Read Online Speak No Evil by Martyn Waites - Free Book Online

just one, horrific event to define a life. She had parlayed her rage and grief into a media career, never forgiving, never forgetting.
    He switched off the TV, picked up the mug, took another mouthful, drained the mug empty. He took it into the kitchen, placed it on the draining board. Albion House. He couldn’t resist it. If ever there was a place and a business made for each other, this was it.
    Situated on Stepney Bank in the heart of the Ouseburn area of Newcastle, the area’s claim to fame was that it used to appear in the credits of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? as a symbol of the region’s run-down industrial past. It was now rapidly redeveloping as a base for newer, smaller, more dynamic businesses. Artists’ studios. Theatre companies. Galleries. Printers. Publishers. The Seven Stories children’s literature museum. And pubs like the Cluny, a reclaimed bonded whisky warehouse now turned into bars, restaurant, live music venue and art gallery. And Donovan’s local. Almost his second office.
    Albion House was a great location, he thought. And the mortgage was cheaper than on the old place. Business was starting to pick up and the place had been renovated and redecorated. Things were going well.
    He thought of the screen downstairs in the office showing the unchanging blue door.
    Most things were going well.
    He checked his watch once more. Yes, he wouldn’t look too desperate if he turned up at the Cluny now. He was just about to leave, moving towards the front door, when he noticed an envelope on the floor. A brown manila. He picked it up. No postmark, no address. Just his name printed on the front.
    He opened the door, looked up and down the street. Saw no one, nothing except streetlight-cast shadows in the late November evening. It could have been delivered any time since Anne Marie left. He closed the door, entered the office, opened the letter. Read it.
    You’re working with that child murdering bitch. She’s probably giving you the sob story. Well here are a few things you don’t know about her. Check these. Guy Brewster. London. Adam Wainwright. Bristol. James Fielding. Colchester. Patrick Sutton. Hull. Now go to work.
    Donovan no longer wanted to eat or drink at the Cluny. Or anywhere. He wanted to do what the letter said. Go to work. He sat down at his iMac.
    Did just that.

‘So what were you found guilty of?’ He knows the answer to the question but asks it anyway. For the recorder. For the record.
    â€˜Manslaughter. On the grounds of diminished responsibility.’
    â€˜And how did you feel about that when it was read out?’
    She sighs. She reaches automatically for a cigarette but stops herself from taking one. Her bandaged hands stay on the table, fingers moving like small electric shocks are being administered.
    â€˜I didn’t know what he meant at first. I didn’t know whether that meant I could just go home or not. I knew that if he said murder then that meant prison.’
    â€˜How did you know that meant prison?’
    â€˜I’d seen it on the telly. Murderers were caught and went to prison. Sometimes they were hanged. That’s what really scared me. That they would hang me.’
    â€˜They wouldn’t have hanged a child, I would have thought. Not even then.’
    â€˜They would have done if they could have got away with it. But they gave me manslaughter because of the psychiatric report.’ Her fingers reach for the cigarette pack on the word ‘psychiatric’.
    â€˜What did that say?’
    â€˜That I had a psychopathic personality. That I didn’t know right from wrong. That I had no concept of death.’
    â€˜And did you?’
    â€˜Which one?’
    â€˜Any of them.’
    She thinks for a moment before speaking. ‘Back then I probably didn’t know right from wrong. No. Lookin’ back I can say that now. But then I only had the things that had happened to me up till then