After You Die Read Online Free PDF

squatting to scratch a spaniel’s belly. He straightened and the dog got up too, followed him as he rushed towards the gate, into the yard.
    ‘Sally, what is it?’
    She blurted out the news and he crumpled back against the fence, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times but didn’t speak. He didn’t look capable of forming words, face slack, hand at his head. Sally stood close to him, rubbing his shoulders and whispering in his ear, words Zigic couldn’t hear and which didn’t seem to be helping.
    Eventually she slipped an arm around his middle and drew him into the house, one faltering step at a time.
    Again they followed, Ferreira throwing Zigic a questioning look across her shoulder:
Are we buying this routine?
    He wasn’t sure yet.
    The kitchen was large but gloomy, all dark wood units and heavy oak beams blackened by age and generations of cooking grease, a room which should have been homely but somehow wasn’t, dominated by a pine table big enough to seat twelve.
    Sally coaxed Warren into a chair and he immediately buried his face in his hands, while she sat next to him, her fingers curled tight around his arm.
    Zigic let the silence develop, aware of how uncomfortable Sally was becoming, sitting with her eyes lowered but stealing glances at them through her lashes, shifting incrementally closer to Warren, shielding him.
    Around them the house ticked and creaked and Zigic thought of its previous inhabitants laying their dead out on the kitchen table, all the bad news and trauma this room had witnessed. Hundreds of years of it soaked into the stone walls.
    Finally the quiet got too much for Sally.
    ‘Was it a car accident?’
    ‘No,’ Zigic said, watching them closely. ‘Dawn was murdered.’
    ‘What about Holly?’
    ‘At present it looks likely to be natural causes.’
    Warren shook his head, tears coming freely. ‘This isn’t real. This is mad.’
    Zigic apologised, the words just as useless as they always were, too small, too commonplace to address the obliterating scale of a parent’s grief. Warren doubled over and let out a deep, wailing cry that tugged Sally from her seat.
    She went to him but he shrugged her off so forcefully that she stumbled into the Aga’s drying rail. By the time she’d righted herself he was out of the door, moving at a sprint.
    Zigic took her by the arm and steered her back to her chair, gesturing for Ferreira to go after him.
    ‘Where’s she going?’ Sally tried to stand again but Zigic held a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘He needs to be alone.’
    ‘She’ll be gentle.’
    Sally looked unconvinced. Worried what he was going to say without her there to stop him. Did she think he was capable of murdering his estranged wife and daughter?
    When he was sure she wouldn’t bolt for the door he sat down again, watching her nibble at a ragged fingernail.
    ‘He’ll never get over this,’ she said. ‘He’s only just started to deal with Holly’s accident. He blamed himself. Stupidly. He was a serious climber and Holly always wanted to do what her dad did …’ She shook herself out of it suddenly. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’
    ‘Thanks.’
    Sally busied herself filling a black cast-iron kettle and set it on the range, talking about Holly’s sporting exploits, how proud Warren was of her, how close they were. And Zigic didn’t doubt the truth of it, but he heard a slight edge coming into her voice, something like bitterness, and he wondered if she’d been envious of their relationship.
    ‘It must have been very difficult for Warren.’
    Sally leaned against the range, hands tight around the rail. ‘She wasn’t the same girl any more. All the light went out of her.’
    ‘Were you and her close?’
    ‘I liked her.’
    Not what he’d asked but it said plenty.
    ‘It would have been different if she wasn’t … how she was.’ Sally grimaced. ‘We never really had a chance to get to know each other. Dawn wouldn’t let her come here, I couldn’t go