After You Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

there. Obviously.’
    ‘Dawn was protective of her?’
    Sally laughed, a short, humourless snort. ‘No. Not how you mean.’
    ‘How then?’
    ‘They were in the middle of a divorce and Dawn was dragging it out.’ She plucked a tea towel from the drying rail and folded it up, clutched it to her chest. ‘All Warren cared about was Holly, and Dawn knew that, so she used her against him. She could have come here. She could have moved in if she wanted to. We’ve got the space. I’d have been delighted to have her.’
    It sounded rehearsed. Something she’d said to Warren a hundred times without meaning a word of it.
    ‘But Dawn insisted this wasn’t a “fit environment” and Warren was scared of challenging her because divorce courts always side with the mother. He knew how easy it would be for her to block access altogether.’
    The kettle began to whistle and she whipped it off the heat, carried it over to a stretch of worktop under the kitchen window to fill up their cups, taking the opportunity to check the scene out there.
    ‘Sounds like Dawn was pushing the pair of you,’ he said.
    Sally turned on him. ‘Warren didn’t kill her. She was being difficult but she had her own problems and Warren was fully aware of that. If anything, he felt sorry for her. We both did.’ Sally plucked the teabags out of the water with her fingers, added them to a little pile of used ones on the draining board.
    ‘These problems Dawn was having …’
    ‘Vandalism, that kind of thing,’ Sally said. Another quick look back through the window. ‘Elton’s a lovely village but there are some idiots of course and idiots tend to pick on the vulnerable.’
    ‘Did Dawn talk about it much?’
    ‘Well, not to me, obviously, but Warren knew about it. He encouraged her to call the police and get it down on record.’ She straightened. ‘Do you think that’s who killed her?’
    ‘It’s very early for us to start making assumptions,’ Zigic said. ‘But we’re looking into the possibility.’
    The kitchen door opened with a bang and a gangly teenage boy walked in, headed straight to the fridge in the corner without looking up from his mobile, one white ear bud plugged in, the other trailing loose over his shoulder.
    Sally followed him with her eyes, frowning at his lack of manners or maybe the slogan on his T-shirt,
The idiots are winning
.
    ‘Benjamin, I think you should sit down.’
    He popped the top of his Coke can, gave Zigic the barest glance. ‘I’m good, thanks.’
    ‘This is very serious.’
    He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
    Zigic recognised the stance from his own teenage years. The boy had obviously done
something
wrong, now he was trying to figure out which bad thing they knew about and how much they knew and whether he could blame someone else.
    ‘Sweetheart, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ Sally said. ‘It’s about Holly and Dawn.’
    The boy relaxed visibly. ‘Yeah, I saw, the house next door blew up. Fuck, you’re not going to ask them to move in here, are you?’
    ‘No.’ Sally put her mug down but didn’t make any further move towards him. ‘They’ve been killed.’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘Murdered,’ Zigic said.
    ‘Fuck.’
    Sally frowned at him. ‘There’s no need for that sort of language.’
    He shrugged, attention on Zigic now, curious rather than shocked, and Zigic wondered if his lack of emotional response was the usual adolescent attempt at worldliness or something darker.
    ‘Were they raped?’
    ‘Benjamin!’ Sally turned to Zigic and apologised. Back to her son. ‘What a disgusting thing to say.’
    He held his hand up. ‘I was only asking. Jesus. It’s what happens, isn’t it? That’s why women usually get killed.’
    Zigic stood slowly and walked over to the boy, seeing him fight the growing discomfort which backed him into the fridge door. He was used to saying what he wanted, Zigic guessed, weathering no worse punishment than his mother’s scandalised