Read Online Next to Die by Neil White - Free Book Online

the way.’
    ‘That’s the game, Joe. That’s what you keep telling me. And I’ve spoken to the prosecution. They’ve got some more papers for us. What you were given in court was just a summary. They’re arriving by courier later, so you can read them before tomorrow.’
    ‘Call me when they arrive. I’m going to draft Monica in on it.’
    ‘I thought you might.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    Gina laughed. ‘Come on, Joe, I’ve seen how you look at her. I can’t blame you. She’s a pretty young woman.’
    ‘I don’t look at her in any way,’ Joe said, a blush creeping up his cheeks.
    ‘I’m a woman, Joe. I know how men look at other women. Just promise me one thing: don’t make a fool of yourself,’ and then she turned to walk away.
    He didn’t answer that. He just looked away as the door closed slowly, listening as Gina’s footsteps receded faintly down the corridor.
    Joe turned in his chair to look out of the window. Monica was on a bench eating some salad in a plastic tray, a book open in front of her, her hand constantly pushing her hair back behind her ears as she dipped her head to eat, so that it was like a routine, her fork going to her mouth and then her hair teased back, and then it would fall forward again as she looked down to her tray. Joe smiled to himself. He had enjoyed her company during the day.
    She looked up and he pulled his head back quickly, panicking that she might see him watching, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. He closed his eyes. It was his window, with a good view, so everything was normal.
    Joe eased himself back in front of the window, and he saw that she was on her feet now, walking across to a litter bin, her food finished.
    He was about to turn away again, but then something attracted his attention. He leaned closer to the window and scoured the park. Then he saw it. It was a man sitting on a bench further along from Monica. He looked smart, in a blue V-neck and grey slacks, his hair parted neatly. But it wasn’t his clothes that had caught Joe’s attention. It was the way he was looking at Monica.
    No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that he was looking at her. He was studying her. He was sitting bolt upright, with his hands on his knees, his head turned towards her, watching as she put her food in the bin and started her walk back to the office.
    Joe kept watch on him as Monica went through the park gate and crossed the road to the office. As she skipped up the office steps, the click of her heels reaching up through the open window, the man got to his feet and walked away.

Thirteen
     
    Joe noticed the silence as he clicked the door closed in his apartment. No tick of a clock or the sound of conversation from another room. There were noises from elsewhere in the building – the mumbles of a television from the apartment above, and someone was shouting a few doors down – but his home had none of that.
    He was carrying a box filled with papers, Ronnie’s file, sent over from the prosecution an hour earlier. It was no way to spend his birthday.
    He walked through to the living room and put the box on the floor. The low evening sun flooded in as he opened the blinds. The apartment was sleek and minimalist, although more by accident than design. He wasn’t interested in decorative clutter. A sofa. A television. A computer. It was all he needed, because it was the view that he came home for.
    The apartment was in Castlefields, once the heart of the industrial revolution, the hub of what had built England, where waterways and railways converged, with the end point for the world’s first industrial canal, the stopping point for the cotton sent over from the Deep South, unloaded at Liverpool and sent along the canals to the Pennine towns that stretched all the way into Yorkshire, where deep green valleys became choked by smoke, and moorland grasses were replaced by long stretches of terraced housing, like deep gashes across the countryside. The history had