No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

and without saying anything more. If she wanted to tell him about it, presumably she would. And in the end, she said:

‘They found his body in the river. The River Spey. He’d been… he’d been tied up.’

‘Oh Christ! That’s…’ What the hell could he say? Anything he said would be so inadequate. ‘That’s really awful,’ was all he could come up with.

She nodded, and he got up, in the end, to finish making the drinks and bring them to the table. For a while they blew on them and sipped without speaking. Then:

‘I can’t be with anyone else,’ she said, and looked away.

‘Because it would be like a sort of… betrayal? Of Owen?’

At the time he didn’t think anything of it, the tiny hesitation before she nodded.

Another long silence, and then Bram, for some reason, found himself telling Kirsty about his family in Amsterdam, his grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins, the whole noisy, impossible, wonderful tribe of them, and at last Kirsty smiled, and then she was slumping, asleep on his shoulder, making little puffs as she breathed.

He sat in that scuzzy kitchen and breathed in time with Kirsty, feeling the warmth of her against him, wanting so much to be able to take her pain away, to wave a magic wand and take it away. At one point he dared to kiss the top of her head, her clean, shiny, girl-smelling hair, as if she were his sister.

But she wasn’t his sister.

Oh, good merciful heaven, no.

Scott didn’t help him out, so Bram was forced to say, ‘You don’t think… This might seem like a stretch, but you don’t think this could in any way be connected to Owen Napier’s murder?’

David snorted, and Kirsty shook her head.

‘What if there’s some nutter out there who…’ He stared at Kirsty. He really didn’t want to say this, not in front of her, but what choice did he have? ‘Who’s obsessed with Kirsty, who killed Owen… And now Kirsty’s back and she’s got another partner – me – and the nutter wants me gone too?’

Kirsty was still shaking her head.

Scott was smiling. The bastard was actually smiling. ‘That’s quite a stretch. No, Bram, I think I can say with some confidence that the two things are pretty unlikely to be connected. Owen’s murder was a drugs killing, ninety-nine per cent. The theory was that he was either supplying drugs to an organised crime group and there was a falling out, or he was muscling in on someone else’s patch and they took exception to that.’

‘But whoever’s doing this to us seems to be targeting me specifically. The weedkilling of the veg, shooting at me in the wood… and the comments on my blog. And now the pig’s heart in my risotto, and Your next… That’s similar to some of the trolls’ messages. There’s one calling themselves Red.’ Bram got out his phone. ‘Take a look. “You people”. And “You’re bringing this on yourself, Bram”. I think Red could be the one. Someone obsessed with Kirsty who’s targeting me.’

Scott examined the comments. ‘Although in this case the “you’re” is grammatically correct.’

‘They could have made a deliberate mistake to throw us off the scent.’

‘It’s just wee yobs,’ said David scornfully. ‘This has got nothing to do with Owen.’

‘How can we know that?’

Kirsty put a hand on his arm. ‘Dad’s right. Scott’s right. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Owen.’ Like Bram, she hadn’t got much sleep, after arriving back last night to find the place swarming with cops. There were dark, sunken-looking semicircles under her eyes, which were bloodshot. ‘Can we go up to our bedroom?’ she asked Scott.

‘Aye, but use the terrace doors.’

Bram followed Kirsty into their room and crossed to the expanse of glass in the gable to look out at the paddock, the field, the wood, the hills beyond, but he wasn’t seeing gorgeous scenery. All he was seeing was potential hiding places. Was Red out there now, crouched in that concealed dip in the field, or lying on his stomach in that clump of bushes? Watching and waiting?

Kirsty sat down on the bed. ‘We have to try to keep things in proportion and not jump to wild conclusions. There’s no way this could have anything to do with… with Owen.’

‘How can you know that? We’re obviously being targeted – I’m being targeted.’

Kirsty sighed. ‘This sort of stuff has happened before to the Taylors. The only reason we’re being “targeted” is that we live next door to them. You’re being paranoid.’

‘But don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that as soon as you move back home, some nutter is coming after me? And I’m getting messages on my blog telling me – me, specifically – to go back to London or else?’

‘No one’s coming after you. And they’re just trolls. You shouldn’t take anything they say personally, Bram, you know that.’

Was he being paranoid?

Those BB pellets had been aimed at him. He was almost sure of it. Okay so maybe they weren’t dangerous, but still.

‘Did Owen… The same kind of thing didn’t happen to Owen, did it? In the time leading up to his murder? He wasn’t threatened? Someone didn’t try to put the frighteners on him, to get him to leave town? To leave you?’

‘No. Owen’s death… It was nothing to do with me. Like Scott said, Owen was involved in supplying drugs to an organised crime gang.’

Bram nodded. She was probably right. ‘I’m sorry. For bringing all the Owen stuff up again.’ He sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay. I agree that this is really worrying, someone actually coming inside the house… What are we going to do? Should we have the kids stay on with Mum and Dad for now, or should we go and get them? I really want to go and get them, Bram.’

Max and Phoebe had been bundled off to David and Linda’s house last night, while Bram and Kristy had stayed here