A Reason to Kill Read Online Free PDF

her to the bedside and looked Matt over. Didn’t like what he saw.
    “I need a smoke,” Tom said. “I’ll see you back in the waiting room.”
    Outside, well away from the main doors of the hospital, Tom fired up, dragged deeply on the cigarette, and stared out from under the concrete overhang at the summer rain that still sheeted down from a sullen sky.
    He was shaky, and felt weak and tired to the bone. Stunned disbelief was still the strongest emotion he felt. This wasn’t America, where cops met violent ends with sickening regularity. The shooting of police officers was still an extremely rare occurrence in Britain. That five of his men had been gunned down that morning was almost inconceivable. Donny Campbell had been married for less than a year, for Christ’s sake. And his wife, Kath, was pregnant. The kid would be born fatherless. Bernie Mellors was divorced, but had been very close to his two daughters. Keith Collins and Tony Pybus were single, though that was of little solace. How many lives had been affected by their deaths? How many hearts broken? Wives, children, parents, significant others and friends would have to face a wall of grief and find a way to accommodate it. It was a fucking catastrophe. And knowing that Frank Santini would be laughing at them made it even worse. Tom’s brain burned with a white-hot wire of anger. Even a young couple next door to the supposed safe house had been shot. The man was dead, but his wife had survived, though was in a critical condition. The bullet had struck her at an angle, glanced off her skull, fracturing it, but had been deflected enough to travel around the outside of her cranium, under the skin and hair, to almost tear her right ear off as it exited. There had also been a baby boy in the house, found unharmed. If the mother lived, then at least she still had her son. Tom supposed that his survival would be some measure of consolation. The kid wouldn’t be an orphan.
    Dropping the cigarette end and grinding it out with the sole of his shoe, Tom promised himself that Santini would get what was coming to him, and sooner rather than later. Even the mighty fall eventually, and Frank Santini would be no exception. His days were numbered.
    Back inside, grimacing at the antiseptic smell that hit him as the automatic doors slid back, Tom determined to stay at the hospital until Linda’s mother arrived. She was on her way in from Oxford, and should be there within the hour. He would then head back to the Yard, write up his report and steel himself against the bollocking that the brass would subject him to. He just hoped he could grit his teeth and not tell the dickheads into what dark and unwholesome places they could shove their slings and arrows.
    Linda put her hand over Matt’s. It was clammy, not the marble cold she had expected. “You’re going to be fine, Matt,” she said. “I’ll be here with you until you wake up.” Could he hear her?, she wondered. Maybe not, but she talked to him anyway, about everything in general and nothing in particular. She had read somewhere that even people in comas sometimes responded to the outside stimulation of voices or music. And Matt was not comatose. Every so often, she went back to the waiting room. Her mother arrived and fussed too much, as usual. Tom left, promising to return as soon as he could. Linda didn’t care whether he did or not. Bartlett meant well, but was part of the problem that had led to this.
    It was two-thirty the following morning when Matt’s fingers twitched and then tightened round her hand. She gasped, shocked by the unexpected movement. And her stomach cramped as his eyelids slowly opened. Would he still be Matt? What if his brain had been damaged and he had no awareness of his surroundings, or of anything?
    “Matt, are you all right?” she asked.
    His eyes found hers. He blinked and frowned as he fought to focus. Swallowed hard, and felt nauseous from the residue of the meds.
    A male nurse