Chapters (156)
- A DATE WITH DEATH
- Also by Mark Roberts
- A Date With Death
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- The Past
- 1977
- Day OneWednesday, 1st December 2021CatoptrophobiaFear of mirrors
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- The Past
- 1979
- Day TwoThursday, 2nd December 2021OneirophobiaFear of dreams
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- The Past
- 1980
- Day ThreeFriday, 3rd December 2021MonophobiaFear of being alone
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- The Past
- 1982
- Day FourSaturday, 4th December 2021ThanatophobiaFear of Death
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- 116
- 117
- 118
- 119
- 120
- 121
- 122
- 123
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- 125
- 126
- 127
- 128
- 129
- 130
- 131
- 132
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- 134
- 135
- 136
- 137
- About the Author
- An Invitation from the Publisher
‘Same pattern as Warrington. The two marks that you can see at the centre of her throat are the bruises from his thumbprints. The four marks I’ll show you either side of the centre back of her neck just below the place where her hairline was, they’re the perpetrator’s finger marks. The scalping was performed post-mortem.’
The news came as a crumb of comfort to Clay but she was compelled to ask, ‘Are you one hundred per cent sure of that, Doctor Lamb?’
‘If she was alive when this was done, the person who did it would have to have had access to extremely powerful anaesthetics, which places the hunt for the killer directly in the NHS or in a pharmaceutical company. I’ll be able to tell if she’s been given an anaesthetic. In the Warrington case, Sandra O’Day wasn’t.’
Harper lifted the woman’s head from the table and Clay saw the fingerprints either side of her neck, the bluntness of the dark marks and the comparatively large thumbprints at her throat. In her mind, she made a pair of hands strangling thin air and worked out the position of the killer to his victim.
‘Base of her neck,’ said Clay, ‘is his baby finger. Rising up, next finger’s his ring, middle finger next sticking well out of the group and at the top of the line it’s his index finger. My hunch is he’d turned her into mental rubble in the days he held her captive and strangled her face to face. Up close and personal and looking right into her eyes as he squeezed the life from her.’
She looked at the network of interconnected muscles where the woman’s face should have been and focused on her eyes bulging from their sockets, shocked in death and without the tender mercy of her eyelids to block out the gaze of strangers.
Clay turned back to see Doctor Lamb looking at a colour photograph of Sandra O’Day on the board in another autopsy suite and then at Annie Boyd’s body on the board in front of her.
Doctor Lamb looked at Clay and, through over a hundred encounters in the autopsy suite with her, she was pretty certain what was running through the pathologist’s mind.
‘I know,’ said Clay. ‘I know. He needs to be caught before he does this again. I’ll do everything in my power to do just that, Doctor Lamb.’
Harper combed Annie’s torso with torchlight, starting at the top and working his way down. He hummed a tuneless song through clenched lips, his eyes riveted to the illumination on her skin.
‘The past. Straight off, can you see any differences this time to the Warrington victim, Doctor Lamb?’
‘No.’