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Back Dead Water Save as PDF
Chapters (47)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-One
  22. Chapter Twenty-Two
  23. Chapter Twenty-Three
  24. Chapter Twenty-Four
  25. Chapter Twenty-Five
  26. Chapter Twenty-Six
  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-One
  32. Chapter Thirty-Two
  33. Chapter Thirty-Three
  34. Chapter Thirty-Four
  35. Chapter Thirty-Five
  36. Chapter Thirty-Six
  37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-One
  42. Chapter Forty-Two
  43. Chapter Forty-Three
  44. Chapter Forty-Four
  45. Chapter Forty-Five
  46. Chapter Forty-Six
  47. Chapter Forty-Seven

‘But he’d have confided in you,’ Perez said gently. ‘He’d have told you what his story was about.’

Maria looked at him as if she suspected Perez of betraying Jerry too.

‘It might help us find out who killed him,’ Perez said. ‘We have to know what brought him here, what he was planning to write about.’

She looked at him, seemed at last to be wavering, to be ready to tip over the edge and answer. Then there were footsteps on the stairs. Peter, chilled now and ready to come into the warm, appeared at the door.

‘Jimmy!’ he said, his voice so jolly that he must have been practising the tone all the way from the garden. ‘Still here then? I was just going to make some coffee. You’ll join us?’

Perez looked at Maria, hoping that she still might be persuaded to talk to him, but it seemed that whatever spell he’d put on her had been broken. She stood up. ‘I’ll take a bath,’ she said. ‘Leave you boys to it.’ But at the door she paused. ‘He was going to tell us,’ she said. ‘He was going to tell us his secret the night he died. We were waiting up for him.’ She left the room before Perez could talk to her further.

‘Do you know what that was about?’ he asked Peter.

The man shrugged. ‘I know nothing about any secret,’ he said. ‘You should take it with a pinch of salt. Jerry and Maria both enjoyed a drama.’

Perez declined the coffee and walked back to his house. He collected his car and set off for the Bonhoga.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Perez arrived at the gallery before the lunchtime rush. Once the Bonhoga had been a water mill and it was still a grand three-storeyed building. On the ground floor there was a shop and reception, and upstairs in the roof the exhibition space. Perez couldn’t go up there. Whenever he’d come to the Bonhoga with Fran she’d drag him up to look at the paintings and drawings, and the memory was too raw. She’d exhibited there herself on a number of occasions. So he went straight downstairs to the coffee shop, where one wall was made up of huge windows looking over the burn.