River of Souls Read Online Free PDF

Lights, vodka and green salads. It still impressed me hugely that she’d given up booze and fags the instant she became pregnant.
    ‘Have you heard from Will?’ I asked.
    ‘Last week. He’s moving back to London, isn’t he?’
    ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ It still rankled that my brother always phoned Lola instead of me when there was news to report. In the years when he’d lived rough, I’d been dependent on her for information. Even though his bipolar disorder had stabilised, she was still his first port of call.
    ‘Tell me more about the married man,’ she said.
    ‘There’s nothing to say. His wife kicked him out because he’s a workaholic. We had a flirtation, but his sons missed him so much he decided to go back.’
    ‘What are you going to do about it?’
    ‘Nothing, obviously.’
    She gave me a sorrowful look then kissed me goodbye. ‘Promise not to stay home and mope.’
    ‘Have I ever?’
    I kissed her on the cheek and watched her leave. Even in the last month of her pregnancy, Lola could still turn heads. Most of the men in the café gave her admiring looks as she breezed away to her final antenatal appointment.
     

6
     
    The man shelters between two buildings. He’s wearing one of the disguises he keeps in his car, a leather jacket and a short blond wig, grey woollen hat pulled low over his eyes. It’s vital that no one can identify him. Taking the priest’s life still haunts him, but there’s a higher calling now, and he must follow instructions. The river blessed him after it accepted the priest’s soul, singing his name for hours.
    Pedestrians scurry past on St Pancras Way, hiding under their umbrellas. It would be easy to run at them, knife raised, but the river is more discriminating. It has already chosen its next victim. He searches the faces of the people rushing up the steps to the police station. At last a black woman with a beautiful face emerges and he slips further into the shadows. If she spots him, there’s a chance she will see through his disguise. Even from this distance, he can measure how pure her spirit is. He takes time to observe her as she talks to a friend by the station’s entrance, her uniform baggy on her slight frame. When she slips through the doorway, he feels bereft. He has memorised her features so accurately, he can see her even with his eyes closed.
    It’s after two when the man looks at his watch. He must go back before anyone misses him, but seeing the woman’s beauty has strengthened him. Even though he’s soaked to the skin, he feels elated as he hurries away.
     

7
     
    My next meeting was at three p.m. that afternoon with Jude’s older brother. I’d received a cryptic text from Heather, letting me know that Guy was prepared to see me at his art school on Granary Square. I was curious to know whether he had inherited his father’s slick manner and unwillingness to reveal secrets. From the outside, St Martin’s Art College was a drab industrial building, but the interior was lined with mirrored walls, glass mezzanine floors, and light flooding across abstract sculptures in the atrium. The students were much more glamorous than the geeks who had populated my psychology course. It looked like they’d spent days foraging in Camden Lock for retro clothes. It made me wish I’d been artistic, but my only talents at school had been a good memory and an obsession with the foibles of the human mind.
    I recognised Guy Shelley from the photo in his parents’ kitchen. He was in his mid-twenties; tall, with an athletic build and spiky black hair. His skin was so pale it looked like he’d been living underground. He seemed determined to conceal his wealthy background, dressed in scruffy jeans and a black shirt covered in patches of white powder. His handshake felt dusty, as though he’d been sifting flour. He didn’t return my smile, which made me wonder if he’d been coerced into seeing me.
    ‘Thanks for making time to meet,’ I said.
    He