
    ‘Knock yourself out. We’ve videoed in there, but we haven’t fingerprinted yet, so don’t go polishing anything.’
    Steve picks his way past the techs, into the kitchen. The ceilings are low enough that he