Read Online The Stone Gallows by C David Ingram - Free Book Online Page A

along Woodlands Road, an area of the city that was notorious for the amount of brothels tucked between lawyers’ offices. The hair was shorter, the face two years older (and, I hate to say, twenty years wiser), but there was no doubt in my mind that it was her. After showing her picture to just about everybody in the city, I felt like I could recognise her face blindfold. From there, it was a simple matter to follow her to work, and even simpler to arrange a meeting.
    Like I said, shoe leather.
    â€˜So how did you end up working in a place like this?’ I asked her.
    â€˜I just kind of drifted into it. I was homeless when I first came here, sleeping in squats and stuff like that, always cold. I ended up having a one nighter with some rich guy just so as I could have a place to sleep.
    When I woke up in the morning he’d gone out, to get a loaf of bread to make toast or something. Didn’t matter. I cleaned out his flat and hit the road.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘I realised then and there that there was no reason for me to be cold and hungry all the time, not when I was young and good looking and not too picky.’
    â€˜You’re still young and good looking.’
    She blew a plume of smoke at me. ‘Tough luck, pal, your fifteen minutes are up.’
    â€˜So why run away in the first place?’
    She shrugged. ‘Did you read the letter my dad gave you?’
    I shook my head. ‘I was only hired to find you.’
    She took the page out, read through it quickly before tucking it away again. ‘I just got sick of them, you know? Mum had an affair with the next door neighbour. Dad knew about it, but just let it go. You could see how miserable he was, but he just didn’t have the balls to act, and all the time mum was just making a complete fool of herself.
    She was talking about leaving dad, of upping sticks and going to run a bar in Ibiza, and everybody in the fucking village was laughing at her. I just got tired of the whole thing and moved on. My boyfriend was a few years older, said that we could make a go of it. I was dumb enough to believe him.’
    â€˜Boyfriend?’ I’d asked about boyfriends, but her father had been unable to tell me anything. Now I could understand why. At the time, he’d been too concerned about his wife’s affair to notice what was going on in his daughter’s life.
    â€˜Yeah. The bastard ditched me a week after we got here.’
    â€˜Sounds like a nice guy.’
    â€˜A prince.’
    â€˜So why didn’t you go back to your parents?’
    She shrugged, and in that gesture I realised that for all her adult mannerisms, she was barely more than a kid pretending to be a grown-up. ‘I figured I was old enough to look after myself.’
    â€˜You were sixteen.’
    â€˜Yeah, and about twice as bloody mature as my parents.’
    â€˜They want you to go home.’
    â€˜Why should I?’
    â€˜Because. . . ’ I wasn’t sure what to say. Even though she was still young, this girl had done things most people couldn’t imagine. It had changed her, making her seem not older, but more cynical. She was confusing life experience with maturity, but if I was to tell her that, she wouldn’t believe me. ‘Because they’re sorry.’
    â€˜Everybody is, nowadays.’
    I looked over at the fat businessman. He whispered in the ear of one of the girls at his side; a second later her hand slid underneath the table and into his lap. Her expression suggested that she would rather fondle a bucket of toads. ‘You’d prefer to stay here?’
    Anther shrug. ‘The money’s good.’
    I nodded in the direction of the opposite table. ‘It can’t be that good.’
    She watched for a few seconds, her face expressionless. ‘You’d be surprised. It beats working in some call centre for six pounds an hour.’
    â€˜Your parents love you.’ I told her,