Web of Deceit Read Online Free PDF Page A

allowed to touch anything,’ the cop said again.
    Jane heard Alex moving on the rocks past the front of the train. She looked under it to see his beam cut off by the first wheels thenshine again. The light flooded across the body, blinding her. Then he clicked it off.
    ‘Alex?’ she said in the quiet.
    ‘It’s him,’ he said.
    She stumbled around to where Alex was on his hands and knees on the rocks between the train and the platform. She pushed past the protesting cop and in next to him, held the beam of her torch as steady as she could and shone it between thewheels to see the dead white face of Marko Meixner staring back at her.
    *
    Detective Ella Marconi’s phone beeped with a text as she entered Town Hall station half a step behind Detective Murray Shakespeare.
    You can’t just phone?
    On a case, Ella sent back.
    Dinner tomorrow then?
    Let you know.
    She switched the phone to silent. Her mother, Netta, was gettingas obsessive about speaking to her live as she was about dinner invitations. It didn’t stop Netta herself from texting as often as she wanted, of course.
    Ella put her mother out of her mind and followed Murray onto the stairs. The call was an odd one: man under a train, and something about a smoke bomb and a crowded platform and a pushy guy wearing a cap. On the drive over, Murray had discussedat length his thoughts on whether it might be a homicide, a suicide or an accident, and the issues they needed to examine to work out which.
    Ella had watched him talk and mused on his chattiness, his recent new enthusiasm about everything and a certain light in his eyes; and now, as they descended the stairs, she noticed that his hair was freshly cut across the back of his neck. Everythingfell into place. The general level of intensity, the way he carried himself so newly tall and straight, the commencement of the use of cologne. There was no doubt about it: Murray had a girlfriend. She smiled. Good on him. She herself was spinning her wheels relationship-wise, but now was not the time to dwell.
    They reached the platform, and she put on her cop face and looked around. A trainsat stationary to the left, and the tracks on the right were empty. Firefighters were packing up gear, and uniformed cops stood with a small group of what Ella guessed were witnesses: three civvies, the train’s driver, and two paramedics in dirty uniforms. The air smelled smoky and she could see a haze up high in the tunnels. She wondered what had really happened here.
    A uniformed constablecame towards them.
    ‘What’s the story?’ Murray said, and Ella opened her notebook.
    ‘Just before six the platform was packed, with trains due on both sides,’ the officer said. ‘The witness in the blue suit said that a man pushed through the crowd past him, muttering about somebody being after him. A moment later another man came pushing through, seeming very determined, and with a capon. Then a smoke device was triggered, people shouted “Fire” and the crowd panicked and rushed the stairs. A train arrived then, and the same witness said the first man fell in front of it.’
    Ella scribbled to keep up.
    ‘What did the other witnesses see?’ Murray asked.
    The officer gestured at the group. ‘Woman in the pink shirt also got pushed by a man in a cap shortly before thepanic started. Woman in stripes says she saw the smoke gadget start up. Driver didn’t see much at all, just sudden movement right in front of him. Paramedics say they took the dead guy to hospital earlier today after he crashed his car into a pole.’
    ‘Head injury?’ Ella said. ‘Concussed and confused maybe?’
    The officer shrugged. ‘They said he was talking about somebody being after himthen too. They thought he was a psych case.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Murray said.
    The officer nodded and walked away.
    Murray turned to Ella, all eagerness. ‘Driver first?’
    Ella nodded. The guy looked drained. It was the kind thing to do.
    Murray beckoned him over.
    ‘Detectives