BooksBarbecue
Back Bad Friends Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Bad Friends
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. AFTER: DECEMBER
  6. BEFORE: JUNE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-One
  48. Chapter Forty-Two
  49. Chapter Forty-Three
  50. Chapter Forty-Four
  51. Chapter Forty-Five
  52. Chapter Forty-Six
  53. Chapter Forty-Seven
  54. Chapter Forty-Eight
  55. A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE SEEBER
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. About the Author
  58. By the same author:
  59. About the Publisher

I dug around in my bag for the keys, fumbling as I hurried, annoying myself with my clumsiness. I put my overnight bag and the carrier of groceries from Pendarlin by the front door, which still smelled of fresh paint. And it wasn’t double-locked. I frowned. I was quite sure I’d left it locked – but maybe in my hurry to collect Bel on Friday …

The rank and fetid air hit me hard as soon as I pushed the door open. I whistled for the bloody dog again, but still he didn’t come. I took a deep breath and steeled myself against the foul smell, propped the street door open with my bags and slowly crept up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs I froze, my hand already sweating where I clutched the metal banister. I stared and stared, but I couldn’t quite absorb any of it.

‘Oh my God.’ My voice was a cracked and empty husk.

What lay before me was utter carnage – a car crash, a train-wreck of a living room. The flat destroyed, my world turned upside-down: ransacked by someone who could only mean me harm. Rubbish from the bin lay strewn across the kitchen floor, rotting vegetables, old teabags, meat-bones – worse. Alex’s painting of dawn over Waterloo Bridge was slashed to pieces above the fireplace; my framed photos smashed. Every book and CD had been pulled from the shelves and flung across the room; clothes were scattered all down the flight of stairs from the bedroom. I looked closer. No, not my clothes – my underwear.

And across the back wall, once a stark and brilliant white, were huge words: scrawled in that red paint again, looking like the letters had just bled:

I’M GETTING CLOSER

What was that smell? I could taste it in my mouth now, hot and meaty. I gagged as it pervaded every pore.

And then I heard a noise. My top lip went all clammy. ‘Digby?’ I whispered, but I couldn’t see him. There was a creak on the stair, followed by a footstep. My heart began to gallop faster. What the hell did I do now? I looked around desperately; the bread knife was on the floor about five feet away. I made a lunge for it just as I heard another footstep.

Alex appeared on the stairs below me.

‘What the fuck’s happened here?’ He looked horrified. ‘And what the hell is this?’

In his hand he held an envelope, from which tumbled a stream of long black curls.

I burst into tears.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Once DI Fox had established that neither the roof-terrace nor the front door had been forced in any way, he wanted to know who had keys to the flat.