Acid Row by Minette Walters Read Free Book Online Page A

questions about her relationship with her husband. Perhaps Laura knew what was coming, because she refused to get off the floor or move away from the kitchen door, and her almost permanently lowered head with its curtain of dark hair made it impossible to read her expression. It gave a sense of indifference, or, worse, deceit.
    “Why does he feel sorry for Amy?”
    “I told him her father abused her.”
    “Was that true?”
    She gave a small shrug. “It depends how you define abuse.”
    “How do you define it, Laura?”
    “Exercising power without love.”
    “As in bullying?”
    “Yes.”
    “Which is what you've accused Kimberley of doing.”
    She hesitated before she answered, as if fearing a trap. “Yes,” she agreed. “She and Martin are two of a kind.”
    “In what way?”
    “Inadequate people need to dominate.”
    Tyler recalled his first impressions of Martin Rogerson when the man opened the door in his shirtsleeves and extended a friendly hand.
    Policemen were used to shock or evasion when they produced their cards everyone had something to fear or feel guilty about but Rogerson showed none of these. He was twenty-five years older than his wife in his late fifties a bluff, confident solicitor with an easy manner and a firm handshake. Certainly he gave no impression of being the inadequate bully his wife was describing. "How did Martin bully Amy?"
    “You wouldn't understand.”
    “Try me.”
    Another hesitation. “He made her beg for affection,” she said, 'so she thought his love was worth more than mine."
    It was such an unlikely answer that Tyler believed it. He remembered seeing an ill-treated dog that had crawled on its belly towards the boy who was whipping it; remembered, too, how when he had intervened the dog had bitten him. “And yours was rejected?” he suggested.
    She didn't answer.
    He sprang the trap half-heartedly. "If you knew Kimberley was a bully then why did you leave Amy with her?" he asked.
    Laura used the point of a finger to sketch circles on the floor. Each one apart. Each one contained. Tyler wondered what they represented.
    Martin? Herself? Amy? Distance?
    “I've been saving for a deposit on a flat,” she said shakily.
    “It's our only way out .. . Amy wants it as much as I do.” She opened her other fist to reveal a sodden tissue which she pressed against her eyes. "She kept promising me Kimberley was different when they were on their own. I knew she was lying .. . but I truly believed the worst that was happening was that she was sitting on her own in her room all day. And that didn't seem so bad .. . not after .. ." She broke off vanishing the tissue inside her fingers again as if it were a piece of dirty laundry that needed hiding.
    “Not after what?”
    She took time to answer and he had the feeling she was inventing an explanation. “Just life,” she said tiredly. "It hasn't been easy for either of us."
    Tyler studied her bent head for a moment, before consulting some notes on the table. "According to your husband, you and Amy haven't lived with him for nine months. He said you left him for a man called Edward Townsend, and as far as he knew you were still with him."
    “He's lying,” she said bluntly. “He knows Eddy and I split up.”
    “Why would he lie about it?”
    “He's a lawyer.”
    “That's hardly an answer, Laura.”
    She waved his remark away. "I was supposed to inform him if our situation changed .. . but I didn't. It's a technical point. Martin can argue that, because he didn't hear it from me, I acted against Amy's best interests by withholding information."
    “Who would have told him?”
    "Eddy. Martin's still his solicitor. He talks to Eddy more than he ever talked to me.“ She gave a bitter little laugh. ”He's legal adviser to Eddy's company. They're always on the phone to each other."
    Tyler let that go for the moment. The vagaries of human nature had long since ceased to surprise him. In Rogerson's shoes, he'd have punched the other