The Red Room by Dawson Mark

Author:Dawson, Mark [Dawson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, thriller, Suspense
Amazon: B0BR8L4TXC
Goodreads: 75441882
Publisher: Unputdownable Crime and Mystery Thrillers
Published: 2023-03-25T07:00:00+00:00

52

Francine was exhausted when she got home, and there were no spaces outside the house where she could park. She drove along St. Ann Street until she found somewhere she could leave the car and, ignoring the fact that her permit wasn’t valid this far down the road, she pulled up to the kerb and walked back to the house. It was only when she opened the door that she remembered that Charlie had offered to cook dinner for her. The light in the kitchen was on, and she could hear the radio, tuned to the channel that played the nineties indie tunes that he preferred. The music was loud and, as she slipped off her boots and hung up her jacket, she recognised the Manic Street Preachers.

“Hello?” she called out.

The volume on the radio was turned down, and Charlie stepped into the doorway. He was wearing her apron and, as she smiled at the incongruity of it, he gestured to the slogan printed onto the front.

“‘Wine goes in, wisdom comes out,’” he read. “Recent events would suggest otherwise.”

“Very funny.”

“We could put it to the test tonight?” He reached for the counter and held up a bottle of red. “I had a bottle of this last year. It’s bloody nice.”

Francine followed him into the kitchen and saw that he had already gone to an effort to make the evening special: he had laid the table with cutlery for three courses and had lit a candle that flickered above the two settings.

“Look at all this,” she said.

He pulled out her seat and, with a theatrical sweep of his arm, indicated that she should sit down. He went to the counter and brought out the first course: mussels with chorizo, beans and cavolo nero.

“So,” he said, sitting down and pouring out two glasses of the wine. “How was your day?”

“Difficult.” She took a bite of the mussels. They were delicious, and she said so.

“Thank you,” he said. “So what happened?”

“You know the death at the cathedral?”

“The bloke who fell off the tower?”

She nodded. “It wasn’t an accident. We’re sure about that now.”

“You said that someone went up the tower with him.”

“It’s not just that.”

She knew that she should keep her mouth shut, but she had been thinking about it all day, and she knew it would help her to relax if she could tell someone else about it, too.

“A video was sent to the Journal on the day he died. An old videotape—VHS.”

“Why would that have made him jump?”

“It’s a sex tape.”

“With him in it?”

“When he was younger.”

“Oh.”

“That’s not all. The boy in it was borderline legal—hard to say, one way or the other. Teenage.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded.

“So why push him off the tower?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t pay. Maybe the blackmailer wanted him dead and his reputation ruined. We don’t know.”

Charlie rose and cleared the plates away and then replaced them with the main course: baked sea bass with lemon caper dressing. Francine finished her glass and refilled it, Charlie held his out, and she topped that up, too.

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