Day of the Dead by Mark Roberts

Day of the Dead by Mark Roberts

Author:Mark Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781784082956
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2017-05-03T18:30:00+00:00


63

2.43 pm

Riley pulled up at the lights at the junction of Muirhead Avenue and Queens Drive, looked in the rear-view mirror at Christine Green sitting on the back seat and handcuffed to one of the plainclothes detectives drafted in from Walton Lane police station to search her house.

‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ asked Christine.

Riley said nothing as she looked in the wing mirror and saw a black Hackney cab pull up behind her.

She looked back in the rear-view mirror and saw that Christine was now staring at her with contempt and anger.

‘Did you find jack shit? asked Christine. ‘No, you didn’t, but you’re still hauling me over the entire length of the city to answer a bunch of poxy questions about some crock-of-shit, trumped-up nothing.’ Her eyes flashed and she said, ‘Are you deaf or what?’

‘Or what,’ said Riley.

‘I’m a smart arse, I’m a copper,’ goaded Green.

Riley smiled.

‘What are you smirking at?’

Riley ignored her and remembered how Barney Cole had filled her in on the details of Christine Green’s past from the NPC when they were still in her house on Rice Lane.

Six years earlier, in her mid-twenties and not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Christine had been arrested at a bus stop on Lodge Lane in Liverpool 8 after calling an eighty-year-old Chinese man a fucking perv and a fucking Chink in front of a large group of black and white youths who detained her until the police arrived.

The red and amber traffic lights turned to green and Riley pulled across the junction and headed southbound on Queens Drive.

‘I said, What are you fucking smirking at?’

‘Book smart, street stupid!’ replied Riley.

The black taxi behind Riley’s car eased into the left-hand lane and slowly nudged forward. She glanced at the taxi driver and saw it was a tough-looking woman, a blonde whose attention was dead set on the road ahead and whose jaw pounded down hard on a wad of gum.

Riley looked at the road ahead as the rear end of the taxi pulled alongside the passenger door of her car. Her instincts started to twitch.

‘These fucking handcuffs are fucking pinching me. Oww! Owwwww!’

Put a bloody big rock in it, thought Riley.

The taxi edged ahead of Riley’s car in the left-hand lane and, uneasy now, she had a clear sense that she was being watched.

She glanced left at the passenger on the back seat and recognised her immediately. Samantha Wilson.

It’s got to be a coincidence, thought Riley. I see dozens of people I know in different places every single week.

Samantha Wilson raised a hand, waved, and Riley nodded back.

Samantha turned her attention away from Riley and towards the taxi driver. She spoke to the driver, gesticulating with her hands.

Issuing instructions, thought Riley, imagining the terminally lonely Karl Stone being hit on by a good-looking but flakey woman and the conflict he must have endured.

The taxi driver slowed right down and took a sharp right turn to tuck into the space behind Riley’s car.

Cathedral bells rang inside Riley’s head, as the black taxi remained directly behind her in the right-hand wing mirror.



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