The Blooding Read Online Free Page B

was stopped by one of the policemen.
    "That's my daughter!" he told them. "I think that's my daughter, Lynda!"
    The policeman began talking to him and making notes while Eddie Eastwood had the thought all frightened survivors have at such a moment: Well, of course! It's all a mistake!
    He later remembered the policeman saying, "Go home. We'll call on you."
    The rank of inspector in the British police service is the equivalent of lieutenant in most American police forces. One of the CID inspectors, Derek Pearce, had just come off the aborted Caroline Hogg inquiry. And Pearce absolutely hated leaving an inquiry "undetected."
    Derek Pearce was the kind of whom they say, "You either like him or you don't." They also say that Pearce had the ability to rise to the top of the police totem if only he weren't constantly being dragged back down by Derek Pearce.
    Members of the Lynda Mann murder squad asked to name the brightest detective among them responded:
    "Derek Pearce."
    "Oh, Derek Pearce, of course."
    "Pearce, no doubt."
    "Derek Pearce, but . . .
    There would always be a "but" with a man like Derek Pearce. Some of the adjectives preceding his name were: immature, talented, abrasive, ruthless, charming, insensitive, generous. But everyone called him complex. A driven perfectionist, he expected everyone to do the job as well as he would.
    To get an idea of his energy you'd only have to watch him for an hour. If he was on his feet talking to someone he'd rise on his toes, or rock back on his heels, or slide, or bounce, or sway. If he pursued his listener through a doorway he'd stop, grab each side of the jamb, and do what looked like calisthenics or yoga: pushing, pulling, rising, settling. They said if you could harness that energy you could power British Rail.
    He did everything at his own pace, from driving a car (daringly) to mixing beer, Scotch and vodka (daringly). And Derek Pearce fed on stress. If the job didn't supply enough anxiety, he'd find some. John McEnroe would understand.
    Pearce was thirty-three years old, just under six feet tall, and slim. But he seemed very slender. Anyone who survives such an energy overload seems very slender. In a pin-striped suit he could've been a young barrister at Crown Court. His thatch of darkest-brown hair and Royal Shakespeare Company beard were closely cropped. He could've played Petruchio in Kiss Me Kate.
    Pearce's glasses made his brown eyes dilate when he was flying into someone's face. Occasionally he was imprudent enough to take intensity-fueled flights at superior officers.
    His four-year, childless marriage to a policewoman had just ended, and Pearce lived alone with a very large English sheepdog named 011ie. Police work was his life.
    Pearce had been off the Hogg inquiry only one day when he received the word from a fellow detective inspector: "We've got another murder. This one's in Narborough."
    "You're winding me up!" he said. "Tell me it's a joke!"
    "It was a quirk of fate that I got on the case at all," he later recalled. "The other DI had to go to the Crown Court, and it isn't easy to get out of it when you're summoned to the Crown Court."
    "It's all yours," he was told by the court-bound DI. "Cheers, mate." Pearce immediately organized the call-out of a squad that would grow to 150 men and women.
    When Derek Pearce got to the crime scene that day, he was told by Chief Supt. Baker to drive to the home of Edward Eastwood and bring him to identify the body which they were reasonably certain was that of his stepdaughter, reported missing the night before.
    At 11:15 A . M . Eddie Eastwood was back at The Black Pad where he met Baker and a scene-of-crime officer who was trying to gather exhibits.
    When a detective lifted the shiny black sheet, Eddie Eastwood looked and said, "That's Lynda."
    "Are you sure?" the detective asked.
    "Put it down!" Eddie said. "That's her."
    Death had sculpted and painted and done its masquerade. But Eddie knew that the pale contorted face with