Chapters (78)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
- Also by Nicci French
- About the Publisher
Jude looked at this man, who she strongly suspected had hired Liam and Vin without having the money to pay them. She tried to imagine how she would have reacted if she had been Liam. Angry. Abusive. That sounded about right.
Thirty-Four
It was dark by the time Jude returned to the flat. The cat hissed and the fridge whined. She took off her muddy boots and put on the kettle. She checked her phone and saw the unopened texts, emails, missed calls and WhatsApp messages.
She clicked on the first text. It started with “Darling, darling Jude.” She put her phone facedown on the table. Her chest ached.
She ran a bath, hot and deep, and tipped in the last of Simon’s muscle-relaxing bath foam. Bubbles came almost to the brim and she lowered herself in with a sigh and slid into the water.
She thought about Liam stubbing his cigarette butt out on a table he didn’t like and laughing. Then she thought about him taking the blame for the crash without any sense of martyrdom or virtue. She thought about him as she had last seen him, smiling at her, unreadable. She thought about him dead: a body pushed out of sight under a bush on the marshes, in the rain and darkness.
She thought about how she had been unable to tell Nat what she had done when she was a teenager: she couldn’t have given her secret to the hard-faced stranger she had met up with yesterday. She closed her eyes and sank beneath the water and then, with a splutter of blown-out breath, she surfaced again.
A thought had snagged her.
Wrapped in a towel, she sat on the bed with her mobile, found DI Fox’s number and rang it.
“I thought I should keep you up to date.”
“Up to date with what?”
“For a start, Liam’s financial affairs were in chaos.” Jude paused, remembering Leary telling her that the police had already talked to him. “I suppose you already knew that.”
“I did.”
“I went to see someone who owed Liam all that money. A guy called Anthony Leary. He and Liam clearly had a massive falling-out.” Jude waited but Leila Fox didn’t respond. “I thought it might be worth looking into.”
“Did you?”
Jude waited but Leila didn’t say anything else.
“The thing I really wanted to say was about Nat.” She coughed. “My ex.”
“I know who Nat is.”
“You asked me about him before and I told you that he hadn’t known anything about Liam. I just thought of something. The morning when everything started, when Liam met me at the hospital and asked me to do him a favor. When Liam turned up, I texted Nat to say not to come.”
Jude waited for a reply. Nothing.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“Yes.”