Blood Of Angels by Michael Marshall

still pools above which clouds of midges hung. The body had been found half-in and half-out of one of these, a few yards to the side of an odd hump in the ground. A stand of bushes had obscured it from the path down by the stream, and Nina dutifully stood and observed this conjunction for a moment. 'Still — not a major attempt to hide the body.'
    'No. And this is a popular walk.' Reidel pointed up the rise to where the wood thinned. There was a small parking lot at the top. 'They don't actually call it "Lovers' Lane", but that's what it's for.'
    'Though it's actually not as nice as all that.'
    'It's a small town. I guess you work with what you've got.'
    'Still no sign of the guy's clothes? No blood?'
    'Nope.' The detective indicated around. 'It's a tough scene because of the leaves and twigs and general forest crapola, but I'm pretty sure it was undisturbed before our scene-of-crime techs got on it. The couple who found the body kept well clear.'
    'Forensics on the stab wounds in the chest and stomach indicate the victim was dressed at the time of death?'
    'Very likely. Fibre traces in several of them. Though there are two in the groin area which are notably clean. So maybe…'
    '… a sex act was under way when the attack started. Right.'
    Nina reached into the envelope under her arm and pulled out two of the pictures of the victim in situ. The first was a general view, largely replicating, she supposed, the sight the discovering couple had come upon. A body, in a wood at twilight. It was large and pale and just lying there. It was so incongruous that at first you barely registered its sex, though the body was completely naked. It was lying on its back, legs out sturdily straight. There were cut marks over its belly and chest. It was a male chest.
    The second picture was from closer in. It showed that the victim's head was partly under water, only the chin and nose breaking the surface. The eyes were open under the surface, and the mouth too. The photo was sharply focused and you could see how the hairless parts of the body had a clammy-looking texture, like a piece of raw meat which had been lying on the counter too long. The body's left arm was out to the side, as if in sleep. The right was cocked upwards slightly, breaking the water like a fallen branch. There was nothing at the end of it.
    'No sign of the hand yet?'
    Reidel shook his head ponderously. He did not have the air of a man who was going to wander off anytime soon.
    'Clean, too,' Nina said. 'Seventeen stab wounds, plus the amputation. Yet the body is not smeared with blood. And no rain the night before, or during the day until it was found.'
    'Which suggests the victim was murdered elsewhere, stripped and mutilated, and then brought here. Maybe.'
    'Time of death sometime the night before last?'
    'Correct. Body dumped then too, the pathologist thinks, determined by the relative density of bugs and micro-organisms on it. And the amputation was postmortem. Which helps with the lack of blood. Leave it until the guy's dead to cut off his hand, it's a lot less messy.'
    'Though still hard work,' Nina said. She flicked through the notes once more. Hand removed with two or three chops from something heavy and sharp, rather than a sawing action. Still waiting for a full blood workup to come back. 'And the nearest place you can park is that lot up the slope, correct? Long way to carry a two-hundred-pound body. Especially for a woman.'
    'The body has some cuts and general contusions on the back. The theory is it was dragged down.'
    'Still. I wouldn't want to pull it that far, and I work out. Used to, anyhow.'
    'This has sex all over it and the victim wasn't homosexual. He's a forty-six-year-old married man with two kids.'
    'Married men are sometimes homosexual. Or don't you see much of that down south?'
    The man smiled. 'Ma'am, I was born up in DC. You can see pretty much anything you want there, if you know where to look. But the victim is a man to whom local gossip