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

their mate John, who had taken the picture, had just cracked.
    John, who had introduced them a year earlier, had a simple philosophy that they both often joked about: Get up, have a laugh, go to bed!
    But Jamie wasn’t laughing at that now. With tears streaming down his face, he stared at the woman he loved more than he could ever have imagined loving anyone, who he still hoped would become his wife.
    She was twenty-four, with long brown hair and an infectious smile that showed her immaculate white teeth. The first time he had seen her she had reminded him of a younger Demi Moore in one of his favorite movies, Ghost. She’d told him he reminded her of a younger Matt Damon, in an un–Matt Damon kind of way. Whatever that meant. She was like that, quirky and oblique at times.
    God, he loved her.
    Please be OK, my darling. Please come home. Please come home.
    Every time he heard a sound out in the corridor he turned and waited, expectantly, for Logan to walk in through the door.
    He turned to PC Holliday, who was sitting on a sofa making notes, and asked if there was any update.

 
    12
    Thursday 11 December
    Logan’s head was pounding. She was lying on her back, totally disoriented and with no idea where she was, shivering with cold. She was light-headed and giddy, and experiencing a faint swaying sensation, as if she were on a boat. And she badly needed to pee. Desperately. She fought against it. There was a vile smell in her nostrils, of mildew and something much stronger, a smell that reminded her of the time she and Jamie had come back from two weeks on the Greek island of Spetses last summer to find the mains fuse in their flat had tripped, and the fridge and freezer had been off for many days during an August heatwave.
    They had opened the freezer door to find two steaks crawling with maggots and a chicken that had turned bright green and almost luminous. The smell of the decaying flesh had made them both gag, and it had taken days of keeping the windows open, burning scented candles and constantly spraying the place with air fresheners to finally get rid of it.
    Was she having a nightmare?
    But her eyes were open. She could see a faint green glow of light. She was lying in some enclosed container, hemmed in on both sides so tightly she could not move her elbows. Her eyes were blurred, as if they had some kind of drops in them, and her mind was fuzzy. She tried to sit up and something hard dug into her neck, painfully, almost choking her.
    She cried out.
    What the hell?
    Where was she?
    It was coming back now. And with it, the terror. She felt a dark feeling of dread deep inside her.
    Driving down into the underground car park. Someone in the shadows. Then, suddenly, the hooded figure looming above her window. Her car door being yanked open.
    The hiss of gas.
    Her eyes stinging, agonizingly.
    Then nothing.

 
    13
    Thursday 11 December
    â€œI really like this Farrow and Ball paper for the dining room,” Cleo said. “What do you think?”
    The question took Roy Grace back almost twenty years, to when he and Sandy had bought their house. But the big difference was, he realized, that Sandy had got on and made all the decorating choices herself, without asking him his opinion in the way Cleo was doing.
    Roy had just dropped in, on his way to Chesham Gate, to update Cleo and keep his peace with her. He stood over the sofa and peered down at the gray and white zigzag pattern. It looked busy and a complete contrast, he thought, to the kind of paper Sandy would have chosen. She liked minimalistic, plain. “Yes,” he said, a little abstractly. The coffee table and most of the floor were scattered with fabric swatches and sample books. To their irritation, Humphrey kept moving around restlessly, sitting on different books. It was as if the dog sensed that change was happening, and was unsettled.
    Grace would have loved a drink right now. A really stiff vodka martini or a large glass of cold