Acid Row by Minette Walters

Author:Minette Walters [Walters, Minette]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: ISBN|9780330463034
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

14 Allenby Road, Portisfield

Little had changed in the Logan house, except that Kimberley had ceased her crying. Barry and Gregory still sat morosely watching television in the front room, and Laura remained closeted in the kitchen. There was no question of any of them going outside. Photographers, their long lenses focused on the front door, were camped behind barriers at the end of the street, hanging like leeches on the family’s misery.

Laura had moved to a chair at the table, her strained, white face showing her exhaustion. Tyler shook his head gently as he opened the door and saw hope leap into her eyes. ‘No news of her,’ he said, pulling out another chair, ‘but that’s a good sign, Laura. We really are optimistic that she’s alive.’

‘Yes.’ She placed a hand on her heart. ‘I think I’d know if she was dead.’

He smiled encouragement, leaving her with her illusions. He’d heard the same sentiment expressed a hundred times, but the link between people who loved each other was in the mind, not in the body, and real pain only began when death was certain.

‘I need to ask you some more questions about Eddy Townsend,’ he explained.

She dropped her head abruptly to shield her eyes and he cursed himself for letting her off the hook earlier. He should have realized that her obsession with hiding was too pathological to be confined to Rogerson alone. But he wondered what secrets could be so bad – or criminal? – that she would gamble on her daughter’s life by not revealing them. What lever would prise them out of her now?

‘We suspect Amy might be with him,’ he told her bluntly. ‘He returned early from Majorca, and a car similar to his was seen in Portisfield yesterday with a child answering Amy’s description in the passenger seat.’

She stared at him with such a bleak expression in her dark eyes that he knew she had been afraid of something like this from the beginning.

‘I need to know what happened, Laura.’

She dropped her face into her hands and ground the heels viciously into her lids as if she were driving out her devils. When she spoke, it was like an emotional dam bursting. ‘He was so handsome . . . so sweet . . . completely different from Martin. He really cared . . . about me . . . about Amy. It was all so different . . . so attractive . . . he called us his little princesses.’ Her voice broke on a half-sob, half-laugh. ‘Can you imagine how that felt after being treated like Martin’s hired help for ten years . . . making excuses for the fact we were in his precious house . . . walking on tiptoe so he wouldn’t know we were there . . . never opening our mouths so he couldn’t find something to criticize? I should have listened to my father . . . he said Martin only wanted a trophy . . . a bit of fluff on his arm that proved he could still get it up .

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