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

corner for the installation of a small desk. It had always occurred to her that a laptop wasn’t actually meant for a lap, and so she would have a desk. The friendly Argos website said they could deliver the same day, and she mentally prepared herself for an evening of flat-pack assembly.

The sound of a key in the lock caused a spasm of fear to pass through her, and she knew who it was on the other side of the door. She slid over to the window, and glanced outside. Evan’s car was parked across the road. She waited.

The key was inserted for the second time, and then she heard a thud as he kicked the door.

A couple of minutes or so later she heard the same key insertion sound, but this time in the back door. Then he banged loudly. ‘You in there, Beth?’

She remained quiet. She had to stifle laughter as she heard a muttered ‘Fucking woman. Think you can change locks and keep me out? Fucking woman.’ She was tempted to move towards the kitchen window and wave at him, but she didn’t really want to have to arrest him for harassment or breaching the peace, or probably even GBH. She wanted to spend her evening building a desk, not down at the station booking her ex.

He eventually gave up and she moved back into the lounge, watching as he walked down the road towards his car. He sped off with a squeal of tyres, and she finally gave in to the laughter. He hadn’t known of her change of car which was parked on the kerbside; four doors away had been the nearest she could get to her home. He had obviously worked it out that she wasn’t in. She briefly wondered what he had come to take this time, but dismissed it as irrelevant. From now on she would decide what he could have.

Erica walked up and down the riverbank, talking to members of her team who were fingertip searching. With the onset of the afternoon rain following the hopeful sunshine of the morning, everyone was looking wet, and shortly before four, satisfied that everything possible had been done, she called off the activities.

‘Okay,’ she called, and her team stopped, hoping the instruction wasn’t to move to another area. ‘Time to pack up and go. Please check in every evidence bag when you get back to the briefing room, and I’ll see you there for a quick chat, then it’s home time.’

There was a brief but heartfelt cheer, and Erica asked Ian to make sure the crime scene tape was still secure around the small area where Clare’s body had been found, before heading back to her car.

For a short time she sat and let her thoughts wander. This had been a nightmare week and she hoped she had stopped it getting any worse by hiding away the other two girls. They had to step up the search for the killer – he or she had a pattern, and she sensed their brain wouldn’t allow them to deviate from that plan. Two girls from the four-girl group had gone, and she suspected he would wait until the remaining two went back into society. They couldn’t keep them locked up for ever, they would have to resume their university life one day.

As Erica started the car her phone rang, and she sat with the engine running while she answered Frannie. ‘I’m frozen.’

‘I imagine you are. You at the river?’

‘I am. We’ve found nothing, Fran.’

‘So what will you do next?’

‘I have no idea. Sit and think about it, for a start. What time are you home?’

‘Should be no later than nine. I did put it in your journal. You know, Erica, I can cancel it if you need me there now…’

‘No you can’t. It’s your job. I’ll be fine. I made some notes when I went through the twenty-fourteen file, so I’ll work on them, see if they clarify anything. I’ll put jacket potatoes in about eight, and they’ll be ready when you get home.’

‘Okay. Let’s have something exotic with it. How about curry?’

‘That’s exotic?’

‘It’s tasty even if it’s not exotic, and it’s already in the freezer. I’d better go. Wanted to check in with you, make sure you’re okay.’

They said ‘love you’ and disconnected. Erica put the car into drive, and set off down towards the city centre, and her office. The team would all appreciate an earlier night, and hopefully return the following morning feeling refreshed and alert. They would need to be – most of them would be out doing door-to-door interviews.

She would be going back to the beginning, she decided. What had sent this killer from random girls with L names, to a group of girls all living together? Where had the information come from? The university?

Time to stop the initial evidence-gathering, she needed to move on to the real work, and start thinking like a killer. She would get the girls to write down a list of their tutors, and as many as they could remember who had been there for Susie and Clare, then she would head for the university, already armed with a certain amount of knowledge. Technology had moved on since twenty-fourteen, and she intended making full use of it. The tutors’ names would be fed into HOLMES within minutes of her getting them, and maybe something out of kilter would hit her.

Beth couldn’t believe how simple it was to erect the desk. Even the two drawers had been almost easy, and she sat on the typist’s chair she had ordered at the same time, and surveyed her kingdom. Queendom. Well, whatever.

It looked so cosy now she didn’t have to have everything worked around watching football, and she opened up her laptop, firmly ensconced on the desk and not falling off her lap. She entered her complicated password that had taken her three days to learn, and, as usual, felt inordinately pleased that she had got it right. She