The Killer Inside by Lindsay Ashford Read Free Book Online Page B

job and seeing his child left little time for a relationship.
    ‘I’m beginning to understand why his marriage broke up.’ Megan stared at the pink liquid in her glass. ‘It’s impossible to plan anything because he seems to live his life out of a suitcase. We haven’t had a weekend together for about two months. The best we’ve managed was a night at my place when he was en route to a court case in Jamaica – and theonly reason he came over then was because the flights from Cardiff and Bristol were booked up.’
    Delva wiggled her eyebrows. ‘Oh, come on! I’m sure that wasn’t the only reason!’
    ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly romantic,’ Megan shrugged. ‘He had to be up at five the next morning to get to the airport.’
    ‘So when are you seeing him again?’
    ‘I don’t know. Next weekend maybe – if Laura doesn’t have plans for him, that is.’ When they’d first got together, Megan had thought Jonathan was the perfect partner. They got on well, had loads in common and laughed at the same things. The fact that he already had a child had seemed a big plus. Megan had been told at the age of twenty-five that she would be unable to have children. It was one of the big regrets of her life, not least because it was her own fault. A botched abortion as a student had damaged her fallopian tubes. It was a mistake that had dogged her throughout her adult life, scuppering her marriage and her last long-term relationship. Both her ex-husband and her previous lover had got other women pregnant while they were still with her. It had nearly destroyed her faith in men but meeting Jonathan had changed that. Here, she thought, was a man for whom having children was not a priority. And it was true: Jonathan didn’t want any more kids. What Megan hadn’t realised was that she would be competing with the one he already had.
    ‘What is it about men, eh? I think I’m going to get myself a dog instead.’ Delva let out a snort of a laugh that had heads turning in their direction. Megan couldn’t help laughing with her. Delva’s record with men was nearly as disastrous as her own. In her case it was being famous that caused problems. She never knew if men were interested in her for herself or because she was a face on TV.
    ‘Come on, let’s have another drink,’ Delva said. ‘Then you can give me the lowdown on Balsall Gate – we’ve beentrying to get inside that dump for years!’ Over a second Pink Lady, Delva told Megan that BTV had been trying to get permission to make a documentary about the prison. ‘Governor’s as tight as a duck’s arse, though, isn’t he? We’ve had to resort to subterfuge. One of our researchers has started writing to a prisoner. She’s young and very innocent-looking. Once she’s buttered him up she’s going to try smuggling a camera in. You can get really tiny ones now and the searches in that place are supposed to be pretty lax.’
    ‘Tell me about it.’ Megan shook her head slowly. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I don’t want this to go any further at the moment, but as far your documentary’s concerned, it’s absolute dynamite.’
    Delva’s eyes widened as Megan told her about Carl Kelly’s death. ‘Strychnine? Where the hell would you get hold of something like that?’
    ‘No idea. But it’s not the sort of thing that would go unnoticed, is it? If there was a batch of it cut with heroin, I mean.’
    Delva shook her head and her braids shuddered. ‘If it had happened to anyone outside the prison we’d have known about it. I mean, you don’t get many stiffs with a grin on their faces, do you?’ Her own mouth curved down as if she had tasted something nasty.
    ‘No,’ Megan replied. ‘That’s why I think it was deliberate.’
    Delva blinked. ‘You think someone murdered him?’
    ‘I think someone smuggled that dodgy heroin in – probably via one of the screws – to settle some score.’ She told Delva about the grave in St Mary’s churchyard; about the patch