Convictions Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘Honestly, it’s nothing to worry about.’
    Penny bristled. ‘Don’t treat me like a child. I want to see it.’ She took a drag on her cigarette. ‘It was addressed to me. I have rights.’
    ‘Okay. But it means nothing, Penny. Remember that.’ She opened out the piece of paper and held it so that Penny could read it. Derek came inside, wanting to know what was going on, and he read it, too.
    The letter was scrawled, barely legible. Penny peered at it, then she gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
    ‘No,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, God.’
    ‘Come away, love,’ Derek said, taking her hand and leading her outside. He hugged his wife and daughter and left the police to do whatever they had to do.
     
    ***
     
    ‘I hate these clothes, they’re stupid.’
    ‘You should get used to them. This is what you’ll be wearing from now on.’
    ‘I want my MC Boyz T-shirt.’
    ‘It’s dirty. Put these on.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You will wear these clothes.’ The man smacked Annie’s legs, hard. She had never been hit before, not by an adult, and she began to cry. ‘It’s time you learned how to behave. Now stop crying and get dressed.’
    Annie began putting the clothes on, and made sure to cry quietly. Her legs were stinging and she didn’t want to be smacked again.
     
    ***
     
    ‘Who would write such a thing?’
    The mess had been taken away, the residue cleaned up, air freshener sprayed liberally around, and still the smell lingered in the house. Derek had put the table in the garden then phoned the council to come and collect it and take it to the dump. Penny had taken Tina into town for an hour or so, a police escort following at a discreet distance. Derek and Ruth sat in the lounge, each clutching a mug of coffee. He still couldn’t believe that someone would do such a thing.
    Ruth tried to play it down. ‘All sorts of people come out of the woodwork when something like this happens. They all think they know best. Honestly, try to forget it. We’ll catch them if we can, but they’re just nasty-minded folk, best ignored.’
    ‘It called me and Penny “scum”. It said we didn’t deserve our kids and they’d come for Tina next.’
    ‘We’ll keep a close eye on things, believe me. We’re not taking any chances, but threats like that are usually empty. The chances of the person who took Annie also being the person who sent this are pretty slim, but we’ll check it all out just to be sure.’
    ‘How could people think we don’t care about our girls? Don’t they know what happened?’
    ‘They probably don’t, Derek. They’ll have heard that the girls were out on their own at that time of night and not listened to anything else.’
    Derek put his mug down on the coffee table. ‘They must know us,’ he said slowly. ‘How else would they know where we live? It must be someone who knows us.’
    Ruth’s heart sank: she’d been hoping they didn’t think of that. ‘That still leaves a lot of people to consider,’ she said. ‘There are all the families of the kids the girls go to school with, and friends of those families, as well.’
    ‘People we work with.’
    ‘People in the street or who you see in the supermarket. Put it out of your mind. You’ll end up suspecting everybody. You can’t live your life like that.’
     
    ***
     
    The day wore on. Penny and Tina returned from their outing. Derek fixed beans on toast for lunch, after which Tina went up to her bedroom. Penny opened a bottle of wine and sat at the table on the patio with a drink and a cigarette. Ruth checked in with DSI Hardcastle, but they had nothing new to tell each other. Derek slumped in front of the television set, staring in the direction of the screen.
    ‘What are we supposed to do?’ he asked Ruth, eventually. ‘I feel … useless. I want to be doing something constructive, not just sitting about.’
    ‘There’s not much you can do, in fairness,’ said Ruth. ‘We have the investigation in hand. The team are working