I See You Read Online Free PDF Page B

herself some toast and took it to her ground-floor bedroom. It was a large, square room with a high ceiling and walls painted white above the picture rail. Beneath it Kelly had painted the walls pale grey, covering the past-its-best carpet with two huge rugs she’d bought at an auction. The rest of the room – the bed, the desk, the red armchair she was currently sitting on – was pure Ikea, the modern lines contrasting with the sweep of the bay window into which her bed was pushed.
    She flicked through the copy of
Metro
she’d picked up on her way home. Lots of Kelly’s colleagues never looked at the local papers –
bad enough we have to see the scumbags at work; I don’t want to bring them home with me
– but Kelly had an insatiable appetite for them. Breaking news bulletins scrolled constantly across the screen on her iPhone, and when she visitedher parents, who had moved out of London to retire in Kent, she loved to scour the village newsletter with its appeals for committee members and complaints about litter and dog mess.
    She found what she was looking for on page five, in a double-page spread headed ‘Underground Crime Soars’:
City Hall chiefs launch an investigation into crime on public transport, after record increases in reported sexual offences, violent assaults and thefts.
    The article opened with a paragraph rammed with terrifying crime statistics – enough to stop you using the Tube altogether, Kelly thought – before leading into a series of case studies, designed to illustrate the types of crime most prevalent on London’s busy transport network. Kelly glanced at the section on violent assaults, illustrated with a photograph of a young man with a distinctive pattern shaved into the side of his head. The teenager’s right eye was almost invisible beneath a black and purple swelling that made him look deformed.
    The attack on Kyle Matthews was violent and unprovoked
, read the caption. That needed taking with a pinch of salt, Kelly thought. Granted, she didn’t know Kyle, but she knew the symbol shaved into his head, and ‘unprovoked’ wasn’t a term usually associated with its wearers. Still, she supposed she should give him the benefit of the doubt.
    The photo accompanying the section on sexual assaults was in shadow; the profile of a woman just visible.
Stock photo
, the label said.
Names have been changed.
    Unbidden, another newspaper article appeared in Kelly’s head; a different city, a different woman, the same headline.
    She swallowed hard; moved on to the final case study, smiling at the face pulled by the woman in the photograph.
    ‘You’re not going to make me do a
Daily Mail
sad face, are you?’ Cathy Tanning had asked the photographer.
    ‘Of course not,’ he’d said cheerily. ‘I’m going to make you do a
Metro
sad face, tinged with a spot of outrage. Pop yourhandbag on your lap and try to look as though you’ve come home to find your husband in bed with the window cleaner.’
    The British Transport Police press officer hadn’t been able to attend, so Kelly had volunteered to stay with Cathy for the interview, to which the woman had been quick to agree.
    ‘You’ve been great,’ she told Kelly, ‘it’s the least I can do.’
    ‘Save the compliments for when we find the guy who stole your keys,’ Kelly had said, privately thinking the chances were slim. She’d been coming to the end of a month-long secondment to the Dip Squad when the job came in, and she’d taken to Cathy Tanning immediately.
    ‘It’s my fault,’ the woman had said, as soon as Kelly had introduced herself. ‘I work such long hours, and my journey home is so long, it’s too tempting to go to sleep. It never occurred to me someone would take advantage of it.’
    Kelly thought Cathy Tanning had got away lightly. The offender had rifled through her bag while she leaned against the wall of the carriage, fast asleep, but he hadn’t found her wallet, zipped into a separate compartment, or her