A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh Read Free Book Online Page A

knew that.
    She reread the letter through a swim of tears. Her first thought was that Simon had misjudged her, and that she would leave the package where it was, telephone the police and show them the letter. Perhaps she could ask for the officer who had interviewed her after she had reported Simon’s death. He had been sympathetic, in a weary way. There was a phone on the corner of her desk. She reached out a hand and touched it.
    Stevie pushed back the desk chair, went through to the hallway, dragged the stepladder from the cloakroom cupboard and set it beneath the small ceiling hatch that led to the loft space. If the package was hidden there she would telephone the police. No one would blame her for checking first.
    The ladder’s rungs were cold against her bare feet. Stevie tipped the hatch open and put her head and shoulders into the loft. It was dark and spidery and she was forced to go back down and find a torch. She pointed its beam into the blackness and saw a shape, dark and flat, resting on one of the ceiling joists, beyond arm’s reach.
    ‘Fuck, Simon,’ Stevie whispered. ‘You’re not exactly making things easy for me.’
    The days in bed had weakened her, and it took all of her strength to haul herself into the crawlspace that separated her ceiling from the apartment above. She lay there for a moment, gathering her resources, and then stuck the torch in her mouth and started to pull herself along one of the beams on her belly. Simon must have used a pole of some kind to push the package out of reach. He would never have fitted his body into the tight space. A tiny fleck of darkness scuttled away from her. Stevie gasped, but the torch in her mouth stopped her from crying out.
    The telephone started to ring down in the flat below and Stevie remembered she had forgotten to call the TV station. She took the torch from between her teeth.
    ‘Shit, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit.’
    The beam of light swept the length of the narrow space. It was like being buried alive, sandwiched there in the dark. Something touched Stevie’s face. She gasped and flung a hand out, but she had come too far to turn back.
    Now that she was closer she could see that the package was oblong and wrapped in a plastic bag. Stevie stretched out, gripped the edge of the plastic with her fingertips and pulled it slowly towards her. ‘Got you.’ She grasped it tightly with both hands. She had expected the package to contain some kind of manuscript, but it was too hard-edged and heavy to be papers. Stevie edged her way backwards until she was able to lower herself back, out of the hatch. Her feet groped for the ladder. It occurred to her that it would be ironic if she were to fall now and end up in the morgue beside Simon, but she managed the transition safely and set her burden on the top step.
    The plastic bag was grimed with dust and cobwebs. She peeled it free to reveal a laptop zipped in an anonymous slipcase. Stevie tossed the empty plastic bag back into the loft, slotted the hatch cover back in place and carried the laptop down with her, realising she was as filthy as the bag she had discarded.
    She stripped off her tracksuit, went naked into the spare bedroom and set the laptop on her desk. There was nothing for it but to phone the police; anything else would be foolish. She unzipped the slipcase and slid the laptop free. Simon had been devoted to a slim ultra-fast tablet, small enough to slip into his jacket pocket. This machine reminded her of her own computer, top of the range a few years ago, but not up-to-date enough for someone as techno-chic as Simon. Stevie opened the lid, pressed the power button and watched the screen glow into life. The manufacturer’s logo sailed towards her, followed by Windows’ four-coloured pane. The display shifted to black, Stevie saw her own naked torso reflected in it for an instant, and then the start page invited her to enter the password.
    She typed in different variations of Simon’s