Want You Dead by Peter James Read Free Book Online Page A

open.
    ‘Yes!’ Mrs Hovey said.
    ‘Your parents would be happy with this room when they come to stay,’ her husband said.
    Promising , Red thought.
    Then she led them across the landing to the pièce de résistance. She opened the master bedroom door, waited until they had entered and were absorbed in looking around, then tapped the Sky News app on her phone, hoping desperately, forlornly, for some news of Karl.
    ‘Wow!’ Mrs Hovey said. ‘You’re right, this is a stunning room!’
    ‘The bathroom’s a bit disappointing,’ her husband said.
    ‘We could change it, darling. It’s a fabulous bedroom!’
    Red wasn’t listening. She was staring at the news. Unable to take her eyes off the screen.

15
    Thursday, late afternoon, 24 October
    The charred body lying in the ditch at Haywards Heath Golf Club looked even more eerie under the glare of the spotlights, if that were possible, thought Glenn Branson. He was standing with DS Bella Moy, who Roy Grace had dispatched from the Major Crime Team to join him. Both of them were feeling cold in the chilly autumnal air behind the screens that had been erected to enable the Home Office Pathologist, Dr Frazer Theobald, who was conveniently in the area for another postmortem, to view the body in situ. Although it looked very much like suicide, foul play had to be ruled out.
    A little earlier, he’d had to deal with an irate Club Secretary, James Birkett, who felt the police were being over the top in closing down the entire golf club, and demanded to know when his members could resume playing. He had been extremely unhappy when Glenn had told him, apologetically, that it would depend on whether or not the pathologist was satisfied there was no foul play. If he was not satisfied, it meant it could be several days before this part of the golf course at least could reopen.
    In an attempt to mollify him, and masking his irritation, Glenn Branson had asked the Secretary how he would feel if this man was a member of his family – would he not want the police to do everything possible to find the perpetrator, and not take the risk of golfers trampling a vital piece of evidence into the ground?
    Under the harsh lights the corpse seemed even more like a prop from a horror movie, and despite all his experience, Glenn found himself having to remember that this was a human being, someone’s son, and, more than likely, someone’s loved one. As the pathologist worked his painstakingly thorough, methodical, slow way around the body, Glenn tentatively put an arm around Bella’s shoulder. You had to be so careful in the police in this new politically correct age. One false move and you could find yourself up on a disciplinary charge of sexual harassment.
    He fancied Bella like hell. Although his wife, Ari, had died only a couple of months ago, they had been living apart for over a year and before her sudden death, following a bicycle accident, she had started divorce proceedings. Even beneath the blue hood of her crime scene protective oversuit, Bella looked attractive. In her mid-thirties, she was not conventionally beautiful, but she had something about her face, and a good figure, and Glenn believed that if she would allow him to organize a total makeover – as he had once done with Roy Grace – she would really blossom.
    There was one fly in the ointment, however. It seemed that at the moment she was dating one of his colleagues, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting. It was hard to understand what she could see in a four-times divorced, shabby, balding, pipe-smoking male chauvinist in his mid-fifties, and Glenn was determined to make a play for her. He felt her respond, a little, to the pressure from his right arm, and she moved closer, snuggling against him.
    ‘I am soooooo cold!’ she said. ‘And starving.’
    ‘Can’t offer you any pork scratchings, I’m afraid.’
    She shuddered. ‘Yech! Thanks, Glenn.’
    Suddenly her phone rang. She answered and Glenn strained to hear the