Free The Murder Code by Steve Mosby Page A

tell they were fully clothed, but above the neck there would be nothing but red smudges staining the dirt. You would be able to tell that something awful had happened to them, but it wouldn’t prepare you for what you’d see where Laura and I were, standing on the path itself and staring down at what was left of their faces and heads.
    Beyond the bushes, residents of the estate would be lined up against the cordon, craning their necks, trying to see. They’d been there when we arrived; they’d still be there now. They weren’t the types to be dissuaded by the police. Clusters of kids in too-small tracksuits stretched over thin shoulders, smoking roll-ups, strolling here and there. Older people remonstrating, wanting to know who we’d found—whether any of the bodies belonged to one of theirs. Getting the same answer each time: we can’t say right now.
    Not least because we couldn’t tell.
    Laura said, ‘Trying to show us how powerful he is?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Come back to earth, Hicks. The way’s he’s left them.’
    ‘Yeah, maybe.’ I looked at the three bodies, lying side by side, as though they’d all lain down there and gone to sleep, and he’d killed each in turn without waking the others. As though it had been easy for him. ‘He’s made it look like he could kill three people without any resistance at all. Without them managing to fight back.’
    I shook my head.
    ‘But?’ Laura said.
    ‘But they couldn’t have died like that. And he couldn’t have killed them all at once.’
    ‘Unless it’s more than one killer.’
    ‘It’s not.’
    ‘We can’t say that for sure.’
    I didn’t reply. It was possible, but it didn’t make sense. It was rare—practically unheard of, in fact—for two people capable of this kind of horrific violence to find each other and work together. Not impossible, but … no. It was one person and we were missing something.
    Come back to earth, Hicks.
    It was difficult, though; my head was all over the place. Under normal circumstances—or as normal as it ever gets—I’d have been on top of things, but this was quickly moving far out the other side of normal, and it was unnerving me. The cold and the quiet were getting to me, when I wouldn’t normally have paid any attention to them, and certainly wouldn’t have put any stock by them even if I’d noticed. I wasn’t superstitious. Things didn’t get weird for me.
    And yet … this whole case felt different.
    ‘Hicks?’
    ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Possibly more than one killer. But that would be unlikely, wouldn’t it? The probability is that it’s one guy, working alone.’
    ‘Go on then, Sherlock.’
    I glanced to either side, up and down the path, still feeling the atmosphere of the place. The waste ground had already been dead and barren, and somehow he’d left it feeling even more so …
    Already dead and barren.
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘So this could be the same as the Gibson scene—what we were saying about it yesterday. It’s not the victims themselves, it’s the place. He picked an isolated place and waited.’
    ‘Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Somewhere he’d be disturbed just often enough.’
    Laura was silent. It was a horrible idea, of course, but it felt right. I looked up and down the path again. Yes. I was sure of it. Our guy had waited here during the early hours of the morning and killed people as they came along. Ambushed them—struck out at random. Just allowed … what, fate? Fate to choose his victims for him.
    I remembered what Laura had said yesterday.
    ‘It could have been anyone,’ I said.
    Laura glanced overhead.
    ‘No helicopters,’ she said. ‘Won’t be long, though. We need to get the tents up.’
    I nodded absently. Still thinking.
    ‘That’s why they’re arranged the way they are,’ I said. ‘He’s not showing off to us, or at least that’s not all he’s doing. He just put the bodies in there to keep them off the path. And he