Cold Revenge (2015) by Alex Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

tall, rangy, with muscular shoulders. He’s very powerfully built, she thought.
    He caught her eye looking at him and he smiled warmly. ‘I’m Stephen Michaels. I work at Queen’s.’
    His voice was deep and he had a northern accent she couldn’t place – accents were not something she was good at – a cross she thought between Liverpool and Manchester.
    ‘Are you a lecturer?’ she asked. He certainly didn’t look like one. He shook his head and opened his hands in a rueful, revealing kind of gesture. ‘I’m one of the chefs here. This is my chance to get some culture.’
    He smiled again. ‘I get staff discount,’ he said.
    He had startlingly attractive eyes, assured and watchful. Hanlon found herself warming to him. He had that kind of hard, self-deprecating self-confidence that she found very attractive.
    She spent her life dealing with people, both police and criminals, who seemed to feel the need to act tough. She was so tired of people’s lies and that included the image that people liked to project. Sometimes she felt like screaming, just stop it will you. Stop the bullshit. It was refreshingly unusual to be with someone free of macho bluster. Hanlon hated it. If you can walk the walk, you simply don’t need to talk the talk.
    She looked more closely at him. Like calls to like, type to type. Hanlon had issues herself and she sensed that Michaels really wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to argue with.
    When she was a child she could remember there’d been a craze for T-shirts with slogans. ‘Just Do It,’ had been one. Just do it. It was a sentiment she believed in absolutely. She felt instinctively that Michaels was in the same camp.
    Don’t talk about it, just do it. And if you can’t do it, as her old boss DCI Tremayne had succinctly put it, ‘Give up and get a fucking paper round.’
    Jessica McIntyre was still on the subject of Hannah Moore.
    ‘And my God, that girl was a liar, and a fantasist too. You can’t believe a word she ever said. All this nonsense on her blog about Gideon being some sort of bondage addict.’ She shook her head disapprovingly. ‘They say you can’t libel the dead, they should have added something about the dead not being allowed to libel the living. She was sex-obsessed. She’d jump on anything that moved.’
    ‘I liked her,’ said Stephen Michaels.
    Jessica gave him a baleful look, her eyes a glacial blue under the waterfall of platinum blonde hair. She was extremely attractive in a highly manicured, cared-for way. Michaels returned her look evenly and carried on.
    ‘She had a good heart,’ Michaels continued, unmoved by Jessica McIntyre’s disapproval. ‘Did you know she used to volunteer for one day a week at Battersea Dogs Home?’
    ‘Well, she’d have felt quite at home there then,’ said Jessica unpleasantly. She stood up to leave, swinging her expensive handbag, its LV initials shining in the light of the pub, on to her cashmere-adorned shoulder with easy grace.
    Hanlon looked at her in a calculating way. Two lovers, Hannah had mentioned, one a woman and married. There was a wedding band on Jessica’s finger. She was about forty, Hanlon guessed, but lithe and athletic, the kind of girl who’d have been games captain and probably head of house while Hannah languished on the subs bench or was sent for a cross-country run with the other no-hopers. She had the air of being very much the kind of woman who was used to getting her own way, to being in control.
    She could well imagine Jessica tying someone up; she was naturally dominant.
    ‘Well, I’m off. My husband’ll be back from the trading floor soon, I’d better go and rustle him up some food. See you all next week.’ She tossed her head and her long, blonde hair swished imperiously.
    ‘Bye-bye, Mrs McIntyre,’ said Michaels. His voice emphasized the ‘Mrs’ in a pointed way. She glared at him venomously and strode off and out of the pub, her heels clicking on the tiled floor.