The Burning Girl-4 Read Online Free PDF Page A

His friend pul ed a mock-serious face. "That film's shit, mate .. ."
    "Get the fuck out of my shop!" Izzigil reached beneath the counter, but before he could lay his hand on the pool cue the shorter boy had leaned across and a knife was suddenly inches from the shopkeeper's face.
    "You were given a letter .. ."
    "What letter? I don't know about a letter."

    "Some friends of ours gave you a fucking letter. You were offered the chance to behave like a businessman and you didn't take it. So, now we won't be wasting any more money on fucking notepaper. Clear enough for you?"
    Izzigil nodded.
    "Now we stop messing about. Next time we might stop by when you're upstairs giving your hairy old lady one, and your son's down here, minding the shop .. ."
    Izzigil nodded again, watched over the boy's shoulder as his friend moved slowly around the shop, tipping display cases on to the floor, casual y pul ing over bins. He saw a customer put one hand on the door, then freeze and move quickly away when he glimpsed what was happening inside.
    The boy with the knife took a slow step backwards. He cocked his head and slipped the knife into the back pocket of his jeans. "Someone wil pop round in the next week or two to go over things," he said.
    Izzigil's hand tightened around the pool cue then. He knew it was much too late to be of any use, but he squeezed it as he watched the two boys leave.
    On the screen above him, Austin Powers was dancing to a Madonna song as Izzigil came slowly around the counter and walked towards the front of the shop. He pressed himself against the window and looked both ways along the street.
    "Muslum .. .?"
    Izzigil turned at his wife's voice and took a step back into the shop. He saw her eyes suddenly widen and her mouth drop open, and he turned back just as the black shape rushed towards the window. Just as the world seemed to explode with noise and pain and a terrible waterfal of glass.
    They walked slowly back along Buckingham Palace Road, towards the station. It was the middle of the lunch hour, and people were queuing out of the doors of delis and coffee-shops.
    February was starting to bite and Thorne's jacket was zipped up to the top, his hands thrust right down into the pockets.
    "How's Jack doing?"
    Chamberlain stopped for a second to let a girl dart across the pavement in front of her. "He's the same." They moved off again. "He tries to be supportive, but he didn't real y want me to go back to it. I know he worries that I'm taking on too much, but I was going mental stuck in the house." She looked at herself in a shop window, ran fingers through her hair. "I couldn't give a shit about gardening .. ."
    "I meant about these phone cal s. That letter."
    "He doesn't know about the letter and he slept through al but one of the cal s. I told him it was a wrong number." She pul ed the scarf she was wearing tighter around her throat. "Now. I'm more or less hovering over the bloody phone al night long. It's almost worse on the nights when he doesn't ring."
    "You're not sleeping at al ? It's been going on for a bloody fortnight, Carol.. ."
    "I catch up in the day. I never slept much in the first place."
    "What's he sound like?" Thorne asked.
    She answered quickly and simply. Thorne guessed that she'd known the questions he would ask, because they were the ones she would have asked.
    "He's very calm. Like he's tel ing me things that are obvious. Like he's reminding me of things I've forgotten .. ."
    "Accent?"
    She shook her head.
    "Any thoughts as to his age?"
    She carried on shaking it.
    "Look, I know this is going to sound strange, but I'm not sure why you didn't just cal the police."
    She started to speak, but Thorne stopped her.
    "I mean the local lads. This is just some nutter, Carol. It's a kid pissing you about. It's someone who's read some poxy true-crime book and hasn't got anything better to do."
    "He knows things, Tom. Things that never came out. He knows about the lighter that was dropped at the scene,