Honeytrap: Part 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

have to be a confident man to be comfortable with it – but she could pursue that subject this evening.
    It was another half hour before Harry showed up. He seemed jumpy and agitated and there were bags under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept. She stared at him across the table.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘There’s nothing wrong.’
    ‘So why do you look like you’ve been up all night? Come on, this is me you’re talking to. Something’s up. You’re as white as a sheet and—’
    ‘I’m fine,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
    Jess folded her arms and fixed him with a steely gaze. ‘I’ll just keep asking until you come clean.’
    There was a short silence while Harry stared back at her. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘but you’re not going to like it.’
    ‘Ah, I see. You’ve changed your mind, right, about me doing the interviews? Well you could have told me sooner. I’ve just been chatting to Sylvie.’
    Harry shook his head. ‘It isn’t that.’
    ‘What is it, then?’
    ‘I saw someone last night, someone I never expected to see again. It’s … I don’t know … I think she’s in trouble. No, I’m sure she is.’
    ‘Who exactly are we talking about here?’
    Harry hesitated before telling her. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around the pub before finally meeting her eyes again. ‘It was Ellen Shaw.’
    Jess’s intake of breath was clearly audible. She had hoped to never hear that name again. ‘What? What’s she doing back in London?’
    ‘I’ve no idea, but I saw her last night. I didn’t get the chance to speak to her, though. She did a runner, took off as soon as she spotted me.’
    ‘That tells you something,’ Jess said coldly.
    ‘It tells me she’s in trouble. Look, I know you never liked her but—’
    ‘It’s not to do with liking or not liking. If it hadn’t been for her, Len would still be alive today.’
    ‘Are you kidding me?’ Harry snapped back. ‘Len would have drunk himself to death years ago.’ Immediately, he rubbed at his face, his mouth twisting down at the corners. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong. But you can’t blame Ellen for what happened.’
    Jess, however, could and did blame her. She still felt the loss of her old colleague, her mentor back in the days when she was working for the
Hackney Herald
. ‘If you’ve got any sense you’ll stay away from that woman. She lied to Len and she lied to you. She’s bad news and you know it.’
    ‘She was the victim, Jess. None of it was her fault. She only lied because she was scared.’ Ellen had been the missing child, the eight-year-old girl that everyone had thought was dead and buried until Len Curzon had discovered the truth. It was a long and twisted story that Jess had later unravelled in an article called
The Lost
. Suffice to say that Ellen had been betrayed by the people closest to her.
    Jess gave a small shake of her head. ‘God, you’re going to try and find her, aren’t you?’
    ‘I have to.’ Harry rose to his feet. ‘Would you mind if we took a rain check on lunch?’
    ‘You’re crazy,’ she said.
    ‘I’ll give you a call.’
    Jess watched him leave with a feeling of foreboding. If Harry got involved with Ellen Shaw again, it wasn’t going to end well. That woman always left a trail of misery in her wake. But what could she do? The answer was pretty much nothing.

6
    Wilder’s was one of those laid-back bars full of comfortable sofas and fashionable people. The lighting was subtle, the décor a combination of chrome, pale wood and a large dose of nostalgia. Covering the walls were black-and-white pictures of old movie stars – Bogart and Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe – a homage to times past. Jess looked around her, taking it all in. The reception was, as far as she could gather, some kind of fundraiser for an independent film company.
    Sylvie was already on the job, having homed in on Joshua Keynes only