Skin Read Online Free Page A

measuring tape. Women’s clothing. A dress. A pair of high-heeled sandals. A purple velvet coat. A silver mobile. ‘Misty Kitson?’
    ‘Of course. These are reproductions of what she was wearing. We’ve circulated them force-wide. Every person in every office across the force is going to have a copy of these pinned above their workstation by this evening, so even if they don’t read the papers or watch the telly they’ll’ve heard of her.’ Powers went to the map on the wall, put his hands in his pockets and studied it. ‘I can’t fathom it. I really can’t. A two-mile radius, the biggest search I’ve ever seen in the force, every inch gone over and we haven’t turned up a thing . Not a sausage and—Christ, you’re not listening to a word I’m saying. Are you?’
    Caffery was sitting forward, staring at the post-mortem photograph of Dundas pinned up on the wall, at the way his hair had been clipped.
    Powers picked up a photograph of Misty’s clothes and stuck it, pointedly, over the one of Dundas. ‘Jack, you’ve got three DSs and four DCs out there waiting to hear what you want them to do. They all want to find her.’
    Caffery opened his drawer and pulled out the photographs of another post-mortem that had taken place two nights ago. It had come to him yesterday on the Centrex Guardian database and had everything he needed. He got up and pinned it over the photo of Misty Kitson’s clothing.
    ‘Ben Jakes. Twenty years old. Student at Bristol University. Can’t face his exams, girlfriend leaves him, ends up with a penknife and a case of wkd reds . Down in the Elf’s Grotto area. It’s pretty there. You can see the lights of Bristol. Very popular suicide spot.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
    ‘His phone was missing – still hasn’t been found. He’d been robbed. Roommate said he had money, a twenty at least, plus cards, never been used. Even sandwiches in his rucksack. They were gone. Oh, and he was naked.’
    ‘Stripped off to kill himself? What was it? A full moon?’
    ‘No. The thief took the clothes too. At first the officer in charge had it down as a murder. It was in the “too hard for district” file for a while, even flagged up on a watchlist for us, until the PM came back as suicide. The clothes came off him more than twenty-four hours after he died, says the coroner. Plus the other evidence – depression. No one’s got any doubt it was a suicide; even his parents said they’d half expected it. But this is what I want you to look at.’
    Powers took off his glasses and peered at the photograph.
    ‘See it? His hair?’
    ‘It’s been cut.’
    ‘Shaved. Remind you of anything?’
    Powers frowned again. He took the photograph off the wall and turned it over. It was stamped by the Audio-Visual unit at Portishead. ‘Where did you say it happened?’
    ‘Quarry number eight. Down near Elf’s Grotto.’
    ‘And it’s the hair that’s the important factor? Because it’s the same as what happened to Dundas?’
    ‘The same person did it. The marks are almost identical.’
    ‘So?’
    Caffery gave him a grim smile. ‘The pathologist, being a pathologist, is typically vague about when Jakes died. But he’s admitted that whoever rolled up and stole his clothes did it a minimum of six hours after death – there’s livor mortis to prove that. The roommate says it’s six a.m. when Jakes leaves his room. We don’t know how he gets to the quarry but it’s got to take at least an hour, probably more, assuming he doesn’t stop on the way, which gives us seven a.m., so our thief has to come along at one p.m. at the absolute earliest. Meanwhile Brown was in that place,’ he jabbed a finger at the screen, ‘at two that afternoon. I saw the bastard with my own eyes. Can you really see him cruising out to the quarry, shaving Jakes’s head and winging it back to the other side of Bristol within an hour?’
    ‘I take it these are on the quiet, these timings the