The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns. Mary-Jane Riley

Чтение книги онлайн.

       7

      Alex pulled the front door closed behind her and hunched down into her coat, trying to avoid the worst of the east wind and the rain lashing at her face. She loved Sole Bay with its jumble of terraces, semis, and mansions, and the B. & B.s, and the chi-chi shops that sold everything from designer clothes to plastic windmills, but, God, how she hated the winter weather. The wind and rain whipped off the grey North Sea, across the sand, around the beach huts, straight at anyone who dared get in the way. In the summer, the streets were clogged with visitors – the little train running up and down the pier doing good business; barrels of beer were transported to the pubs by a dray pulled by shire horses, and holidaymakers whiled away the day on the beach. But at this time of year the few tourists spent their money in the steamy tea shops or art galleries rather than brave the outside.

      The wind pulled at her as she walked along the coast road, out of the main town, passed scrappy grass with its ‘No Ball Playing’ notices and the pub that still sold ‘Austerity Lunches’. She was heading to her favourite part of Sole Bay – the trashy harbour end, with its caravan park, dodgy prefab houses growing shells and beach paraphernalia in the gardens, and the black rickety sheds advertising fresh fish for sale. Today, the boats were tied up in the harbour, the fishermen not foolhardy enough to brave the North Sea conditions. There would be no boxes of slippery silver fish or snapping crabs until the weather had calmed.

      The call from Jonathan Danby had come a few days after she first spoke to him. Days that were spent going to and from Sasha’s, making sure she ate something, even if it was only a bowl of soup. Days of going over and over the whys and the wherefores of Jackie Wood’s release from prison. Alex tried her best to sound soothing and caring, but however much you love someone, however much you care, after a while your patience runs out. She couldn’t risk her sister doing anything else stupid so she just gritted her teeth and carried on caring. Sasha’s house became ever more claustrophobic. The one good thing was that Jez did come up trumps and was spending each evening there, and the occasional night. She managed to avoid him nicely.

      So when Danby called, she was ready to do anything, go anywhere.

      ‘This’ll be a sympathetic look at her life?’

      Not this again. She took a deep breath. ‘As I’ve already told you, it’ll be an honest one. That’s how I’ve got my reputation. Whether it’s sympathetic or not is up to her, in a way. I write as I see it.’ She held her breath.

      ‘Fee?’

      ‘As we agreed.’

      An inhalation and then a sigh. Smoking, Alex reckoned.

      ‘Look, I’d be lying if I said I was happy about this, I’m not. But Miss Wood seems keen, for some reason. Says she likes your work.’ Sure she does. ‘Will only talk to you. Doesn’t want me there.’ Alex closed her eyes. All above board. Now there was no reason for Liz to get the jitters and say no. This interview could be gold dust.

      ‘So the answer is yes, but with certain restrictions.’

      ‘I don’t do restrictions,’ Alex said. Ground rules have to be set from the outset, parameters defined, otherwise you end up dancing to your subject’s tune, and that just doesn’t work. Alex knew she’d done the song and dance thing with Malone, but that was an exception.

      She heard the crackle of cellophane; the flick of a lighter, another inhale. ‘Jackie doesn’t want anyone to know where she is.’

      ‘I understand that.’ The dance continued.

      ‘You know what this country’s like; there’ll be a lynch mob after her before you can say “not guilty”. The Mail will be writing editorials about the death penalty and all the other red tops will be baying for blood.’

      ‘Right.’ She balled her fist. But she is guilty, Alex wanted to shout at him down the phone. She was found guilty. She was only let off on a technicality, some obscure legal thing; the expert witness making a fuck-up, being discredited. Alex had believed him, they all had. And she didn’t see any reason to change her mind now.

      ‘You won’t have to travel far,’ said Danby. ‘She wanted to go somewhere she knew. Figured it would be easier for her.’

      ‘So…?’

      ‘She’s in your neck of the woods, as it happens. Suffolk.’

      Alex closed her eyes. She was so close. ‘Fine,’ was all she said.

      Eventually she and Danby managed to thrash it out. She was to tell no one where she was going, who she was interviewing – apart from her editor, she lied – and for that Jackie Wood was going to grant Alex one or two mornings of her time.

      Deal done.

      It was half-term and Gus was at home. Alex had been trying to get him to do some schoolwork; to help her with shopping; to get him chatting to Malone: anything СКАЧАТЬ