Free Sins of the Fathers by Sally Spencer Page A

it,’ the priest replied. ‘But I don’t. Bradley didn’t tell me where he was going.’
    A lorry had arrived to transport the battered and violated Ford Cortina to the police garage, where it would be given a detailed forensic examination, but Dr Shastri – who arrived just before the car was about to be loaded – had insisted that nothing should be moved until she had made a thorough search of the area.
    â€˜If it were women in charge of removing the car, I would have no qualms about letting them go ahead,’ she told Bob Rutter, ‘but men are, by their very nature, such clumsy creatures, don’t you find?’
    â€˜Yes, I do,’ Rutter agreed.
    They
were
clumsy, he thought to himself – in oh-so-many ways.
    Dr Shastri gave the area around the battered car a brief inspection.
    â€˜Well, on with the show,’ she said, in a tone not unlike that of a music hall compère.
    It would have been generous to describe the floor of the alley as merely unsavoury – the council felt no strong urge to do anything about improving the environment of tenants who rarely paid either their rent or their rates – but the filth and squalor did not seem to deter Dr Shastri in the slightest. She produced a rubber mat from the back of her Land Rover, and was soon kneeling down on it and examining the grimy cobblestones.
    A few minutes had ticked by – and she had shifted the mat around several times – before she looked and said, ‘The murderous attack did not take place here, my dear Inspector.’
    â€˜You’re sure of that?’ Rutter asked.
    â€˜Absolutely positive. It is true that if Mr Pine had been killed on this spot, the local rats would have removed much of the evidence – a piece of the human brain is to them what a fine pork roast would be to you or I – but there would still have been bloodstains left behind.’
    â€˜There would have been a lot of blood, wouldn’t there?’
    â€˜A veritable fountain of it. And however diligently the killer had tried to clean it up, he would inevitably have left some traces.’
    â€˜Would you mind taking a look inside the car?’ Rutter asked.
    Dr Shastri smiled. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I am willing to do anything at all which will contribute – even in a small way – to making my second-favourite police officer happy.’
    She opened the car door, and examined the stain Rutter had spotted on the back seat.
    â€˜Now that
is
blood,’ she said. ‘And if it is not our little friend’s blood, I would be most surprised.’
    â€˜Shouldn’t there be more of it?’ Rutter asked.
    â€˜Not once the heart had ceased to pump. What we have here is mere seepage.’
    â€˜And you’re as sure that he
was
mutilated in the lay-by as you are that he
wasn’t
killed here?’
    â€˜Indeed.’
    â€˜I wonder why the murderer waited until he reached the lay-by before he finished off the job,’ Rutter mused. ‘Do you think it was because it would have been too messy to have done it earlier?’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ Dr Shastri said, cautiously.
    â€˜You’re not convinced that’s the case at all, are you?’ Rutter asked. ‘You’ve got a theory of your own.’
    â€˜I have,’ Dr Shastri admitted. ‘But as I have already pointed out to your superior, the admirable Chief Inspector Woodend, I am more of a plumber than a brain doctor, and my theory may well not be worth a bag of acorns.’
    â€˜I’d like to hear it, anyway.’
    â€˜Even though you run the risk – if you take it seriously – of being sent off on a wild goose hunt?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Very well, on your own head be it. I believe that, initially, the murderer thought that whatever torment was driving him to distraction would be assuaged by simply
killing
his victim. But by the time he had reached the