BooksBarbecue
Back The One from the Other
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

Then I saw it and my heart missed a beat. Protruding from under the drawn curtain of the changing cubicle was a woman’s stockinged foot. It was without a shoe. I took hold of the curtain, paused for a moment, bracing myself for what I knew I was about to find. And then I drew it aside. It was Vera and she was dead. The nylon stocking that had killed her was still wrapped tight around her neck like a near-invisible snake. I let out a long sigh and closed my eyes for a moment. After a minute or two I stopped behaving like a normal human being and started to think like a detective. I went back to the door and locked it, just in case. The last thing I wanted now was for one of Vera’s customers to walk in on me while I examined her dead body. Then I returned to the changing cubicle, drew the curtain behind me and knelt beside her corpse to make sure she really was dead. But her skin was quite cold and my fingers felt nothing when I pushed them underneath the twist in the stocking and against her jugular vein. She had been dead for several hours. There was dried blood in her nostrils and in her gums, and on the side of her face. And lots of scratches and finger marks around her chin and near the tie in the stocking. Her eyes were closed. I’d seen drunks look worse who were still alive. Her hair was a mess and her glasses lay broken on the floor. The changing cubicle chair had been knocked over and the mirror on the wall had a large crack in it. It was obvious that she had put up quite a struggle before yielding her life. It was a conclusion that I underlined when I lifted her hands and saw the bruises on her knuckles. It looked as if she had managed to punch her attacker. Perhaps several times.

I stood up, glanced around the floor, saw a cigarette end and picked it up. It was a Lucky, which wasn’t at all Lucky for me. There was an ashtray full of them back in my hotel room. I put the cigarette end in my pocket. There was enough circumstantial evidence against me already without giving the police a present of more. She and I had had sex the night before. I hadn’t been wearing a condom. Vera had said it was safe, which was another reason she had been keen to go to bed with me. A postmortem would find my blood type.