All Fall Down: A gripping psychological thriller with a twist that will take your breath away Read Online Free PDF Page A

hurried through to the dining room and whipped the curtain aside. But the street outside was empty. No one in the police car, either, by the look of it.
    Rob waited, listening to the greasy thud of his heartbeat. Of course, it might be nothing more than a note from a kindly neighbour, who had observed the police activity and assumed the worst.
    He returned to the hall and picked up the envelope. Inside was a small sheet of notepaper. Rob’s hands shook as he read the brief message it contained.
    WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID

Eight
    T he first test was a simple one. Straightforward, but not without risk.
    You had to start a fire in a shop.
    It was a test that required creativity and courage. The target was a department store in a large, ugly shopping mall. There was CCTV everywhere. There were security guards. There was the likelihood of an effective sprinkler system and the possibility of what the media sometimes call ‘have-a-go’ heroes.
    You had to wear disguises. That part was fun. Some frivolity was allowed, but it remained a serious business. Great care had to be taken to avoid leaving the merest trace of DNA on any of the equipment.
    You started several fires. You used a variety of incendiary devices, some made from fireworks, and one that involved a simple, pungent accelerant and a timber-based manual ignition method, courtesy of Swan Vesta. The most ingenious was a domestic iron, modified to overheat, which was surreptitiously plugged into the mains at a socket near an unattended counter.
    All but one of the fires took hold. They burned for almost an hour, at a conservative estimate – by that stage you were gone. The mall was evacuated successfully, and reopened late the next day. The store itself was closed for almost a week. Repairs were costed at over three hundred thousand pounds, but that no doubt included an element of exaggeration for insurance purposes.
    No one was hurt, but that wasn’t the objective.
    Not this time.
    Nevertheless, the media followed the story for several weeks, hysterically at first. They whipped up fear and suspicion; they encouraged racism and intolerance while pretending to do the opposite. Proclaiming that this would be the first of many such attacks, they claimed that it was ‘a savage assault on our very way of life .’
    Shopping.
    The police were thrilled. The politicians were ecstatic. What a perfect opportunity to justify more oppression, more surveillance. All this from half a dozen lowly fires in a drab provincial department store, ten minutes before closing time on a rainy Wednesday.
    The excitement came from what they perceived as the motives for the attack.
    They thought you did it because of religion.
    They thought you did it because of culture.
    They thought you did it because of ideology.
    You did it because I told you to.

Nine
    W endy woke to the sound of a car pulling up outside, and another driving away. Monday morning , she thought, and then remembered why it was busy outside.
    She checked her phone for messages. She’d texted Josh a couple of times last night, but he hadn’t replied.
    It was just after six, a while yet till the alarm. Beside her, Rob was snoring, not loudly but with a lack of rhythm that often kept her awake. He barely stirred as she pulled on a robe and checked the window.
    A couple of police officers were chatting on the pavement, while forensic staff unloaded equipment from a van. Weak sunshine filtered through the clouds, sparkling on puddles in the road. Wendy hurried downstairs and opened the door before anyone could ring the bell.
    ‘We’d have used the side gate, don’t worry.’ The officer who greeted her was about twenty-five, with pale blue eyes and a cheeky grin.
    ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Would bacon sandwiches be of interest to anyone?’
    His colleague exclaimed: ‘Oh my word, yes. You’re a lifesaver!’
    A fine compliment, Wendy thought as she turned away – except she wasn’t a lifesaver at all. Her first aid skills