DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 Read Online Free PDF

could walk to work and manage to get to all the bars on his doorstep without too many
problems. Even if he did need a taxi home every now and then, it didn’t cost too much.
    Garry ran his hands through his thick black straggly shoulder-length hair. There had been a time when he thought longish hair would give him a rock-star look all the girls would go for. All
these years down the line and that thinking had definitely gone out of the window but he still couldn’t be bothered to get it cut.
    He looked at the scene in front of him and thought that, even though his choice of home wasn’t that appealing, he probably wasn’t helping himself. Clothes were strewn over most of
the free floor space, while the sink that was supposed to act as somewhere to prepare food, clean dishes and wash his hands, was overflowing with a mix of pots, pans, cups, plates and a folded-up
pizza box.
    ‘Right,’ he said out loud to the empty room. ‘Let’s get this mutha sorted.’
    It wasn’t the type of thing he would have said if anyone else was present.
    Garry was fairly slim and unimposing with his hair his most striking feature. His pasty frame was covered only by a pair of blue boxer shorts he had worn the whole of the previous day then slept
in overnight. He put on some music to play through his phone, the rock tracks blending into one and sounding tinny through the device’s underwhelming speaker. Garry could hear them well
enough and, safe in the knowledge he was on his own, he sang along to the words he knew, made up the ones he didn’t, played a bit of air-guitar and danced around in a way he never would on a
night out.
    Slowly but surely the scuffed wooden floor began to become visible. Clothes were shoved into the oversized chest of drawers or dropped in a giant supermarket carrier bag he had kept so he could
do his own laundry.
    As he was finishing, the playlist of songs he had set up on his phone came to an end and the room went quiet. Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, Garry folded his bed back into the
sofa and flicked on the TV. The indoor aerial was, as usual, not giving much of a signal into the cheap digital box he had hooked up. He fumbled around with it but the television just kept spewing
out a hum of dissatisfaction. Annoyed, he turned it off and picked his phone up, skimming through his contacts until he got to a certain name.
    Mark Llewellyn was one of the quieter people he knew and, although Garry fancied a drink and a chat, he didn’t really want to spend the rest of the day in the pub. He dialled the number
and, after a brief conversation, the pair arranged to meet at his local in half an hour.
    It dawned on him that spending his Saturday afternoons in the pub was hardly embracing life but he didn’t have much else better to do.
    Garry had already drunk a third of his pint when Mark slid into the booth opposite him, plonking a full glass of beer on the table between them. The pub was only two
minutes’ walk from Garry’s flat and usually full of locals. Because it was away from the main street, the tourists didn’t really see it, although most would have opted for a
significantly posher bar anyway. It was a mile or so away from the student district and, whenever he went for a drink, Garry was convinced he was the youngest person there.
    ‘You all right, mate?’ Mark asked.
    ‘Not too bad, just work and that.’ Garry’s tone clearly gave his mood away.
    Mark had picked up his drink but put it back down to avoid spilling it as he laughed. ‘Blimey, it can’t be that bad? Want to talk about it?’
    ‘Maybe. It’s a bit girly, isn’t it?’
    Mark looked at him and laughed again. ‘What, talking? You really have got problems.’
    Garry knew Mark through a mutual friend but, because they lived in close proximity to each other, they often went for a quiet drink together. They shared quite a bit in common but Mark earned a
very good salary, which was a little intimidating.