In for the Kill Read Online Free PDF

reason why something should have happened to him now: me.
    I craned my neck to see a police car straddling the road of terraced houses, small offices and council flats, its blue light pulsating. My flesh crawled. I glanced nervously behind me but the fair-haired man was nowhere in sight. I watched the white-suited scene of crime team come and go. A television cameraman and reporter were further along to my right.
    ‘What’s happened?’ I asked a black man next to me.
    ‘Man been attacked,’ he said.
    ‘Is he all right?’
    ‘If he is, he ain’t breathing none too well with the body-bag zipped up over his face. I seen it come out half an hour ago.’
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Dunno.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders, but the woman next to him said:
    ‘I heard one of the policemen say it was a private detective and that he must have been working on a pretty nasty divorce case to get himself killed.’
    God! Where would this end? Would it ever end?
    I hung around a bit longer but couldn’t pick up any further bits of gossip. Disappointed and worried I ducked into the nearest café, which was full of students. Nursing my coffee in as dark a corner as I could find I wondered what to do. If I came forward and told the police that I’d had an appointment with Joe they’d ask me why. Before I knew it I’d be in a police station answering questions, or, as they so euphemistically put it, helping with their enquiries, until they could eliminate me. I was out on licence. One sniff of trouble and they’d have me back inside before you could say porridge. The memory was enough to bring me out in a cold sweat and turn the contents of my stomach to liquid. But what if Joe had entered our appointment in a diary?
    Did he keep a diary? Did his secretary?
    ‘You all right, dear? You looks a bit queasy to me.’
    I glanced up to see a middle-aged waitress with blonde frizzled hair, tight cheap clothes, excessive make-up and a worried frown on her lined face.
    She was wiping down the table next to me. She didn’t seem to fit with the café, which was full of youthful vigour, clear skins and trouble-free expressions. Still she wasn’t the only one: I hardly blended!
    She said, ‘I expect it’s the murder round the corner; fair turns you over, don’t it. You’re not safe these days. I’ve heard it’s poor Mr Bristow.
    Such a nice man, never did no one no harm.
    Used to come in here regular like for a coffee and a doughnut, or a nice fry-up for breakfast.
    Hard to believe.’
    She smiled sadly before strutting off on heels that were ridiculously high and thin. Not for me it wasn’t hard to believe. Things happened to me and around me. Had my call to Joe warned Andover that I was on his trail? How could Andover have known that unless Joe’s phone was tapped? It seemed incredulous but then as Andover had managed to manipulate my computer files, a simple case of phone tapping certainly wouldn’t be beyond him. Besides, I’d learnt in prison that you could easily buy electronic listening devices on the Internet or by mail order.
    I considered another possibility that had occurred to me more than once over the last few years. Could Andover be an electronics or computer expert? I didn’t know anyone like that.
    At least I didn’t think I did. It could be someone I had been at school or university with, who might have entered one of those fields. If so it had to be someone who hated me because I had hurt him in some way. I couldn’t think of anyone who fitted the picture, except Steven Trentham, but that was impossible.
    I turned my mind back to poor Joe. Why kill him? The obvious answer was because Andover was scared that Joe might tell me something.
    Which meant there was something to tell. Then why hadn’t Joe already told it to me? Perhaps he had but its importance had eluded me. Time for me to go over the reports he had sent me, yet again.
    I sat up. The reports! Shit! I hoped they were OK where I had left them on the