Post Mortem by Gary Bell (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

‘Not until the start of the trial a week today. I don’t have anything arranged before then.’

‘What do you have on tomorrow? We should talk to her.’

‘We?’

‘Of course we,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with you rocking the boat this near to the end of your pupillage. Not to mention the fact that these dealers are no doubt nasty people. I wouldn’t want to drag you into any sort of danger. Not again.’

Which, in hindsight, was a funny thing to say, because it wasn’t just Zara I ended up dragging into danger.

10

‘You think she’ll be happy to talk with the two of us ambushing her like this?’

We were sitting in my car late the following afternoon, back in Walthamstow, kerbed while I checked the address on my paperwork.

‘It’s a gamble,’ I confessed, ‘but I don’t want to give her time to work herself up again.’

That was a half-truth. What I really wanted was to speak to Charli Meadows and without her brother and her solicitor.

I studied myself in the mirror. I hadn’t slept well, and I feared it showed. At worst, I’d expected the dog’s presence to amount to a low, steady breathing sound. Something peaceful. Instead, she’d walked in tight, unsettled circles as soon as the lamp was out, rattling off the walls of her cage and crying softly, every noise amplified by darkness. For the first hour, I wouldn’t get out of bed to open her crate. In my exhaustion, I worried that she might claim her revenge on mankind by taking those blunted teeth to my throat as soon as I was unconscious. But I let her out, eventually, and after a few more pointless laps of the room she flopped like a warm, rolled-up carpet onto my lower legs.

In the dark, I hadn’t been able to keep my mind from Lydia Roth. I’d faced gangland killers without breaking a sweat, but the thought of a woman – any woman after my marriage – made me anxious. It brought about images I wasn’t ready for, and I had decided not to ring Lydia back even to arrange this meeting. I resolved to see Charli Meadows without her.

After yesterday’s traipsing back and forth across the city, and today’s paperwork, I was feeling quite drained. I sensed a migraine on the horizon. If Meadows had just been straight with me from the beginning, I suspected, it would’ve saved me a great deal of time.

She lived on Low Hall Lane, an incredibly narrow, curved, almost-rural road with houses lining only the south side. All these houses faced a vast greenery of allotments that stretched off behind wire fencing on the opposite side of the road. I left the car under a canopy of the allotments’ overhanging trees and we walked the curvature of the lane on foot while I looked for the correct address. The houses were small, terraced, squashed up together like drunks in a crowd.

‘It’s this one?’ Zara said as I stepped through a front gate onto gravel that was more dandelion than stone. ‘She’s no Tony Montana.’

I got to the front door and lifted a knuckle to knock politely, but I didn’t manage to make a sound before a massive, snarling dog threw its entire weight into the glass from the other side. I jumped, catching my footing before falling backwards onto the gravel, and Zara burst into laughter.

‘Jesus Christ!’ I fumed. ‘If I haven’t had enough of damn dogs for one week!’

Even through the door’s frosted pane, it was obvious that the dog was a huge white beast of postman-eating proportions.

‘Who’re you?’ somebody called out from behind us.

We turned. Directly across the thin road, standing in a patch of grass that looked particularly wild among the tended allotments, was a boy of around eleven or twelve years old. In his concern, it wasn’t difficult to spot the family resemblance.

‘I’m looking for Charli Meadows,’ I said loudly over the dog’s baying through the closed door behind us. ‘Your mother?’

The boy’s face tightened. ‘School send you?’

‘School?’ We came back out through the front gate and stepped into the empty road. Dusk was coming softly, and the allotments smelled sweeter for it. ‘No, the school didn’t send us.’

His eyes darted between us, knees twitching under what appeared to be an almighty fight-or-flight struggle. ‘That bitch Miss Rotenberg put you on to me? I’ve been sick.’

‘I don’t know Miss Rotenberg. We’re not education welfare officers, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

He scowled. ‘What are you then? Pigs?’

‘Do I look like a pig?’ I asked. ‘Actually, no, don’t answer that. We’re helping your mother out with a problem at work.’

‘Lawyers?’

‘Barristers,’ Zara answered, ‘but close enough.’

He eyed us for a moment more, still resentful, then turned away to yell: ‘Mum!’

Some distance off, from a tiny potting shed: ‘What?’

‘Someone’s here for you!’

‘What?’

‘Here!’

We waited, separated by the fence. I looked at the nearby sign: Honeybone Allotments. To the boy, I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder and smiled. ‘Dogs, eh? I just got one myself. Yesterday, actually, and they really are –’

‘You going to get my mum off?’

No messing with this boy. I discarded the smile. ‘We’re going to do our best.’

From the potting shed behind him, Charli Meadows appeared, trailed by two little girls. She was wearing a pair of gardening gloves, hair tied up in a bandana, soil stains on the knees of her jogging pants. She looked worried. ‘Mr Rook? What’s going on? Is everything all right?’

‘Quite all right,’ I said, looking past the boy’s unbreakable glower.

‘Where’s Lydia?’

‘Quite busy preparing for the trial,’ I told her. I had no clue. ‘This is Zara Barnes, one of our brightest young stars at Miller & Stubbs. We were in the area and I thought I ought to swing by and see how you were getting on.’

‘You were in Walthamstow?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘At the court,’ I lied, lighting up a cigarette; Snaresbrook was only fifteen minutes away. ‘We pass