Bone Machine by Martyn Waites Read Free Book Online Page B

shook her head. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? My God.’
    Peta agreed. ‘And they haven’t found out who did it. They’re still out there,’ she said. ‘You take care of yourself.’
    Jill smiled. ‘Yes, Mum.’
    Peta smiled in return. Unpacked her books.
    Working with Albion satisfied Peta. On one level. But something had always nagged within her. Something about unfinished business.
     Her parents, both liberal, middle-class
Guardian
readers, had wanted their daughter to go to university. Study the arts. Perhaps become a lecturer like themselves. But Peta,
     in a spirit of youthful rebellion, had taken what she saw as the most contentious route for herself, and the one that would
     annoy her parents most: she had joined the police force.
    Her parents were mortified. They felt they had let her down in some way. Peta, for her own part, hadn’t enjoyed the reaction
     as much as she thought she would have. They were deeply hurt, far more so than she had imagined they would be. And that impacted
     on her. She tried to back out but left it too late, was too far into her training by then. So she vowed instead to make them
     proud of her. That didn’t work either.
    When, five years later, she left the force, almost physically beaten down by being patronized, relegated to demeaning tasks,
     seeing people she had initially had to help climbing the ranks ahead of her, the force’s institutionalized sexism, plus a
     burgeoning problem with alcohol, her parents had insisted it wasn’t too late. They would regard those last few years as a
     temporary blip, a gap-year project that had got out of hand. She could still find the right course, still go to university.
     They would help her, pay for her. Although sorely tempted by this offer, she turned it down. She still had something to prove.
     So, hoping to utilize skills and contacts she had made in the force, she set up her own private investigation and security
     business. That, eventually, folded. And then, thankfully, came Albion.
    But still that nag, that sense of unfinished business. And here she was. Thirty-one years old. Studying psychology at university.
     Over ten years later and her liberal,
Guardian
-reading parents had been right all along.
    Not that she would admit that. Nor how much she enjoyed it.
    Her body got regular workouts in the dojo. Her mind very rarely. This was the perfect counterbalance. Plus the lecturer had
     a lot to do with it. Peta had never met anyone like him.
    The door opened. As if on cue, in he came. Medium height, slim build, he walked with a slight limp, as if the bones hadn’t
     set right from an old injury. And his right hand was covered in scar tissue, gnarled and deformed. But that wasn’t the most
     remarkable thing about him. He was dressed, as usual, like a walking antique. His suit hailed from any time during the 1940s
     or 1950s and had clearly been originally intended for a much bigger man, the wide, grey, fireman’s braces and thick, black-leather
     belt holding up his trousers bearing testament to that. On his feet were lace-up DMs, beneath his suit jacket a black T-shirt.
     His dark overcoat was similarly old and flowing – Peta was sure she had glimpsed a Utility label inside when he had hung it
     up once – with a bright red, paisley scarf thrown over the top, the swirls drawing attention like some kind of fantastical
     space vortex. Topping it off was a grey-felt hat that may have been a homburg or a fedora. Peta wasn’t sure. He looked like
     a child’s idea of a responsible adult.
    His briefcase, an old doctor’s bag stuffed with books and other ephemera, was hefted on to the desk. He took his overcoat
     off, draped it over the back of his chair, along with the scarf. Placed his hat on the desk. His dark hair was shot with grey
     and cropped close. He wore a pair of old round glasses as modelled by John Lennon in the late 1960s. Petahad tried to work out his age, given up. He was anywhere between thirty and fifty.