Perfect Prey: The twisty new crime thriller that will keep you up all night. Helen Fields

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       Chapter Two

      ‘The cut came from a single weapon, but the implement would have been customised by skilled hands,’ Ailsa Lambert said. ‘Two perfectly paired scalpel blades must have been bound together with a spacer between them creating a gap of four millimetres. The combination would have rendered the wound impossible to close or suture, even had he been in hospital when he’d been attacked. The twin incisions are …’ she paused as she picked up a flexible measure, ‘twenty-eight centimetres in length. They have pulled apart substantially, causing a gaping wound resulting in massive trauma. His organs then moved, sliding down and forward, so that much of what should have been in his abdominal cavity exited his body as he fell and rolled. Some of it even has identifiable shoe marks from those around him. Blood loss caused his heart to stop.’

      ‘I get it,’ Callanach said wearily. ‘Not much doubt over cause of death. Anything else I need to know?’

      ‘Tox screen will be a while. He has no other visible injuries, seems superficially healthy, his lungs tell me he wasn’t a smoker, good boy,’ she patted the corpse’s hand with her gloved one and smiled grimly. ‘But this weapon, Luc, this weapon wasn’t designed for self-defence. And you can’t pick it up at the hardware store either. Someone crafted it, adored it. The cut was deep, even, and yet very little force seems to have been required to puncture far into the abdominal cavity. Whoever did this took pride in it, thought about efficiency, understood the mechanics of it. This was no impromptu stabbing or weapon grabbed in the heat of an argument.’

      ‘An assassination then?’ Callanach asked, bending over the body and taking stock.

      ‘More like a ritual, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘This was dreamed up, practised and perfected.’

      ‘How old is he?’

      ‘Between eighteen and twenty-two, I think. Five feet, eleven inches. Active, no spare fat, good muscle mass but not one of those types who live at the gym. Size ten shoe. Brown hair, hazel eyes. No defence wounds. Never saw it coming.’

      ‘So he didn’t recognise his attacker as a threat when they came for him?’

      ‘Most unlikely. You don’t look well yourself, Luc. Are you sleeping?’ Ailsa asked as she peeled off her gloves and made notes.

      ‘I’m sleeping just fine,’ he lied.

      ‘Eating properly? You’re pale and you have broken blood vessels in your eyes.’

      ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow for the tox results,’ he evaded. ‘Anything before that and you have my mobile number.’

      ‘Give my regards to DI Turner, would you? I haven’t seen her for an age. I used to catch up with her mother regularly at an opera appreciation group but I haven’t bumped into her recently either,’ Ailsa said, stretching her back. In her mid-sixties, tiny and birdlike, she was a force to be reckoned with.

      ‘I’ll pass that on,’ he said, stripping off his own gown and dropping it into the bin outside the door.

      On his return to the station, a grim welcome party sat around in the incident room. Callanach looked directly to Detective Constable Tripp.

      ‘Just following up a lead from a phone call, sir,’ Tripp said. ‘Young woman called in to say she and her boyfriend got separated at the festival. He hasn’t turned up yet. I’ve sent a car to pick her up.’

      ‘Did she give his name?’ Callanach asked, grabbing coffee as he sat at a computer.

      ‘Sim Thorburn,’ Tripp replied, pressing a couple of keys and waiting for a photo to load, one СКАЧАТЬ