The Fireman by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page A

are your sister’s effects,’ said Hall. ‘We found them in the changing room.’ He handed me a typewritten list and a cheap biro. ‘Can you sign for them, at the bottom.’
    I scrawled my signature and then he ripped off the top copy, putting it in the plastic bag along with her belongings. He pushed the bag over to my side of the desk.
    ‘There should be a ring.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’ said Hall.
    ‘A ring. A gold ring with a heart on it. I gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday.’
    Hall looked over at his colleague, who shook his head.
    ‘There was no ring,’ said Hall. ‘Perhaps it is at her flat. We haven’t been there yet.’
    ‘She swore she’d never take it off,’ I said, and then realized how silly that sounded. ‘Never mind,’ I said.
    ‘Is there anything else you can tell me, anything I haven’t asked you that you think might be important?’ asked Hall.
    ‘I want to know what happened.’
    Hall paused, studying a sheet of paper in the file.
    ‘She fell from a high-floor window, dead on arrival. There was no note. You know as much as we do at the moment.’
    ‘Sally wouldn’t have committed suicide.’
    ‘You sound very sure of that.’
    ‘I knew her. She was my sister.’
    ‘That may be, but she could have changed. Something could have happened.’
    ‘Do suicides normally throw themselves through windows?’
    ‘I don’t follow you.’
    ‘Look, I’m a journalist, I’ve covered more than my fair share of jumpers. The sort that jump are the ones that want to attract a crowd, to become the centre of attention for once in their lives. They usually sit out on a ledge and wait for someone to talk them out of it.’
    Hall leant back in his seat and seemed about to speak. I pre-empted him by holding up my hand. ‘Let me finish,’ I said. ‘Sally wasn’t the sort to kill herself, period. But, and this is one fucking big but, if she was she wouldn’t throw herself through a window. She talked tough, but she couldn’t bear pain. You couldn’t get her into a dentist’s chair without pumping Valium into her. If Sally was going to kill herself she’d make sure it was perfectly painless and she’d make damn sure there wouldn’t be any blood.’
    I looked at the two coppers and could see in their eyes that they weren’t listening to me, any moment now one of them was going to lean forward and say, ‘there, there, it’ll be all right.’
    I banged my hand down on the desk. ‘Why won’t you just believe me,’ I yelled, trying to shock them into action.
    ‘There’s no need to raise your voice,’ said the Chinese guy in an American accent. Mid-West, I think. I ignored him.
    ‘Suicide is not unusual in Hong Kong,’ said Hall quietly, as if he was talking to an imbecile. ‘It’s like a pressure cooker here, one of the most densely populated places in the world. Not everyone can adapt to it.’
    I closed my eyes and sighed deeply, he just didn’t understand.
    ‘If she’d had a problem she’d have called me,’ I said wearily.
    ‘Hong Kong is not an easy place for European women, the social scene for them isn’t as, shall we say, fulfilling as it is for the men. You wouldn’t believe how many expat wives are on tranquillizers, or how many just pack up and leave their husbands after a year or so here. Few marriages can survive this place.’
    ‘Sally wasn’t married.’
    ‘I know, I know. But the pressures are the same.’
    ‘She wouldn’t kill herself. She’d just leave.’
    The two policemen looked at each other and I could practically hear them thinking, ‘he isn’t listening to a word we say.’ Yeah, well maybe they were right. But I knew Sally, and they didn’t.
    ‘What happens now?’ I said.
    ‘There’ll be an autopsy,’ Hall replied. ‘Then we’ll be able to release the body. You can either take her back to England or make arrangements here.’
    ‘You’re still waiting to do an autopsy? But it happened three days ago. Why the delay?’
    ‘It takes