Read Online Clean Break by Val McDermid - Free Book Online Page A

recently taken to extracting his payment in kind in Manchester’s clutch of excellent Thai restaurants. I’m not sure if that’s down to the food or the subservient waitresses. Either way, I’d entirely lost touch with anything that didn’t come out of a wok. Which made Michael Haroun a refreshing change in more ways than one.
    He’d arrived promptly at twenty-nine minutes past seven. I’d grown so used to Richard’s flexible idea of time that I was still applying eye pencil when the doorbell rang. I nearly poked my eye out in shock, and had to answer the door with a tissue covering the damage. Eat your heart out, Cindy Crawford. Michael lounged against the door frame, looking drop-dead gorgeous in blue jeans, navy silk blouson and an off-white collarless linen shirt that sure as hell hadn’t come from Marks and Spencer. My stomach churned, and I don’t think it was hunger. “Long John Silver, I presume,” he said.
    â€œWatch it, or I’ll set the parrot on you,” I replied, stepping back and waving him in.
    He shrugged away from the door and followed me down the hall. I gestured towards the living room and said, “Give me a minute.”
    Back in the bathroom, I repaired the damage and surveyed myself in the full-length mirror. Navy linen trousers, russet knitted silk T-shirt, navy silk tweed jacket. I looked like I’d taken a bit of trouble, without actually departing from the businesslike image. Michael wasn’t to know this was my newest, smartest outfit.
Besides, I’d told Richard my evening engagement was a business meeting, and I wasn’t entirely ready for him to get any other ideas if he saw me leave.
    I rubbed a smudge of gel over my fingers and thrust them through my hair, which I’d kept fairly short since I was shorn without consultation earlier in the year. My right eye still looked a bit red, but this was as good as it was going to get. A quick squirt of Richard’s Eternity by Calvin Klein and I was ready.
    I walked down the hall and stood in the doorway. Michael obviously hadn’t heard me. He was deep in a computer gaming magazine. Bonus points for the boy. I cleared my throat. “Ready when you are,” I said.
    He looked up and smiled appreciatively. “I don’t want to sound disablist,” he said, “but I have to admit I prefer the two-eyed look.” He closed the magazine and stood up. “Shall we go?”
    He drove a top-of-the-range Citroën. “Company car?” I asked, looking forward to the prospect of being driven for a change.
    â€œYeah, but they let me choose. I’ve always had a soft spot for Citroën. I think the DS was one of the most beautiful cars ever built,” he said as he did a neat three-point turn to get out of the parking area outside my bungalow. “My father always used to drive one.”
    That told me Michael Haroun hadn’t grown up on a council estate with the arse hanging out of his trousers. “Lucky you,” I said with feeling. “My dad works for Rover, so my childhood was spent in the back of a Mini. That’s how I ended up only five foot three. The British equivalent of binding the feet.”
    Michael laughed as he hit a button on the CD player and Bonnie Raitt filled the car. Richard would have giggled helplessly at something so middle of the road. Me, I was just glad of something that didn’t feature crashing guitars or that insistent zippy beat that sounds just like a fly hitting an incinerator. We turned out of the small “single professionals” development where I live and into the council estate. To my surprise, instead of heading down Upper Brook Street towards town, he turned left. As we headed down Stockport Road, my heart sank. I prayed this wasn’t going to be one of those twenty-mile drives to some pretentious bistro in the
sticks with compulsory spinach pancakes and only one choice of vodka.
    â€œYou