BooksBarbecue
Back The Game
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. NOW
  4. One
  5. BEFORE
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. NOW
  26. Twenty-One
  27. BEFORE
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. NOW
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. BEFORE
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. Forty-Two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-Four
  53. Forty-Five
  54. Forty-Six
  55. Forty-Seven
  56. Forty-Eight
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. NOW
  61. Fifty-Two
  62. Fifty-Three
  63. Fifty-Four
  64. Fifty-Five
  65. AFTER
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Acknowledgements
  68. About the Author

And whose body was this?

Fourteen

The atmosphere in the car was more charged than on the way to the hospital. Mark listened as Julie and Stephanie chatted animatedly in the backseat. The events of the past couple of hours seemed to have reinvigorated them somehow. As if before there was no hope, but now anything was possible.

Like Emily had been brought back to life.

Mark had heard Julie call the big fella, Uncle Rich, first, almost breathless with excitement as she’d informed him. A short, punctured conversation with her other child followed. The content didn’t seem to go much further than Your sister’s alive! before the phone had been handed back to Rich.

He was itching to get back so he could speak with DI Bennett and find out what the hell was going on. Why no one had checked the body for a birthmark. If they even knew she’d had one. He’d managed less than a minute on the phone to her earlier, giving her the update on the body’s identification. An expletive-ridden ten seconds had followed, before she’d ended the call abruptly.

It wasn’t going to be as easy as they’d hoped.

‘Do you know who it could be then?’ Stephanie said, leaning forward, her head between the seats in front.

‘We’re going to find that out now,’ Mark replied, propping an elbow on the passenger window lip and turning slightly to face Stephanie. ‘I’m just sorry you both had to go through that. I can promise you that it’s never happened to me before.’

‘It’s not your fault. We’re just relieved it wasn’t Emily.’

‘Still… that’s not an experience I enjoy inflicting on people.’

Stephanie caught his eye and held it. ‘We’re just happy to have you supporting us through this. Isn’t that right, Mum?’

Julie hummed a reply, her gaze fixed to the mobile phone screen in her hand. He glanced her way, wondering how long this change in her would last.

Mark didn’t think it would be long before they would be returning to the hospital. He couldn’t work out why he felt that way.

Maybe it was the fact that the dead girl in the morgue had been found within shouting distance of where Emily’s blood had been found.

‘Did she look familiar at all to you?’ Mark said, turning in his seat as far as his seatbelt would allow him. ‘Did you recognise her? Maybe you’ve seen her somewhere else, or with someone?’

Stephanie shook her head. ‘I couldn’t really tell what she looked like – she didn’t look good. There wasn’t much to see.’

Even despite the coroner’s best efforts, the young woman at the morgue was in a terrible state. A fall from a height had a way of changing the look of someone.