Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best romantic books to read .TXT) 📕

bleary eyes tried to move about in his seat to allow his cramped muscles to loosen. He peered down at his watch to see that it was almost seven thirty in the morning; already the rush hour traffic was building on the road ahead, and he could see that the gates to Brompton Cemetery were now open.

Reaching into the back of the car, Declan pulled forward the urban backpack, opening it up and bringing out some items he’d brought with him. He needed a change of shirt, a wipe down with wet wipes and a quick spray of antiperspirant. He took a small swig of mouthwash, swilled and spat out into the gutter beside the car. Then, as freshened up as he could be, he took a mouthful of water from his bottle, grabbed out a lock pick case that he’d barely ever used, zipped the bag back up and left the car, head down, entering the cemetery.

A man in a green jacket, obviously some kind of custodian, looked at him as he entered, so he quickly showed the Frost ID.

‘Crime scene follow up,’ he explained. The man nodded, waving him past, and Declan carried on down The Avenue, towards where Kendis had been found.

But he didn’t go there.

Instead, he made his way down a side road, over to a set of gravestones where, two days earlier, he’d stood with Kendis as she waved her hand around the Cemetery.

‘That’s the one for the Gladwells. Over there is the Harrison family.’

Declan remembered where she had pointed, but needed a reference for it. Here, where he had last seen the longest love of his life alive, he noted the two mausoleums that she had pointed at before his vision blurred as tears filled his eyes.

No. He couldn’t break down now. He had to carry on. He had to find her killer.

Walking further down the path, he now picked his way through the gravestones to where her body had been found the following day. It was about a hundred yards from Will Harrison’s family plot, while only about thirty from Malcolm Gladwell’s.

Why had she been here?

There was still incident tape, slivers of blue and white plastic fluttering around in the morning breeze as Declan looked down to the small area of ground where, less than twenty-four hours earlier, he’d found her, placed onto her back and with her arms crossed, as in repose.

‘Defensive wounds on her hands and arms, bruising around her neck, as if she was throttled.’

‘She was arm-barred during the struggle, I think. Forearm pressed against the throat. There are taser marks on her upper chest, so I think she tried to fight whatever was happening, and then was zapped. There’s a cut to her head where she fell, struck it on something.’

‘They stabbed her in the chest. Small, thin blade into the lung. It would have caused an injury-related pneumothorax, a collapse of the lung itself. She would have passed out most likely, suffocated eventually.’

Declan’s hands were clenching as he recalled Doctor Marcos’ post mortem report. There had been a cut on her head where she’d struck it. In addition, there was no blood.

Somewhere in this cemetery, there was a place with blood.

Declan looked to the Gladwell Mausoleum, purely because it was the closest. He once more walked his way carefully through the graves as he made his way to the eastern wall and the stone building that stood silently under a large and probably old tree. It was square, with a metal door; surrounded by railings, it looked like a tiny house.

And then he stopped.

There was a wire, running along the side of the mausoleum, about an inch from the lip of the roof. Slowing, Declan carefully walked around the perimeter, checking to see what this could be. As he reached the front though, he realised that something connected the wire to what looked like some kind of motion detector, maybe even a camera, like the doorbells that recorded you when you walked up to the doorstep. There was an antenna at the back, some kind of Wi-Fi extender, perhaps? Billy would know. Declan took a couple of photos of the serial number on the antenna, intending to send them across later. Either way, this looked very much like serious levels of security on a simple mausoleum.

But why? Resurrectionists were long gone.

Declan considered leaving the mausoleum, not alerting anyone, but he couldn’t walk away. Every nerve in his body cried out that there was something wrong here. He needed to go inside.

Is this how Kendis had died? Had she gone inside and been seen doing so?

Declan needed to keep his identity out of any cameras, so hunted around the base of the tree, finding a broken off branch, most likely fallen because of a storm a few days ago. Walking to the side of the mausoleum, he used the branch as a hook, yanking the wires out of the extender and then hanging the branch in them, making the act of vandalism look as if the falling branch had simply caught the wire. Then, not knowing how long he had before someone came to look, Declan jumped the railings and, with his lock pick case, started working on the door. An experienced lock picker could get through such an old lock in seconds, but Declan wasn’t that adept, and it took a good few minutes, long, worrying ones where at any point anyone could find him before he unlocked the door to the mausoleum, opening it up and with his phone’s torch as his light source, entering the dark room within.

The mausoleum was square, a corridor on the left and two full length shelves on the right giving eight square tombstones, four on each shelf where coffins would have been placed in, headfirst. These were covered with small memorial stones, each one explaining which member of the Gladwell family lay in rest there. There were a couple of blank ones; Declan assumed these were empty, held for the next