Where the Bodies are Buried Read Online Free PDF Page B

days she’d been experiencing it even when she
     wasn’t on a follow, turns on busy streets becoming a Pavlovian trigger for a tightness in her chest.
    When she turned this particular corner, the sight that met her truly was grounds for dismay. It wasn’t that she’d lost the
     subject: Croft was visible twenty yards ahead, approaching the junction with Byres Road. It was what else she could see. Charlotte
     Queen was sitting at a table outside a deli-café on Cresswell Street, she and two friends enjoying the atypically summery
     weather by sipping their coffees al fresco, and she was looking Jasmine’s way. Their eyes met: only fleetingly, and at a distance,
     but it was definitely reciprocal.
    Croft was almost at Byres Road, a T-junction, and by some distance the busiest street in the West End. The lead she had given
     him was acceptable on back streets, but very risky on a bustling main drag. Making ground was strongly advisable; allowing
     him to gain any more seconds potentially calamitous. She had to hurry, but she couldn’t do anything conspicuous like run.
    She increased her walking pace and locked her gaze on Croft, acting as though she had barely registered the group outside
     the café. Charlotte had only glanced at her for a moment, so there was every chance that she didn’t recognise her, or didn’t
     remember her out of context.
    She was five yards from the table. Brisk and purposeful, come on, focused and in a hurry, mind
obviously
elsewhere,
clearly
not ignoring the brilliant but flaky, capricious and egotistical …
    ‘Jasmine? Jasmine Sharp?’
    It felt like time stood still. Jasmine was suddenly presented, in oneprecipitate moment, with making a decision that could lay down a path before her for the rest of her life.
    She knew she could not stop to talk. Nor did she have time to explain, even with the utmost brevity, precisely
why
she couldn’t stop to talk. A quick ‘oh, hi’ as she walked on by would also look unacceptably dismissive when she was being
     personally hailed by someone well used to having people in her thrall.
    It was a stark, unavoidable choice between losing the subject, leaving Jim with nothing to give Hayden-Murray, and blanking
     – in front of her friends, no less – the one person who could yet offer Jasmine an acting break.
    Jasmine looked deep into herself in that moment, asking not merely what she really wanted, but what she truly believed she
     could be.
    She continued – walking still walking – saying nothing as she passed Charlotte’s table, so close she could smell the fumes
     from their espressos, all the time keeping her eyes on the corner. There were tears forming in them by the time she had turned
     right on to Byres Road. It took her a moment through the throng and the mist of tears, but she could see Croft ahead, passing
     the bollards at Vinicombe Street. She picked up the pace.
    ‘Making ground,’ she reported, swallowing. ‘Subject walking still walking towards Great Western Road.’
    This job was real. It was paying a wage. She couldn’t be a little girl any more. Mum was gone. Dreams were gone.
    She kept walking.
    Croft was approaching the junction of Byres and Great Western Roads, where Oran Mor looked across at the Botanics; Oran Mor,
     where, when she could afford it, she spent lunchtime enjoying A Play, A Pie and A Pint for a tenner, telling herself that
     one day she’d be the one on stage.
    Croft glanced back before reaching the corner, just a casual look but potentially suspicious. Jasmine not only got her head
     down but checked her pace and stepped out of sight behind a gangling art student toting a big black portfolio. She was already
     envying him his aspirations, the fact that he still had them.
    The traffic on Great Western Road bustled left and right across her path directly ahead. Another corner, another pang of anxiety
     about what was around it, the dread possibilities of which had just been given a whole new depth of scope