The Murder Code Read Online Free PDF

had to say was, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Fuck off. Both of you. Both of you can just fuck off.’
    I said, ‘Tom, we really can’t fuck off.’
    We were in one of the upstairs interview suites: a bare, functional room, containing just a steel table, chairs, Laura and me, and the current man of the hour. Gregory was in his early forties, six feet tall, wide at the middle, and had a certain meaty heft to him. The kind of guy who’d never done a day’s actual exercise in his life but would still be dangerous in a brawl. He’d shaved away his receding hair, and was wearing cheap blue jeans and a dirty red lumberjack shirt. The overall impression was that a dilapidated lorry was parked up in a truck stop somewhere waiting for its owner to come home.
    ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he said again.
    ‘I can assure you that I’m not.’
    He remained incredulous. It was an emotion that sat transparently on his stubbly face, in much the same way I imagined most emotions did. He was not a man of any obvious subtlety, and seemed to wear whatever he was feeling on his features without much concern as to what other people might think. For men like him, I guess, the fact they’re feeling it is usually enough to justify its immediate and forceful expression regardless of anything else.
    He stared at me for a moment, then leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath the bulk of him, and folded one beefy arm over the other. It was clear he thought the situation was stupid. To be fair, that was how I felt about him right now too.
    ‘You’ve got to be,’ he repeated.
    ‘You’re being a bit slow here, Tom. It’s surprising, really. You look like you’d be so much sharper.’
    ‘What’s that meant to mean?’
    ‘It’s not meant to mean anything. It means you’re acting pretty dumb. Dumber than you look, in fact. Somehow, you are achieving that. Your ex-partner is dead and you have a history of violence against her, so you’re going to have to do better than telling me I’m making it up. Because I know I’m not.’
    ‘I didn’t kill her.’
    ‘You don’t look too broken up about the situation.’
    ‘Why should I be? We were long over with. I’d put her out of my mind altogether—that’s the truth. I wish I’d never met her in the first place.’
    ‘Wish she was dead?’
    ‘No.’ But then he shrugged. ‘I don’t fucking care, though, if that’s what you’re asking. Why should I? You tell me why I should care. You can’t. She was a dirty, lying bitch. Something was always going to happen to her eventually.’
    ‘ Something was always going to happen to her, ’ I said. ‘This is good stuff, Tom. You remember this is all admissible in court, don’t you? Keep it up, we can dispense with the trial. I’ll just pull my gun out and shoot you now.’
    ‘What I meant is living where she did.’ He looked slightly more contrite now, probably only because he’d realised what he’d just said. ‘That horrible place. All those fucking scumbags and junkies hanging around. Telling lies about people too. That was what she did. It was only a matter of time before she ended up in trouble.’
    ‘Like she used to get in trouble with you?’
    ‘I never did anything.’ He tapped the table. ‘See any convictions in my file?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So it never happened.’
    Beside me, Laura took a deep breath. I sensed she was losing her patience, which didn’t happen very often. But I sympathised. Gregory was sitting there with a smug look on his face now. It never happened. At heart, men like Tom Gregory are still children. Their response to being told off is to be indignant, to not understand, to say I didn’t do it. It’s always someone else’s fault to people like him. If it happens out of sight, if they can’t prove it, you’re all right.
    I decided to needle him a bit.
    ‘Great logic, Tom. But you know what? We have the call logs and witness statements. Not to mention all the other actual