Nine Lives by Anita Waller (best english books to read .txt) 📗

Nine Lives

Anita Waller

Copyright © 2021 Anita Waller

The right of Anita Waller to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

www.bloodhoundbooks.com

Print ISBN 978-1-913942-40-3

Contents

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Also by Anita Waller

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

A note from the publisher

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Also by Anita Waller

Psychological thrillers

Beautiful

Angel

34 Days

Strategy

Captor

Game Players

Malignant

Liars (co-written with Patricia Dixon)

Gamble

Epitaph

Supernatural

Winterscroft

Kat and Mouse series

Murder Undeniable (Book 1)

Murder Unexpected (Book 2)

Murder Unearthed (Book 3)

Murder Untimely (Book 4)

Murder Unjoyful (Book 5)

For my awesome beta-reading team: Sarah Hodgson,

Alyson Read, Marnie Harrison, Tina Jackson and Denise Cutler.

My eternally grateful thanks, ladies.

The punches are never pulled…

The last of the flooding, the last of the rain,

The start of the anguish, the start of the pain.

Calmness remains now where once torrents flowed,

Hearts were sore broken, the night of the flood.

Anita Waller, Aftermath, 1963

Foreword

Sheffield has five rivers: the Don, the Sheaf, the Loxley, the Rivelin and the Porter. This book is about the Porter, the smallest and possibly the prettiest of all five rivers, and a worthy character in its own right for this story.

The city is built on seven hills, and the Porter descends over one thousand feet from its source among the sedge grass on Burbage Moor at Clough Hollow, near the village of Ringinglow on the outskirts of Sheffield. It takes its name from its brackish colour, which is similar to the colour of Porter, a brown discoloration obtained as it passes over iron ore deposits on the way from its source.

It flows eastward through the Mayfield Valley to the first of the remaining mill dams. Beyond Forge Dam the Porter is defined as a main river. It drops down into Sheffield city centre, where it meets the River Sheaf under platform five of Sheffield’s Midland Station. They continue on to meet up with the mighty River Don which then flows onwards until it reaches the North Sea.

To reach this point it passes under many culverts, and in summer is a gentle river. In winter, in heavy rain conditions, it changes…

Prologue

27 July 2014

The body was staged carefully under a tree in Ecclesall Woods, positioned so that an early-morning dog walker would find it easily. The thrill was in the kill, and having the work admired; it wasn’t in hiding the bodies away and hoping they would never be found. In the moonlight, and with her blonde hair spread out around her, this one looked spectacular. Her small but perfectly formed breasts were framed by her arms as they crossed over her stomach, fingers interlinked, and her long slender legs led the eye to the light brown triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs.

The hope was that as it was almost midnight, late-night dog walkers wouldn’t venture into the woods to disturb the scene; it wouldn’t look so good in the dark. This was all about cause and effect, the beautiful symmetry of the girl who had said her name was Lilith. The double-barrelled surname was irrelevant; it was all about the Christian name. Lilith, indeed a beautiful one, and for a moment Lilith’s killer wondered what such a pretty name meant. Something to explore later when the whole thing was relived in the early hours when sleep wouldn’t come.

With the body of the young girl in place, the black-clad figure stepped back in admiration. A sight for tired eyes; time to leave it, after the final act.

Crouching down, clutching a sharp craft knife, the roman numerals IV were carved with precision into Lilith’s right palm. Number four, and the thought in the killer’s mind was full of confidence that the police didn’t seem to have any idea who had killed the first three.

Snipping off the tip of the little finger on the same hand was easy, and the fingers were once more interlinked. Silently the killer stopped for a moment to fill the backpack with Lilith’s clothes and to survey the scene, before moving swiftly out of the woods and back to the entrance. A glance around and the killer morphed into a jogger, running up the road to the posh houses where the car had been hidden in plain sight, false number plates an additional protection.

Fifteen minutes later the evening’s entertainment was over, the fingertip had joined three others in the freezer, the cat had been given some milk, and all was right in a murderer’s world.

1 Sunday evening, 27th October 2019

Katie Davids held up a hand and waved as she saw Rebecca Charlesworth walk into the pub.

‘Over here,’ she called, more in hope than belief that Becky would hear her.

Becky clearly didn’t as she did a full three hundred and sixty-degree turn before spotting