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Back A Change of Circumstance Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Fifty-Nine
  61. Sixty
  62. Sixty-One
  63. Sixty-Two
  64. Sixty-Three
  65. Sixty-Four
  66. Sixty-Five
  67. Sixty-Six

‘Thank you. I won’t be a minute. But she was a very orderly girl, wasn’t she, tidy and careful. She must have loved her room.’

‘Yes.’ Greta smiled slightly. ‘She did. She’d had a much smaller room since she was a baby but last year I turned out everything from when this was the spare bedroom and had it decorated as she wanted – she chose it all. Yes. You’re right about Liv, Mr Serrailler.’

He had taken out textbooks, a file full of notes, neatly made, separated by colour-coded dividers, pencil case, a timetable in a clear plastic wallet, a tube of fruit sweets, a stick of lip salve . . . and the girl’s mobile phone, a smartphone but not the latest model, with a well-thumbed screen. He put it into his pocket and dug around the bottom of the bag, and felt something in a side pocket.

The second phone was a burner, black, small, probably only for texting. Like all of this type, it had plenty of battery left because the occasional text and nothing else used up very little power. He clicked it on. The screen lit up and he clicked again. Most phones, especially those belonging to teenage girls, had a long directory full of names and numbers.

But this phone had one mobile number stored, and only one.

He knew what it would be before checking. Olivia had been given the phone by the owner of the number, so that he could text her whenever he had a job for her. She would reply when she had picked up the packet and again when she had delivered it. And then the phone would be silent until the next time her county lines runner needed her.

Forty-Two

Vince had never gambled, apart from buying a National Lottery ticket every so often, and he had never been able to see the charm of it, given the number of people he had known who had ruined their lives via the racetrack or the casino, but when he walked into the Bevham Greyhound Stadium he caught the excitement and the buzz of the place.

He had once been to horse racing, at a course on the outskirts of a small town. There had been hardly any spectators and no buzz at all.

For a while, he wandered about, looking, listening. It was packed in spite of the cold and no one took any notice of him. He bought a programme and a lager and stood at the bar, studying faces, the way men walked, what they were wearing – the crowd was ninety per cent male – listening to talk about dogs and statistics and chances, odds, physique, which one liked to break late, understanding nothing much, but feeling the energy of the place get to him.