Read Online Out of the Dark by Natasha Cooper - Free Book Online Page B

vindictiveness and a need to know everything. The mention of ‘south of the river’ seemed too significant to ignore.
    ‘Where exactly did she live?’
    ‘I thought you might ask that,’ Sylvia said, sounding satisfied enough to justify Trish’s suspicion. ‘Hang on and I’ll get the report.’
    Four minutes later she was back. ‘The Mull Estate, Southwark. Sixty-three, Kingston Buildings specifically. It’ll be tough for you if there really was a baby from that relationship. I can’t imagine many successful barristers wanting to acknowledge some tart’s child from the slums as their half-sibling.’
    ‘I’m surprised you kept a report like that for so long,’ Trish said, too angry now to suppress everything she felt. ‘What were you planning to do with it? Blackmail him?’
    ‘That’s offensive – and ridiculous. If you must know, I assumed he was suffering a temporary bout of nostalgie de la boue. Some chaps do. So I waited until he was ready to come back. Then, when I had him at my mercy, I was going to rub his nose in the filth of what he’d been doing.’
    ‘Ah,’ Trish said, glad to know she hadn’t been unfair to the woman. ‘So that you could punish him, you mean?’
    ‘So that I could show him precisely why I would never have anything to do with him ever again. Touch a tart’s leavings? Ugh!’
    ‘It must have been very frustrating when he didn’t even try to come back.’
    ‘What makes you think he didn’t?’ Now the Kensington voice was seriously sharp.
    Because I wouldn’t have, Trish thought. We’re alike in that, Paddy and I, just as we’re alike in our terror of being shut up in a chintzy suburban prison. Aloud she gave the easier answer: ‘Because you’d have binned the report by now if he had come back and been made to face it. But I’m glad you kept it, and I’m grateful for the information. Goodbye.’
     
    Sylvia Bantell put down the telephone and looked around her immaculate drawing room. It had seemed appallingly dull for the past nine years, in spite of all the new bits and pieces she’d bought for it and the three expensive redecorations she’d lavished on it. Without Paddy Maguire’s fiery presence, the room – like her life – had felt empty, however many other people she’d imported to take his place.
    Odd to have had the most exciting year of your life at fifty-five, she thought. Paddy had never let her feel secure and so she’d never been bored with him. He’d made her laugh; he’d opened her eyes to life beyond her own little world; and in bed he’d led her into delights that could still make her blush whenever she thought about them.
    The edges of the detective’s report were digging into her hands. She looked down, rather ashamed of herself. Paddy wasn’t ever coming back and it was rather undignified to have betrayed him to his daughter. Sylvia ripped the stiff card covers from the report and wrenched at the tough plastic spiral that bound it. Somewhere in the house was
a portable shredder. She’d put the pages through that and forget the whole business: forget that Paddy had once made her feel like a tart herself. And that she’d loved every grubby, painful, thrilling minute of it.
    Could his daughter have any idea of what he was really like?
    Sylvia didn’t think so. With her intelligently attractive voice and the loyalty that had made her reject all implicit criticism of her father, Trish had sounded quite unaware of the truth. Poor Trish.
    Later, Sylvia watched each page of the report sliding through the dusty old shredder. It really was over now.
     
    Trish reminded herself that she was supposed to be working on Nick Gurles’s case, not delving into her father’s sexual past. She stuffed the envelope he’d given her into her bag and got back to work, wishing that the nervous-sounding trainee from Sprindlers had managed to track down the missing note. When Trish phoned to chase it up, the assistant said she was still trying to find