After You Die by Eva Dolan Read Free Book Online Page A

one she wanted was free.
    She stepped up and chose a programme that would take her across a series of demanding hills at a speed she was still struggling to maintain, wanting to stretch herself tonight, test the progress she knew she was making, despite the dire predictions of the NHS-approved physio she’d stopped going to almost two months earlier. He didn’t know what she was made of, was too used to advising people wallowing in self-pity.
    Instead she listened to her body and it said go on, go harder, fuck that pain, like some half-insane personal trainer who wanted to see her wrecked and on her knees. She’d been there; dropped weak legged off the treadmill and dragged herself into the changing rooms, every step an impossible agony, cried while she hid in a shower cubicle, desperate for one of the prescription painkillers she’d been told to take three times a day.
    She didn’t even collect them from the pharmacy, sure they would drag her down faster, shield her from the damage so she wouldn’t have to face the uphill battle of healing.
    It was easy to give in. It was what losers did. Christian Palmer would love to think of her defeated and addicted, given the lifetime of suffering he’d blown himself up to escape.
    Thinking of him made her calf itch again but she ignored it, focused on her breathing and the rhythm of her feet hitting the belt.
    The police psychiatrist was obsessed with Palmer. No matter what they discussed and how she tried to move the conversation on he always came back to Palmer and how she felt about him. She was supposed to learn to understand him, accept his actions and ultimately find it in her heart to forgive him. Because he was troubled or sick, not in complete control of himself when he thumbed that detonator.
    She knew better, remembered his words: ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mel.’ The venom in them. He’d felt no remorse for his actions and went out content in the belief that he was taking her and Zigic with him.
    It was one of the last things she did remember from that day.
    After that all she had were snatches, odd words and images, but nothing coherent, no sense of how it all unfolded.
    Ferreira glanced at the treadmill’s console, twenty minutes done, another twenty to go and the big climbs were coming up. She felt her thighs beginning to ache, muscles burning. The ligament behind her right knee, the one which took the most damage, was complaining but not loud enough for her to listen to it. She thumbed the volume up on her iPod, kept going.
    On the television set bolted to the wall beside her she saw the local news starting and turned away from it, focused on her reflection in the window, the sky darkening now, lights popping on across the car park. They would be leading with the story, no real details to report, just two bodies found in Elton, victims not yet named.
    Zigic wanted her to handle the official identification tomorrow. They could have sent a family-liaison officer but he was dubious about Warren and decided it was important for her to be there, use the opportunity to study his reaction to his daughter’s corpse.
    His love for the girl was obvious but Ferreira knew it didn’t rule him out as her killer. Especially when you factored in the violent manner of Dawn’s death.
    Except there had been no animosity which could spark off such a brutal attack. Not that Ferreira had seen. When she’d spoken to Dawn, at that initial interview last year, she gave the impression that everything was fine between them and when Ferreira suggested he might be responsible for the harassment Dawn shot the idea down instantly. He was too dedicated to Holly to do anything that might upset her.
    Was there something more to it, though?
    Warren had abandoned Dawn with their disabled daughter, putting the full burden of care on her. She should have been raging and instead she defended him, insisted he was a good father and good man.
    Maybe she saw his relationship with Sally as a