Asking For Trouble Read Online Free PDF

arrangement was a platonic one. I acted, if anything, as Nev’s minder. He didn’t cope well on his own. Squib had his dog for company. He didn’t really need people.
    Declan was the one Terry had been keen on. But we didn’t know where Declan had gone and anyway, he’d had troubles of his own. I didn’t want to put the police on to Declan. I’d liked him.
    So, to come back to the most important question, why? Why should she kill herself? I couldn’t accept it, even though I’d seen the evidence. She hadn’t appeared depressed or worried, more than any of us were worried about the eviction. Despite Squib’s theory, I didn’t believe she’d worried enough about that to take such extreme action. Generally, she’d just been her normal, grousing self. Alarm bells were starting to ring at the back of my brain and I didn’t like the sound of what they were trying to tell me.
    I remembered how she’d been dressed when we found her, just in the unzipped jeans and crumpled shirt. I couldn’t understand why the jeans weren’t zipped up. If she’d been walking around like that before she died, the jeans would’ve ended up round her ankles. So, had she pulled them on in a hurry and, with suicide in mind, not bothered with the zip? Or, an idea, as grotesque as it was unwelcome popped into my head, had someone else dressed her unconscious body, panicking, fumbling with the zip and giving up? I remembered the aroma of cologne in the house when Nev and I returned from Camden and my feeling that some outsider had been there in our absence.
    I put that unpleasant thought on hold and concentrated on another. The rigor. Accepting that she had died yesterday afternoon, the police would want to know where we’d all been, when was the last time we’d seen her and if she’d appeared distressed in any way. They were unlikely, in the circumstances, to accept anyone’s plea of total ignorance and absence from the scene, without some confirmation. We were not the sort of people whose word they took. So what we were looking for here were alibis, not to put too fine a point on it.
    Nev and I, with luck, could prove that for part of the time we were eating Mexican bean stew with his friends. As for Squib, a pavement artist must have hundreds of witnesses to his activities. But all of them would have been hurrying by, glancing at a hunched figure rubbing industriously at a square of paving with chalks. Some would have taken a closer look at the picture, but few would have troubled to look closely at the artist.
    I must have shifted in my chair because I met Wilson’s beady gaze fixed on me. He had tensed as I moved and probably thought I was planning to leap through a pane of glass and run off down the street like they do in movies. If so, he watched too much television.
    Nev said, ‘I need a glass of water,’ and stood up.
    Wilson ordered, ‘You just stay where you are, sunshine!’
    ‘He’s been sick!’ I snapped. ‘You stay there, Nev. I’ll go and get you the water.’ I marched over to Wilson and stood over him. ‘You don’t have any right to prevent me!’ I told him. ‘And don’t forget, your mate was here yesterday and our friend died right afterwards!’
    ‘You’ve got a big mouth!’ he said.
    ‘And you’ve got a fat gut!’ I told him.
    ‘All right,’ he snarled. ‘You won’t be so lippy when the police get here. Go and get him his glass of water. Where’s the kitchen?’
    ‘It’s the next room. If I leave the door open, you’ll be able to see me in there from just outside this room, OK?’
    He grunted and moved out into the hall where he could see both the living-room door and the kitchen door. I went into the kitchen and turned on the tap. I had a drink of water myself while I was there, even though I could feel Wilson’s eyes boring into my back. Then I took Nev’s glass back with me.
    He said, ‘Thanks, Fran!’ and sipped at it. After a moment, he whispered, ‘Stick with me, won’t you,