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Back The Favor Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
  77. Also by Nicci French
  78. About the Publisher

“No, I told you.” Jude stopped. “I just had the feeling that everything had worked out for me and it hadn’t worked out for him. I’d been lucky and he’d been unlucky and there’s a kind of guilt attached to that. Being okay when all around you there are people who aren’t. So when he came to me and asked for a favor, I just said yes. I felt I had to do it. And then this happened.” She looked at the two detectives. “What do you think? Could it just be terrible, terrible bad luck?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any other information apart from what I’ve told you. I don’t know anything. As you said, I was a hundred miles away.”

Leila Fox’s face looked more somber. She thought for a moment then told Jude that they would be driving her back to London. One of the uniformed officers would accompany her as she got her things. They would take care of Liam’s car.

Nine

Jude climbed into the rear of the car with her backpack, her head thick with exhaustion. The car set off, its headlights sweeping across the rough-surfaced lane, the trees and the marshes. She didn’t want to think and she certainly didn’t want to talk to the police or answer any more of their questions.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply and evenly, to concentrate only on her breathing: air going in, air going out. She heard the low rumble of conversation from the front of the car, the occasional swish of the windscreen wipers. Every so often lights coming from the other direction shone on her closed lids.

What did they think?

It wasn’t hard to guess. They thought Liam had been her lover, because why else would she have done him this favor? She had seen their expressions when she talked about the guilt she felt at her luck. They didn’t believe her. But what favor did Liam want? What did they think? What did Jude herself think?

Now they were driving her back to London, where Nat would be waiting.

She opened her eyes cautiously to look at the time illuminated on the dashboard. They had been driving for nearly an hour. It was just gone five o’clock; with no traffic they would probably be back in London by about six-thirty. What would she say to Nat when she stumbled in? She tried it out in her imagination: I told a lie. I didn’t go and visit my grandmother. I went to a cottage in Norfolk because someone I hadn’t seen for over eleven years turned up and asked me to do him a favor.