Good Girls Don't Die by Isabelle Grey Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t the time to change Lance’s mind about what they’d seen. Besides, she was more interestedin hearing his thoughts than in putting forward her own. She could bide her time.
    ‘Maybe he’s pissed off because we
haven’t
found Polly,’ he said, ‘and this is his way of letting us know.’
    ‘That there’ll be a price to pay if we don’t play his game, you mean?’
    ‘Yeah. It’ll all be about him keeping control, won’t it?’
    ‘If you’re right,’ she said, ‘then you’re saying this poor girl’s death is supposed to steer us to something we’ve missed.’
    ‘Exactly!’
    ‘So what is it?’ she asked. ‘
Why
haven’t we found Polly? Where is she? What point are we missing?’

SIX
    Photo ID recovered from the pocketbook in the jacket folded beneath the victim’s head suggested that the dead woman was a twenty-one-year-old final-year law student named Rachel Moston. Her parents were on their way to the mortuary to make a formal identification. Keith meanwhile had sent Grace and Lance over to the law faculty to build up as full a picture of her as possible.
    They walked once more from the car park across the green sward to the raised concrete structures of the campus. The morning sun reflected harshly from the windowed expanse of walls, exacerbating Grace’s dull headache and tempting her to suggest they grab a cold drink before locating the faculty office.
    Heading for the mini-market, Grace spotted Roxanne coming out of the campus bookshop. The reporter, slipping her pen and notebook back into her bag as she ducked into the cafe next door, did not notice them.
    ‘What’s she doing here?’ asked Lance, annoyed.
    In answer, Grace pointed to the bookshop door, wherea page of newsprint from the local paper had been taped to the glass: Roxanne’s interview with Polly Sinclair’s parents, headlined with their appeal for help in finding their daughter.
    ‘If people are talking to the
Mercury
, we need to hear what they’re saying,’ said Lance, changing course and pushing open the bookshop door.
    They entered the hush of a near-empty shop. At the far end, a man with a lank ponytail and a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves appeared to be doing a stock check. Nearer the door, the neatly dressed young man Grace had observed on Monday was straightening piles of books on a display table. He had short, fine hair and wore the kind of grey trousers and white shirt that supermarkets sell as generic school uniform. Once they had shown their warrant cards and given their names, he introduced himself politely as Danny Tooley, the assistant manager, and asked how he could help. Lance pointed back towards the entrance. ‘You’ve displayed that piece about Polly Sinclair.’
    ‘Yes. I put it there.’
    ‘Is Polly Sinclair a customer?’
    ‘Yes. Have you found her?’ he asked eagerly.
    ‘Not yet.’
    Danny frowned. ‘But Roxanne said a body had been found.’ He nodded towards the door through which the reporter had departed, betraying a kind of nervous excitement Grace had observed many times in people on the periphery of a major enquiry. ‘That’s really terrible. But it’s not Polly?’ he asked. ‘You’ve not found her?’
    ‘We’ll be releasing an official statement later,’ Grace told him.
    ‘What was the reporter talking to you about, Danny?’ asked Lance.
    ‘She said a girl had been murdered but she didn’t know who it was. She wanted to know if I’d heard anything.’
    ‘And had you?’
    ‘No. Do you know who it is?’
    Lance ignored the question. ‘So why did Roxanne think you might know?’
    Danny looked at them as if they were a bit slow. ‘Because everyone comes in here. And Polly’s a friend. I mean, we’re friendly.’
    When Grace had noticed the young man standing in the shop doorway and watching the students eat lunch the other day, she’d assumed he’d be all but invisible to them, but she reminded herself that that might not be the case at all. ‘How well do