Bad Boy by Peter Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

to me. I know you’re upset, and you want to be with your mother, but can you please just answer a few questions first? Then you can go.”
    Erin muttered something. She was still chewing on her nail, so it was hard to tell what she said.
    “What was that?” Annie asked her.
    “I said I don’t want to be with my mother.”
    “Well, I know I’d want to be with mine,” said Annie. If I had one, she thought.
    “She turned me in,” Erin said, her hands clasped on her lap now, twisting. She still stared at the desk, and her voice was muffled, her words hard to make out. “How would you feel?”
    “She did what she thought she had to do,” Annie said. Erin gave her a withering glance. “You would say that.”
    “Erin, that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about, however much it hurts, however bad it feels. I want you to tell me about the gun.”
    Erin shook her head. “Where did you get it from?”
    “I don’t know anything about it.”
    “Why did you bring it home with you and hide it on top of your wardrobe?”
    Erin shrugged and picked at her fingernail. “Who gave you the gun, Erin?”
    “Nobody.”
    “Somebody must have given it to you? Or did you buy it yourself?”
    Erin didn’t answer.
    “Are you hiding it for someone?”
    “No. Why do you think that?”
    Annie knew that she was getting nowhere, and she didn’t feel that things were likely to change in the next while. It was all too raw and confusing. She was tempted to call it a day and pack Erin off to whatever hotel or B-and-B Patricia Yu had found, but she was nothing if not persistent. “Was it someone in Leeds?” she asked.
    No answer.
    “Your boyfriend, perhaps?”
    “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
    “Oh, come on,” cut in Chambers, trying to sound avuncular. “A pretty young girl like you? Surely you must have a boyfriend?” He ended up sounding like a dirty old man, Annie thought.
    Erin treated the question with the silent contempt it deserved. Annie could tell from her general appearance and body language that her self-esteem was low right now, and that she certainly didn’t see herself as a “pretty young girl.”
    Annie gave Chambers a disapproving look and carried on. “Of course you do. Geoff, isn’t it? Don’t you want him to know where you are?” Annie didn’t understand the look Erin gave her. She carried on. “Was it Geoff who gave you the gun? Is that why you don’t want to talk about him?”
    Still Erin said nothing.
    “Are you afraid of him? Is that it? I’d be afraid of someone who kept a loaded gun around the house.”
    “You don’t understand anything.”
    “Then help me. I want to understand.” Annie got no reaction.
    “Oh, this is getting us precisely bloody nowhere,” Chambers burst out.
    “I did it,” Erin said. Her voice was little more than a whisper, and she still wouldn’t look up at them.
    “Did what, Erin? Brought the gun home?” Annie asked, leaning forward to hear her words. But she didn’t need to. Erin sat bolt upright and looked directly at her, speaking in a clear, though trembling, voice.
    “Not that. But I killed him,” she said. “My father. It was my fault. I—”
    “Now, wait a minute,” Chambers blustered, looking over at Irene Lightholm, who remained perched on the edge of her chair, enthralled, instead of telling her client to shut up.
    Erin ignored Chambers and the solicitor. Annie could tell she was trying to get out what she had to say before she completely lost control. It didn’t matter whom she was talking to; she just had to have her say. “It was my fault. What happened to Dad.” She glanced at Chambers, then at her solicitor. “We heard the banging at the door, the calls for us to open up. Dad asked me to answer because his knee hurt, and he was starting to have chest pains from all the stress. Angina. I…I told him to fuck off. I said he could bloody well turn me in if he wanted to, I couldn’t stop him doing that, but I was fucked if I was