Blood And Honey by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online

the
beep-beep
from his laptop that signalled a priority incoming message. He struggled to his feet and climbed the stairs to his study. In the spill of light from the hall he could see the email highlighted at the top of the day’s missives. He settled at the desk, reached for the touchpad. Eadie, he thought.
    She’d made it to Melbourne, taking the morning seaplane shuttle from Vanuatu to Sydney and then a domestic flight out of Kingston Smith to Tullamarine. Her description of the take-off – the colours, the spray, the sudden feeling of release as the little floatplane hopped into the air – occupied two paragraphs. The pilot’s father, she wrote, had once been a pupil of her dad’s and so he’d spoiled her with a twirl or two around the island before setting course for Oz. The sight of her family house from the air had been weird – so fucking small – and she’d found herself laughing at how close the beach had once seemed to the gate in the white picket fence that marked the front of the property. As a kid the walk to the ocean had been a big deal, a major expedition. Yet thirty years away had shrunk it to a mere spit. Was this what growing up didto a girl? Could a good lawyer make a case and get her fantasies back?
    Faraday smiled at the traffic jam of questions. Eadie Sykes tore into life with a zest and an appetite that had always left him slightly awed. Professionally, he was sure that it had helped her no end when it came to putting other people’s stories onto film. She blew into their lives with the force of a gale and her very candour, her cheerful bluntness, always seemed to do the trick. Even Faraday himself had opened up, and here on the laptop was yet more proof that she could still reach out and touch him.
    At the same time, when he was honest with himself, he knew that he didn’t really miss her. They’d had great moments together, probably still would, but every conversation – even at this distance – was proof that Eadie Sykes would always go her own way. She’d flown thirteen thousand miles to explore the landscapes of her youth. She’d be staying on the other side of the world until her money ran out. That might be a couple of months, might be longer. Whatever happened, she’d keep him posted.
    Faraday scanned the rest of the email, then sat back in his chair, gazing out at the blackness of the harbour. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that twenty-six years in the job had changed him. For better or worse he was in the evidence business and deep down he’d finally admitted to himself that she didn’t need him. Not now. And very probably not ever.
    He reached for the touchpad a moment, thought about tapping out a reply, then changed his mind and swivelled the chair away. He could see the shape of his upper body in the window, silhouetted against the oblong of light through the open door. His fingersfound the thick growth of greying stubble on his chin and he wondered again whether it was really such a good idea to be growing a beard. Might this be some kind of defiant proclamation about his age? Or was it simply another way of curtaining himself off from a world to which he increasingly appeared to have only visiting rights?
    He began to swivel the chair again, describing a slow, lazy half circle before stilling the motion with his foot. Something had been bothering him about Webster’s headless corpse, and he suddenly realised what it was.

Two
    Saturday, 21 February 2004
    Winter was halfway through a
Good Housekeeping
recipe for Chicken Supreme when his number began to blink on the waiting-room wall. He picked his way between the blank-faced grannies and the squalling kids, pausing to step over a family of stuffed animals on the carpet beside the door. Any more cuddly bears, he thought, and this place would start feeling like the PDSA.
    Winter’s GP, Dr Jessop, looked younger than he probably was, a thin, alert, bespectacled northerner with the kind of complexion