3 1

DC Baker smiled.

“I can see that, Tommy,” said Annie, taking in the ear-to-ear cut, exposed cartilage and spilled blood. “Any sign of a weapon?”

“No, ma’am.”

Annie gestured to the cliff edge. “Anyone checked down there?”

“Got a couple of PCs doing a search right now,” said Naylor.

“They’ll have to hurry up, though. The tide’s coming in fast.”

“Well, in the absence of a weapon, I think we can assume she didn’t top herself,” said Annie. “Think the seagulls did it?”

“Might have done, at that,” said Naylor, glancing up at the noisy f lock. “They’re getting bolder, and they’ve definitely been at the body.”

He pointed. “See those marks in and around the ear? My guess is there’s no blood because she’d already bled out by the time they started pecking at her. Dead bodies don’t bleed.”

The doctor glanced up. “We’ll make an MD out of you yet, Tommy,” he said.

Annie’s stomach gave another unpleasant lurch and again she tasted sick in the back of her throat. No, she wasn’t going to do it. She wasn’t going to be sick in front of Tommy Naylor. But seagulls? She had always hated them, feared them even, ever since she was a kid in St. Ives. It didn’t take The Birds to make Annie aware of the threat inherent in a f lock of gulls. They had once swarmed her when she was in her pram and her father was off about twenty yards away sketching a particularly artistic group of old oaks. It was one of her earliest memories. She shivered and pulled herself together.

“Anything for us yet, Doc?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. She’s been dead for an hour or two, and the cause is most likely exsanguination, as you can see. Whoever did this is a very sick bastard. The woman was seriously disabled, by the looks of it. Probably couldn’t even lift a bloody finger to defend herself.”

“Weapon?”

“Some sort of very thin, very sharp blade, like a straight- blade razor, or even a surgical instrument. The pathologist will no doubt be able to tell you more later. Anyway, it was a clean, smooth cut, no sawing or signs of serrations.”

“Right- or left-handed?”

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R O B I N S O N

“It’s often impossible to say with slash wounds, especially if there are no hesitation cuts, but I’d say probably left to right, from behind.”

“Which makes the killer right-handed?”

“Unless he was faking it. Only probably, mind you. Don’t quote me on it.”

Annie smiled. “As if I would.” She turned to Naylor. “Who found the body?”

Naylor pointed to a bench about two hundred yards away. “Bloke over there. Name’s Gilbert Downie. Walking his dog.”

“Poor sod,” said Annie. “Probably put him right off his roast beef and Yorkshire pud. Anyone know who she is?”

“Not yet, ma’am,” said DC Baker. “No handbag, purse or anything.”

Helen Baker was a broad, barrel-shaped woman, built like a brick shit house, as the saying went, but she was remarkably nimble and spry for someone of her shape and build. And she had flaming-red spiky hair.

Among her friends and colleagues she was known affectionately as “Ginger” Baker. She glanced around. “Not even a wristband, like they sometimes wear. This is a pretty isolated spot, mind you, especially at this time of year. The nearest village is four miles south and half a mile inland.

About the only place in any way close is that residential care home about a mile to the south. Mapston Hall.”

“Residential care home for what?”

“Don’t know.” Ginger glanced at the wheelchair. “For people with problems like hers, I’d hazard a guess.”

“But there’s no way she could have made it all the way here by herself, is there?”

“Doubt it,” Naylor chipped in. “Unless she was doing an Andy.”

Annie couldn’t help but smile. She was a big fan of Little Britain.

Banks, too. They had watched it together a couple of times after a long day at work over an Indian takeaway and a bottle of red. But she didn’t want to let herself think of Banks right now. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the SOCO van turn onto the grass verge. “Good work, Tommy and Ginger,” she said. “We’d better get out of the way and let the SOCOs do their stuff. Let’s sit in the car and get out of this bloody wind.”

F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L

3 3

They walked over to Annie’s Astra, stopping for a brief chat on the way with the crime scene coordinator DS Liam McCullough, and sat in the car with the windows open an inch or two to let in some air, Ginger in the back. Annie’s head throbbed and she had to force herself to pay attention to the matter at hand. “Who’d want to murder some defenseless old woman confined to a wheelchair?” she asked out loud.

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