Psycho Alley Read Online Free PDF Page A

out of your window, you’ll see me.’
    Henry stood up and staggered to the window with the cordless phone, pulled back the curtain and saw Jane outside in her car in the grey dawn looking up at him. Her mobile phone was clamped to her ear. She smiled and tinkled her fingers at him. He waved, dropped the curtain.
    â€˜Be with you soon,’ he said and thumbed the end-call button.
    Kate was propped up on one elbow, her pretty mouth twisted sardonically. She was wearing a long tee shirt bearing a slogan about how dangerous women can be when their hormones are in the ascent. Her hair was ruffled. She looked sleepy and gorgeous.
    â€˜Mm?’ she said.
    â€˜I know, I know,’ he said glancing down at his naked and rather sagging body. Too much time spent on long investigations wreaks havoc with diet and fitness regimes. There was a massive, ugly bruise which had spread in an oval shape around the outside of his thigh, almost up to his waist and down to his knee. It looked worse than it was, the A & E doctor had assured him, but it felt pretty bad just at that moment. He crossed the bedroom and began to dress, pulling on the exact same clothes he had divested earlier. When dressed he bent over and gave Kate a kiss, inhaling her intoxicating night body aroma which often drove him crazy. ‘See you later, honey.’
    â€˜Ho-hum,’ she mumbled. ‘Don’t wake the girls.’ She flopped back into bed, asleep before Henry had even closed the bedroom door.
    â€˜How did you explain the shiner?’ Jane asked with a smirk.
    Henry shrugged. ‘Winged it.’
    â€˜You do a lot of that, don’t you?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Winging it. “Wing” could be your middle name. Henry “Wing” Christie.’ There was a brittle edge to her voice.
    Henry stayed silent, his head resting, eyes closed. Jane gripped the steering wheel, her mouth twisted down with disapproval.
    â€˜You don’t have to do this to yourself, you know,’ Henry said.
    â€˜Do what?’
    â€˜You know – work with me. You’ve got Dave Anger’s lug-hole … there’s no need for you to be working the same cluster as me, is there? You could influence him easily enough.’
    â€˜I didn’t have any choice … we all got posted around the county when the SIO team became FMIT. As much as possible people were posted where it didn’t cause too much inconvenience.’ She shrugged. ‘I live in Fulwood. Not too much of a hardship to get into Blackpool down the ’fifty-five.’
    â€˜Or Preston, or Blackburn, come to that,’ Henry pointed out. ‘Or is it that you’re still spying on me … Anger’s little mole?’ He squinted through his good eye.
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, her neck reddening.
    â€˜Whatever,’ he said tiredly, past caring.
    Jane had driven from Henry’s house, down through Blackpool on to the promenade, then turned north, the sea on her left. The tide was a long, long way out and the clearing dawn was windless and tranquil, the weather having eased since last night. The huge expanse of beach looked for all the world like something from a glossy travel brochure. There were times when Blackpool actually looked beautiful, but Henry did not cast a glance to his right so as not to spoil the illusion. The tacky Golden Mile would bring anyone crashing back to earth. Instead he tried to imagine he was somewhere tropical.
    â€˜Shit.’
    Jane slammed on the brakes. Had it not been for his seatbelt, Henry would have been catapulted through the windscreen. He was literally jolted back to reality, brought back from his dreams of distant shores.
    A scruffy black mongrel dog trotted across the road, a dirty look directed at Jane’s car. She had managed to avoid flattening it more by luck than judgement.
    â€˜County dog,’ Henry remarked, referring to the semi-mythical creature which