Read Online Kick Back by Val McDermid - Free Book Online Page B

worth the wait. Diane Shipley was every private investigator’s dream. She lived at the head of Sutcliffe Court, her bungalow commanding a view of the whole close. With a corner of my brain, I had noted the raised flower beds and the ramp leading up to the front door, but it still didn’t stop me having my eyes at the wrong level when the door opened. I made the adjustment and found myself staring down into a face like a hawk; short, salt and pepper hair, dark beady eyes, deep set and hooded, narrow nose the shape of a puffin’s beak, and, incongruously, a wide and humorous mouth. The woman was in a wheelchair, and it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.
    I delivered my usual spiel about the house next door’s conservatory, and her face relaxed into a smile. “You mean Rachel Brown’s conservatory?” she inquired.
    I checked my list. “I’ve got Rowena and Derek Brown,” I said.
    â€œAh,” said the woman. “Dirty work at the crossroads. You’d better come in. My name’s Diane Shipley, by the way.”
    I introduced myself as I followed her down the hall. We turned left into an unusual room. It ran the whole depth of the house, with windows on three walls, giving a sensation of light and air. It was painted white, with cork-tiled flooring. The walls were decorated with beautifully detailed drawings of flowers and plants. Across one corner was a draughtsman’s table, set at the perfect height for her chair. “I illustrate children’s books for a living,” she said. “The other stuff I do for fun,” she added, gesturing at the walls. “In case you were wondering, I had a riding accident eight years ago. Dead from the waist down.”

    I swallowed. “Right. Em, sorry about that.”
    She grinned. “That’s not why I told you. I find that if I don’t, people only concentrate on half of what I’m saying because they’re so busy wondering about my disability. I prefer a hundred percent attention. Now, how can I help you?”
    I trotted out the old familiar questions. But this time, I got some proper answers. “When I’m working, I tend to do a fair bit of staring out of the window. And when I see people in the court, I must confess I watch them. I look at the way their bodies move, the shapes they make. It helps when I’m drawing action. So, yes, I noticed quite a lot about Rachel.”
    â€œCan you describe her?”
    Diane wheeled herself across to a set of map drawers. “I can do better than that,” she said, opening one and taking out an A4 file. She shuffled through the sheets of paper inside, extracted a couple and held them out to me. Curious, I took them from her. They were a series of drawings of a head, some quite detailed, others little more than a quick cartoon of a few lines. They captured a woman with small, neat features, sharp chin, face wider across the eyes. Her hair was shoulder-length, wavy. “It was streaked,” Diane said, following my eyes. “I wondered a couple of times if it might be a wig. It always looked the same. Never looked like she’d just been to the hairdresser. If it was a wig, though, it was a good one. You couldn’t tell, not even face to face.”
    â€œHow well did you know her?” I asked.
    â€œAt first, not at all. She didn’t spend that much time here. It was May when she moved in, and really, she was only here perhaps three or four nights a week, Monday to Friday. She was never here at weekends. Then, one evening in June, she came over. It was about half past nine, I’d guess. She said she had a gas leak and she was waiting for the emergency engineers. She told me she was nervous of staying in, especially since they had told her not to turn any lights on. So I invited her in and gave her a drink. White wine. I had a bottle open already.”
    I loved it. A witness who could tell me what she’d had to