Read Online How To Kill Friends And Implicate People by Jay Stringer - Free Book Online

they’d know something was wrong. It would be better if she believed it. Just to begin with, until the heat died down.
    So. Okay. That was the plan sorted.
    He needed to fake his own death.
    And he couldn’t tell Kara he was doing it.

SEVENTEEN
    SAM
    18:00
    I’d never known what to make of Kara Pennan.
    The club had first hired me to look into some threatening letters sent to them. She’d been friendly and gracious to me at the time. That changed once I started fooling around with Milo. I was a threat to the business. They still wanted my services as an investigator, but she became cold and aloof, and treated me with the kind of polite contempt that I assume they teach at schools down in London.
    Standing in front of me at that table, she was shifting between the two. One second, the mask would be in place, the next I’d be seeing something else, something more nervous and tender. Then the mask again. It was like she was fighting to decide which version of herself to present.
    I went with the only response I could think of.
    ‘The little shit. What makes you think that?’
    She liked that. She gave me a very real smile and then waved for me to take a seat. I pulled back a chair and sat at the round table. Kara sat down beside me. She made a show of picking up her phone and turning it off, so that I knew I was getting all of her valuable time.
    ‘He’s been acting odd,’ Kara said. ‘He’s out all hours, and when he comes home he either smells of alcohol and nightclubs or, worse, he smells of nothing.’
    ‘Nothing?’
    I understood what she meant, and why it was a bad sign, but sometimes it’s best to pretend. Kara liked to be in control, and I would get more out of the conversation by letting her lead it.
    She fixed me with an aloof expression, putting me in my place. ‘You’re single, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yep.’
    Excellent. That meant she was buying it.
    ‘Well, if he comes home smelling of nothing, at the end of a long day? After being in the office in his suit? And then wherever he’s been after that? To not smell of any of it? It means he’s had a wash. It means he’s covering something.’
    ‘He could just be working late, washing at the office because he doesn’t want the first thing you see of him each day to be a tired and sweaty guy.’
    ‘He has a phone that he thinks I don’t know about, too. A second phone. It doesn’t show up on his bank statements, so I think it’s pay-as-you-go. I’ve seen it a couple of times, it’s a small black thing, flip top. It’s got buttons. ’
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘Right? He goes out of the room sometimes, touching the pocket that it’s in, like he’s about to take a call or answer a text. Other times, I’ve seen a big stack of mail come through the door in the morning, but later on about half of it’s gone, like he’s hiding some bank or credit card statements from me.’
    Did married people spy on each other’s bank statements? Not for the first time, the whole marriage thing seemed alien to me. I’d never been with a man that I really trusted, certainly not one I’d want to share my life with, but I clung on to the idea that marriage should be to someone I did trust.
    Kara continued. ‘He had a couple of travel brochures come through the door recently. Holiday destinations. But he never mentioned it, and the brochures disappeared.’
    ‘And how have you two been getting on? I mean, you’ve listed a load of stuff there that sounds bad, but it’s all in how the two of you are, aye? It could all be innocent.’
    ‘He’s been distant in the last couple of months. He’s always looking over his shoulder when we’re out, and he doesn’t talk much. It used to take a gag to get him to shut up, he always wanted to share his opinions.’
    ‘He’s from London, too, aye?’
    ‘Yeah. We came up for his work. He’s never liked it here. He thinks everyone’s out to get him, because he’s English. But I keep telling him, I’m English, too, and I love