Dark Side Read Online Free PDF

that you were frightened the gunman might kill you. Had your husband been involved with criminals?’
    â€˜I knew he was, but he told me nothing – I didn’t want to know anything.’
    â€˜Was
he
paying protection money to anyone?’
    â€˜He promised me that he wasn’t.’
    Perhaps because he knew she was already doing something along those lines, I thought. But that did not mean that he hadn’t been under pressure from another criminal gang to do so.
    â€˜D’you mind telling me how he died?’ I asked.
    Silence.
    â€˜Did the other police ask you about that?’ I persevered.
    â€˜No, why should they?’ Sulyn answered with a toss of her head.
    â€˜I’m guessing that his death wasn’t as a result of illness or accident.’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜You don’t know!’
    â€˜There was no body. He just disappeared.’
    â€˜When was this?’
    â€˜A little under a year ago.’
    â€˜He might just have run out on you?’
    â€˜No.’ Then, after a short pause she continued, ‘He was too stupid with drink half the time to try to conceal from me that there was another woman or that he planned to go. Who would have wanted him? What would he have lived on? What was the sense of leaving a good business? He just went out early one evening and didn’t come back. And then about three weeks later a man came to see me who said that he was dead and I was to ask no questions. When I agreed he gave me a thousand pounds. I needed the money badly as there were bills to pay.’
    â€˜Did you know this man?’
    â€˜I’d never seen him before.’
    â€˜So you have no idea why your husband was made to disappear or even killed?’
    â€˜No. But I’d known from the way he behaved that something was wrong. He was drinking even more, and jumpy. I’m sure it was something to do with the people he was involved with – the criminals. I didn’t ask.’
    â€˜But the same people who gave you the money couldn’t have wanted to kill you, surely?’
    She shrugged. ‘They might have changed their minds, if they thought I would talk to the police about it.’
    â€˜Was your husband violent towards you?’
    â€˜Yes, sometimes, when he was drinking heavily.’
    â€˜Had you told the police he was missing?’
    â€˜No! I didn’t want him found – I just hoped he was six feet under somewhere.’
    A completely irrelevant and crazy thought went through my mind: why the hell had I divorced Patrick when we were married first time around? Things had never got
that
bad.
    I said, ‘May I have his name?’
    â€˜Only if you promise that, if you find him, you don’t tell him I told you.’
    â€˜I promise.’ The thousand pounds ‘compensation’, I thought, said it all. This man was dead.
    There was another short silence as she hesitated. ‘Sometimes he called himself Bob or Bill Hudson, sometimes Bob Downton. I saw letters that came that were addressed to all those names. I think they were stolen names, stolen identities. I just called him Bob.’
    â€˜You don’t have a photograph of him, I suppose?’
    â€˜No.’
    I laid down my pen. ‘Please, off the record, tell me why an intelligent woman like you married a man mixed up in crime.’
    â€˜You’ll think me a fool. My parents were killed in a road accident – in the States, you understand – and I soon discovered that although I’d always been given the impression that they were wealthy there was no money, only debts. By the time I’d sold the house and settled everything there was only enough for me to come to Britain. I wanted to go to university here but didn’t find out enough about it before I came. I knew there was an aunt in London, my mother’s sister, but couldn’t find her. My visa expired and I couldn’t get a job so I ended up