BEFORE HE KILLS AGAIN an unputdownable crime thriller full of twists by MARGARET MURPHY

Author:MARGARET MURPHY [MURPHY, MARGARET]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2020-07-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 38

Rowan snagged a coffee from the machine in the station’s basement and stumbled into the CID Room at 7.45 a.m. Ian Chan had promised to dust the thumb drive for fingerprints, but she didn’t hold out much hope.

‘You should go to Warman, Cass,’ he’d said. ‘The jacket was a message. This is a message.’

‘Funny,’ she replied. ‘That’s just what I told Neil.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to make a habit of agreeing with you, but when you’re right, you’re right.’

‘Okay — just for the sake of argument, let’s say I go to her — what would I tell her? My car was broken into — oh, and a thumb drive I thought was stolen turned up.’

‘Your car’s been broken into twice,’ he corrected. ‘And he left hand marks on your kitchen window — which, by the way, I might have been able to lift, if you’d told me when it happened instead of three days later. Someone’s stalking you, Cassie. I mean, how am I going to feel if you vanish without trace?’

She tried not to smile. ‘It’s always got to be about you, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and she realised he was in deadly earnest. ‘It’s all a huge joke. Well, if you don’t care about me,’ he said in all seriousness, ‘you might consider Neil.’

‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll talk to Warman later.’

As she approached her desk, she saw that someone had taped an oblong of newsprint to her computer monitor. She looked around; people stood in small groups or sat at their own desks, looking tired and winter-pale. To her right, Wicks rattled a newspaper and she stared at his lumpy profile for a few moments, but he seemed unaware of her, his lips moving silently as he read.

She set down her coffee cup and peeled the oblong of pulpy paper from her monitor. Her heart jumped. It was a newsprint photograph — her and Palmer, Osbourne’s analyst, in the foyer of his office building.

She glared angrily around the room. Wicks rattled his paper again, swivelling his chair to face her. He peered at her through a neat oblong cut from the front page, the size and shape of the picture she held.

‘You bumped your pal’s sketch off the front page,’ he said, holding up the newspaper so she could read the headline.

PSYCHED!

‘The boss is not a happy bunny.’

Rowan’s stomach tightened. ‘You buffoon, Wicks.’ She swiped the paper out of his hand and dumped it in the bin as she walked out of the office. Better to face Pat Warman now than wait to be sent for.

* * *

The tabloid lay on Warman’s desk like an accusation.

‘Can you explain this?’ she asked, her eyes hooded, her jaw so tight it seemed she held her fury clamped between her back teeth.

‘I just found out myself,’ Rowan said.

‘I asked for an explanation, not a chronology.’ Her voice, never attractive, was gratingly harsh.

Rowan retreated into stiff formality. ‘No, ma’am, I can’t explain it.’

‘You’re pictured in the local press with a key witness.

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