Free Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) by Vic Marelle Page A

across to Davies. Friends
and colleagues for many a year, the two detective inspectors shared an office
that was often just referred to within the police station as ‘the Inspectors
room.’ Their desks at right angles, little was private between them and ideas
or opinions were often shared.
    ‘Problem Frank?’
    ‘Looks like it’ said Davies. ‘According to the
Doc, they’re saying that the stiff I was dragged out to see at the old ruin
didn’t have a heart attack because it was Auto Erotic Asphyxiation so he got
himself topped.’
    ‘How old was he? I thought that you said he was
an older bloke. It’s usually the younger ones who go in for kinky sex.’
      ‘The pathologist says it’s not a sex
thing. This scientific stuff is way over my head but he says the guy definitely
didn’t die from a heart attack - something about being crushed but that that’s
not the reason for his death. He didn’t look as though he had been crushed to
me. He was just slumped in the fireplace. It was as though he’d had a skinfull and then sat down to sleep it off. Or fallen down
– there was a bump on his noddle to back that theory up - but apart from
that there wasn’t a mark on him.’ Davies took a sip from his coffee mug,
grimaced and continued ‘This coffee is shit. Goes with how things are going at
the moment I suppose. First I got in the Chief’s bad books for turning up late
for dinner, now I’ll have to see if anything remains of the crime scene or if
it’s been destroyed by the sex mad thrashing about of the area’s idle young. If
it’s all gone to pot then that’ll be another dressing down from on-high and if
that means I get home late there will be a long face and an icy mood from the
wife. Shit all round I suppose.’ Looking across at his colleague he added,
‘I’ll swap you for your randy artist.’
    Giving a chuckle, Radcliffe tipped his chair
back again onto all its legs, dropped his hands and started twirling a pencil.
An offer to exchange cases was nothing more than continual banter between them
and in reality, no matter how difficult, how perverse, neither would ever
relinquish a case until it had been solved or removed from above. ‘Didn’t you
secure it?’ he asked.
    ‘Secure what?’
    ‘The crime scene of course’ said Radcliffe.
‘Didn’t you secure the immediate surroundings and have CSI give it the once
over.’
    ‘Didn’t see the point. The doc said it was a
heart attack so that was me out. Bugger. I guess I need to get back out there
pronto.’

 
    ……….

 
    Only a small board at the roadside gave any
indication that the track led to anything more than a field. A coppice could be
seen no more than 200 mtrs from the road, but not the
ruined mansion it hid or the collection of buildings around the farmyard.
Parking next to a stone building at the end of the track, Davies felt that he
had stepped back at least a century into rural England or onto the set of some
period country TV programme. Pop Larkin came to mind. Ducks were swimming on a
pond to his right and peacocks were roaming free. Behind the pond, two stone
buildings had been converted into a photo studio and a café signed up as The
Hay Loft Tea Shop, while on the far side of the yard opposite him was an open
barn. To his left, housed in another stone building, was a farm produce shop,
beyond which he could see the copse, though even at such close range the ruined
building was still completely hidden, a gravel path disappearing into the copse
being the only indication that something might lie beyond.
    A uniformed constable stood guarding the
entrance to the path, which had been closed off with police tape. Showing his
warrant card, Davies ducked under the tape and made his way towards the ruined
mansion, where Sergeant Debbie Lescott was already
talking to a man in a white overall, previously known as Scenes of Crime
Officers, or SOCOs, but more recently Crime Scene Investigators in line with
the advent of popular