The Blooding Read Online Free

jokes about getting back some of the taxpayers' money from the coppers.
    The Eastwoods arrived home about 1:30 A . M . and found Susan waiting up.
    "Lynda's not home!" Susan said.
    Eddie Eastwood drove around village streets and checked teenage gathering spots. One of the places Eddie searched on foot was The Black Pad, near the Eastwood home. They were building a new housing estate of upmarket homes on one side of the footpath, opposite the psychiatric hospital's pasture. The workers already had the foundation poured and lumber stacked, but hadn't done much framing.
    Eddie walked the length of the unlit Black Pad, alongside the housing development. It was then that he noticed how really bright and clear it was. Walking The Black Pad at night was usually a bit unnerving, and the moonlight helped.
    Eddie called the Braunstone Police Station at 1:30 A . M . to report Lynda missing. A policeman took down the information, but policeme n t he world over don't get very worked up about fifteen-year-olds a few hours late.
    "But she's always home by ha' past nine," Eddie told the officer. "Unless we know, she's always here!"
    When Eddie had searched The Black Pad, it seemed logical to him to look toward the side where the new construction was under way. If there were any teenagers up to mischief, or, God forbid, if anything bad had happened in that dark lane, he'd find evidence there by some lumber pile, he thought. The other side of the footpath was protected by a wrought-iron fence more than five feet tall, a permanent barrier separating The Black Pad from the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. Near the top of the stanchions the black iron bars curved toward the footpath like a row of iron claws, menacing those who walked The Black Pad.
    He had seen nothing move, and heard nothing except the tree limbs, bare of foliage. They groaned in the wind under a blue-black sky, a glittering moon, a few shredded clouds. Edward Eastwood had never thought to look toward the hospital side as he picked his way through the darkness down the black tarmac footpath. He had passed within a few yards of his stepdaughter, Lynda Mann.

    Chapter 4.
    Mannequi n h ospital porter who often used The Black Pad as a shortcut between Narborough church and Carlton Hayes Hospital was on his way to work at 7:20 on Tuesday morning, November 22nd, when he glanced through the wrought-iron fence, toward the wooded copse and grassy fields of the hospital grounds, white with frost on that cold morning. He saw what looked like a partly clothed mannequin lying in the grass by a clump of trees. He stopped and gaped. She was naked from the waist down. There was a smear of red about her nose. He was not sure if she was real.
    The porter ran out of The Black Pad onto the road and flagged down a car driven by a colleague, an ambulance driver from the hospital. The ambulance driver and the porter jogged back to The Black Pad and looked through the fence.
    "Is it a dummy?" the porter asked.
    The ambulance driver ran to the head of the path and found the iron gate wide open. He entered the grassy field and approached. Lynda Mann's jeans, tights, underpants and shoes were in a rolled-up heap about ten or fifteen feet away. Her legs were extended straight out, her head turned to the right. She was supine with the upper part of the donkey jacket hiked under her head, the sleeves partly pulled up her arms. Her chin was bruised and there was bright coagulated blood from her nose.
    Her scarf was wrapped around her neck and crossed at the back, and a piece of wood about three feet long lay under her fight leg.
    Perhaps the ambulance driver was familiar only with victims very much alive and breathing, including those who screamed and thrashed inside straitjackets. Maybe he felt the need to display medical training in the presence of the porter. For whatever reason, he reached down and felt the throat for a pulse, even though rigor was present throughout.
    Lynda Mann was white as china. As