Read Online The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) by Catriona King - Free Book Online Page A

together and we can’t do that if we’re barely civil.” He looked at his watch and made a swift decision. “I’ll be in Limavady in an hour, and I’d like a meeting, D.I McNulty.”
    There was silence for a moment. He hated pulling rank, but he knew that she couldn’t refuse to meet a senior officer. Finally she answered him, slowly, and feigning indifference.
    “As you wish, sir. I can do 5.30. Now I really have to go.” And with a quiet click, she’d gone.
    And without even planning it, he’d found his perfect exit from Harrison’s press fiasco, and from Maggie Clarke’s demanding gaze.
    ***
    The dissection room was always cold, but John rarely felt it, much more interested in the dead’s answers than his own comfort. Davy had phoned through his findings on the photographs five minutes before and they fitted perfectly with John’s on the bullet. Now he just had to work out the logistics.
    Normally Des would look at bullets and trajectories, but he was on leave, and John didn’t want the north-west having all the fun, so at that moment he was in Des’ lab on Des’ computer, playing with Des’ programmes, and setting up a spectacular light show for Marc Craig to solve.
    *** 
    Joe Watson hadn’t believed it when he’d been told, dismissing it angrily as Stormont gossip. The grapevine running away with itself again. Then he’d tried her mobile, listening anxiously as it rang and rang, and then cut to her sweet, kind voice on the answerphone, entreating him to leave a message.
    He’d left three now, with no reply, and he thought vaguely that the police would soon know that he’d called. But he didn’t care, not even a little, unable to shake off the image that while he’d been having the best sex of his life; Irene had been somewhere alone and frightened. He reached for the whisky bottle and poured himself another hit, trying to drown the pain, but he couldn’t. The mother of his child was dead.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    Bob Leighton wasn’t hanging around. Once they’d told him about the note, he’d known exactly what was happening, and he wasn’t staying for the finale. He looked around the bedroom that he’d shared for years, with the woman that he’d killed as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger. His eyes filled with sudden tears.
    He sat on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands for a moment, remembering her. Her warm laugh and her shining fair hair. The scent that she’d always worn, that smelled of raspberries and summer, all year round. He smiled at the memory of her touch while tears ran freely down his cheeks, and then he sobbed rawly that their son would never feel that gentle touch again.
    They’d loved each other, really loved each other, but he’d buried it under career and politics. Under the years of his infertility and trying desperately for a baby, nearly breaking them, in every way possible. None of it was her fault, none of it. She’d stayed as kind and loving as the woman that he’d married twenty years before. Never demanding, never scolding, and never giving him a reason to be cruel. But he hadn’t needed a reason, it was just who he was. He loved power.
    With the power came more stress and easing it with drugs, and now, what? Kaisa? He would never have done anything while Irene was still alive, but now? He needed warmth and comfort and he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But he couldn’t tell her yet; too soon, it would be wrong. People would think that he’d never loved Irene. But he did.
    He kept packing and thinking, now and again lifting one of his wife’s trinkets, tempted to put them in his case as a keepsake, already wearing her wedding ring to remember her by. He needed to get away, just for a few days. To think, and find a way out of this mess. He’d be back, Ben needed him. Of course he’d be back.
    Just then, a telephone rang and it took him a moment to decide, landline or mobile? Then he reached into his jacket pocket, and looked at the