Read Online 02 Blue Murder by Emma Jameson - Free Book Online

know you can hear
me!”
    Jolted back to consciousness, Bhar threw
aside his blanket and consulted the bedside clock. 6:02 a.m. He’d
been asleep for barely three hours. Had his mother, normally
cognizant of everything that transpired in her home — even from the
depths of her bedroom, snug under her bloody covers in the middle
of the bloody night — failed to notice he’d worked twenty-one hours
straight?
    Flopping down again, Bhar turned his back on
the clock, molding his pillow over his ears.
    His mobile shrilled from the nightstand.
Groaning, Bhar sat up. Seizing the phone, he considered hurling it
against the wall, then thought better of it. Heaven help the
detective who ignored a call while working a high-profile murder
case.
    “ This is Bhar,” he
muttered.
    “ Deepal, I am not playing
with you. Come downstairs at once.”
    Giving a mighty, strangled groan — the sound
of defeat, not defiance — Bhar threw himself out of bed, bare feet
thudding hard enough against the wooden floor to rattle the light
fixtures over his mother’s head. Pulling on his dressing gown, he
yanked the bedroom door open with such force, the knob slammed into
the opposite wall. A small crater in the plaster deepened
incrementally, as it had been doing for years.
    “ What?” Bhar bellowed down
the stairs. “What in the name of God is so important?”
    Sharada Bhar appeared at the foot of the
staircase. Short and plump with an impish face, she had a genius
for regaining her own tranquility after pushing Bhar over the edge.
The look she turned on him now was utterly serene.
    “ There is no need to shout
or be profane.”
    “ I haven’t yet begun to be
profane,” Bhar said in tones of menace. He pounded down the stairs,
overlarge robe flapping behind him. It had been a gift from his
aunt Dhvani — a towering, robust woman who labored under the
delusion he was as big and beefy as those professional wrestlers
she adored.
    “ Deepal. Come and sit with
me.” Sharada’s tone suggested she was at peace with the endless
suffering that was her lot. At the same time she widened her eyes,
shameless as a greeting card puppy.
    He emitted another, weaker groan. In Bhar’s
experience, the phrase “Come and sit with me” always boded ill. His
mother habitually began difficult conversations with those words.
Over the years, “Come and sit with me” had preceded everything from
“This report from your teacher is unacceptable” to “I do not
approve of my only son becoming a uniformed thug” to “Because your
father ran off to live with that slut, we may lose the house.”
    “ Come,” his mother repeated,
still with that unnerving tranquility. She ushered Bhar into the
front sitting room, where the large screen telly — his gift to them
both last Christmas — hung on the wall. Neither he nor Sharada were
Christian — at most, they might be described as unobservant Hindus.
But since his early teens, when his mother had dragged a freshly
cut fir tree into the house, enlisting Bhar’s help to hang
ornaments on its fragrant green branches, he and Sharada had
celebrated a secular Christmas. His father found the whole thing
offensive, even obscurely anti-Indian, especially as the yearly
event grew to include stringed lights, inflatable reindeer and
hideous Christmas jumpers. But Sharada ignored such criticism. She
wasn’t one to miss out on a great party just because of a religious
technicality.
    Stifling a yawn, Bhar dropped onto the sofa
— corduroy, over-stuffed and older than he was. The telly was tuned
to the local news. Onscreen a pretty blond reporter described the
axe murders at 14 Burnaby, then breathlessly recounted the trial
and acquittal of Sir Duncan Godington. Blurry crime scene photos
from the Godington case — the tamest available — flashed onscreen
during her narration.
    “ Deepal, that man nearly
ruined your career. You cannot risk letting him succeed this time.
You must recuse yourself from this case.” To