Angel of Death Read Online Free PDF

Jenny, who was spooning pasta into bowls at the cooker. She was still a good-looking woman, even though she was carrying a little extra weight these days. Not that she’d ever really been his type. Did he love her? Probably not, but he needed her. She’d looked after him better than his own mother had. Without her steadying influence, he’d never have been able to build up the business to what it was – or rather, to what it had been a few years ago. And she’d given him Charlotte. In return, he’d given her a life beyond most people’s wildest expectations – holiday homes in Tuscany and Florida, a yacht, endless hours in beauty salons, a face-lift, a tit-lift, an arse-lift, a two-million-quid house. And now all of it was gone, or soon would be. Their whole world was about to come crashing down around them and there was nothing he could do about it. Well, not quite nothing.
    Stephen took aim at Charlotte’s head, and without hesitation, pulled the trigger. The boom of the shotgun, amplified by the confined space, set his ears screaming. Charlotte was flung across the table as if she’d been hit by a charging bull. A millisecond later, she vanished in a cloud of smoke from the gun’s muzzle. Jenny’s almost unearthly screaming rose above that of Stephen’s eardrums. Mechanically, he advanced into the kitchen. Jenny staggered backwards, flinging her hands up in front of her terror-contorted face. Aiming for her chest, Stephen pulled the trigger at point-blank range. As if she was an empty sack, Jenny was punched into the air and thrown against the cupboards. She landed face down in a heap of quivering, twisted limbs. Blood instantly began to pool on the tiled floor. For a few seconds, she made a guttural rattling sound in her throat. Then there was silence, deep and terrible.
    Stephen stooped over Jenny to check for a pulse in her wrist. He couldn’t find one. He started to turn towards Charlotte, but hesitated. He didn’t want to see her as she looked now. He wanted to remember her forever – even if forever wasn’t that long – as she’d looked in the lounge, her blue eyes and auburn hair shining in the evening sun. Besides, he told himself, no one could survive a wound such as she’d suffered.
    Taking care not to look at Charlotte, Stephen sluiced petrol over his wife and daughter’s bloody bodies. He backed from the kitchen, dribbling a trail of petrol into the living room. After dousing the three-piece suite, he headed upstairs, emptying the last of the petrol over the landing.
    Stephen entered the master bedroom, which was dominated by an ornate four-poster bed draped with crimson silk sheets. He shoved aside a rack of suits in the walk-in wardrobe, revealing a safe. He punched a combination into the electronic lock. Inside the safe there was a bundle of papers and a thick wad of fifty-quid notes. He retrieved an unmarked manila envelope. Carefully, almost fearfully, he opened the envelope and withdrew a similarly unmarked DVD. He inserted it into a slot on the side of the television at the end of the bed. A gloomily lit scene that had obviously been filmed on a handheld camera appeared on the screen. He stared at it with glimmering, heavy-lidded eyes. His tongue flicked out like a lizard tasting the air, as the camera swung around to focus on a group of shadowy figures.

3
    As Mark drove through the city’s well-heeled south-western suburbs, one question kept repeating itself in his mind: What was going on? It had to be something bad. Why else would his dad phone him out of the blue? It wasn’t as though they had anything to say to each other. Not that they were on bad terms. There was just no connection between them – no love, no hate, merely a kind of emotional void. It had been like that as long as he could remember, which was OK with him – or at least he told himself it was – because, try as he had many times before, he just couldn’t bring himself to like his dad. There was something