Chasing the Dark by Sam Hepburn Read Free Book Online Page B

news about Norma Craig was sweeping through the village like a flash flood. On my way back, I passed a huddle of dog walkers gossiping about the murder, got stopped by a couple of people asking the way to Elysium and saw a TV van with a big satellite dish on the roof heading down the track. It looked like Norma Craig was still big news. All I cared about was Yuri. I wanted to believe he’d be fine. After all, he’d got George’s money, clean clothes, and all those jewels. Not to mention my phone. My phone! I was an idiot. I could call him and see if he was OK.
    Doreen was out when I got back to Laurel Cottage so I used the phone in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop to dial the number. It went straight to voicemail. Damn. The battery was probably flat. I jiggled the receiver, watched Oz digging up Doreen’s roses and tried to think what else I could do. Suddenly I was searching my jeans, rooting through all the pockets. After a burst of panic, Ifelt my fingers curl round the scrap of newspaper Yuri had left in the cellar. I let out a whoop of relief. Maybe he’d finally got through to the bloke he’d been trying to phone. Maybe he was with him now. I jabbed in the number.
    It rang once before a man’s voice came on the line – young, posh, sure of himself.
    â€˜You’ve reached the voicemail of Ivo Lincoln. Sorry I can’t take your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
    I dropped the receiver and threw up in Doreen’s shiny sink.

CHAPTER 6
    D oreen had one of those waste-disposal units that grinds up trash and slurps it away, so dealing with the puke was easy. Sorting the mess in my head was going to take a bit longer. One minute Lincoln was giving Mum a lift in London, the next Yuri was calling him from Saxted. Who was this guy? I’d never even heard of him till a couple of weeks ago and now his fingerprints were smeared all over my life. And every time his name cropped up things turned nasty.
    Still feeling sick, I called St Saviour’s College. This time the guy in the porters’ lodge said the Professor was around, so I left my number and a message to call me urgently. Then I fetched down Lincoln’s holdall from my room, and laid out all his stuff on the worktop. I switched on the laptop and looked at the password box. The answer– or at least some it – had to be here. I wandered round the kitchen – opening drawers, staring out the window, twanging the knives in the knife rack – trying to piece together everything I knew about Ivo Lincoln.
    According to the papers, he’d been a real wonder boy and, if the pictures were anything to go by, quite good-looking – for a lanky, long-haired toff. Which was why Eddy had got so steamed up about Mum being in his car. Most of the reports said she’d cadged a lift off him because it was raining and she’d had a few too many. I’d gone along with that, just to shut Eddy up, but deep down it had always grated. First, Mum had sworn to me that she’d cut her drinking down to one glass of wine a night. Second she had a rule about never getting lifts from strangers after gigs. She was so paranoid about it she’d done a deal with an all-female minicab service who always drove her home. So even if it was tipping it down that night and posh boy Lincoln wasn’t coming across as a perv or an axe murderer, why chance it? But then, if she wasn’t cadging a lift and she wasn’t cheating on Eddy, what had she been doing with Lincoln? And something else was bugging me. How come Yuri had decided to hole up in the exact same village that Mum had grown up and been buried in?
    I’d gone round in a circle, got nowhere and ended up right back where I’d started. But Lincoln being a journalist kept throwing up another possibility; one I was having real trouble getting my head round. Was there a chance that Mum had been helping him with a