Read Good Girls Don't Die for Free Online Page A

It had been such fun to gossip all night with Roxanne, but now she was regretting the amount she’d had to drink and her short, fitful sleep. She tried some deep breathing to boost her oxygen level.
    ‘Not seen a corpse before?’ Lance’s quiet enquiry was sympathetic, but Grace, caught off-guard, replied more snappily than she intended.
    ‘Of course I have. I’m fine.’
    Lance stepped back, and Grace saw his face go blank.
    ‘Do we know who she is?’ she asked, trying to retrieve his goodwill.
    ‘Not yet. The super’s talking to Wendy now. The crime scene manager,’ explained Lance, nodding in the direction of the forensic van where Keith Stalgood stood engrossed in serious discussion with a woman about Grace’s age. With her shapely figure and white-blonde hair, Wendy looked like she’d be more at home on a country and western stage than amid the gruesome buzz of a crime scene.
    Distracted by the purr of a powerful engine, Lance turned to watch a gold Porsche Panamera slide in behind the forensic van. He smiled. ‘Good, here’s Samit. Now we can get started.’
    ‘Samit?’
    ‘The pathologist, Dr Tripathi.’
    The driver’s door opened and a middle-aged man got out. He wore chinos and a check shirt, and had a pleasant, unassuming face with watchful eyes behind rimless glasses. Seeing them stare in his direction, he nodded politely, then went over to greet Keith.
    ‘Nice car,’ Grace observed.
    ‘Last case we were on, he had an E-type Jag.’
    Grace was relieved to see the friendliness had returned to Lance’s eyes. The CSIs finished laying the walkway and,after instruction from Wendy, disappeared into the van. They soon returned with the kit for a portable tent, which they expertly slotted together to hide the body from prying eyes and protect it from contamination.
    ‘Don’t know if we’ll get to suit up nor not,’ said Lance glumly. ‘Keith won’t want any more of this rubble dislodged than necessary.’
    ‘Sure. Do you reckon this is linked to –?’
    ‘Don’t say it!’ Lance cut her off. ‘Because if our guy has gone and left us a second victim, then this is one serious “oh shit” moment.’
    She nodded, understanding perfectly what he meant: they hadn’t a single lead on Polly’s disappearance, and here another woman was dead.
    Looking around, Grace realised that the street on which Samit’s Porsche and the forensic van were parked led up towards the Blue Bar. Over the past couple of days every nearby alleyway, garden, yard and unoccupied or neglected building had been searched for any clue to Polly’s fate, but nothing had been found. Now this.
    Keith beckoned them over, and they went eagerly. Wendy and Samit had already ducked under the inner cordon of tape and were pulling pristine forensic suits up over their clothes.
    ‘I want you as exhibits officers,’ Keith informed them brusquely.
    Grace and Lance grinned at each other and dived for the forensic van. Moments later they joined the others inside the tent. In the filtered light, with only their eyes visible,their white-suited figures seemed unearthly. Samit concluded his initial description of the young woman; while he concentrated on posture, body weight and identifying marks, Grace saw a slim young woman with expensively cut short dark hair and good-quality clothes. Last night’s eye make-up now appeared clown-like against the dead pallor of her face.
    Squatting down, Dr Tripathi began the process of taking surface swabs and tapings, each of which he handed to them to be bagged and marked. ‘I’m now going to lift the skirt,’ he informed Keith, who gave a nod of agreement. Delicately, he folded the patterned skirt back up to the dead woman’s waist. ‘Well,’ he exclaimed softly. ‘That’s a new one even on me.’
    Grace looked over his shoulder: the victim had no underwear, and a clear glass bottle glistened between her pale thighs. Grace instinctively turned away, but then made herself drag her eyes back,