Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

loved that… ‘Don’t think about work right now. And I should take my own advice. We’re here to relax. I’ve been stuck with work for the last week and I don’t want to talk la hada.’

‘What’s la hada?’

‘Spanish thing. I think gang members use it to describe the police. I got called it over there. I ask you, does any other profession have such a vast amount of negative nicknames? Don’t all these criminals realise vigilantes would lynch every single one if we didn’t exist?’

Bennet grunted. ‘Like peelers. I got called that one recently. In the last few days I’ve heard everything from Lopers and Alt F4 and peelers and now la hada…’

‘What on earth is Alt F4? Is it… what’s wrong?’

She’d seen his face change. He felt it: the blood draining from his cheeks. He stood up and kissed her cheek.

Sanderstead Avenue was a commercial drag in Wombwell and there was a small car park behind the Co-op. Bennet parked on double yellows and strolled past shops, towards a Triumph bike showroom and a Weldricks pharmacy. Between them was a thin alleyway that delivered him into a backyard with an iron spiral staircase leading to a peeling green door above the pharmacy. He saw that the door – probably to a first-floor flat – was open. A Rhianna song floated out.

Halfway up the staircase, he smelled burning and knew why the back door was open. He knocked on the door, but quietly. And said hello, but not too loudly. If he was later questioned about why he’d entered the house unbidden, well, he’d knocked and called out and gotten no answer, and the open back door was a red flag.

He stepped inside and crossed a small kitchen, sparse and grimy. The washing machine, flashing a warning light, seemed to be the cause of the burning smell. A door ahead was also open. No knock this time.

The living room was small and made tinier by a four-seater sofa under the window overlooking the commercial drag. The only other seat was an armchair facing the TV, its back to him. Poking over the backrest was a blonde pixie cut with a hint of blue. He could see a hand with long green nails holding a mobile phone.

Bennet stepped up to the chair and the girl’s legs came into view. She wore a short skirt, no shoes, and he saw a life-sized skeletal foot tattooed over her own instep.

The girl was also wearing headphones, which would aid Bennet’s lawful entry excuse. He leaned closer so he could read her phone. A text message from The Man said:

3 FOR £20 & GARLIK BREAD YOU WANT THREE?

As the girl typed her reply to The Man at the speed of light with two thumbs, Bennet extracted his warrant card and lowered it slowly in front of the girl’s face. Peripheral vision should have alerted her long before the card slid in front of the phone, but such was her obsession with what she was typing, the wallet eclipsed the top of the device before she noticed. And when she did, she jumped as if plugged into the mains.

The teenager got to her feet and backed off, right into the sofa, which tripped her into its embrace. Bennet sat on the armchair and held out his hand.

‘Why’d you just walk in here?’ the girl said.

‘Let me have the phone, Erica. The one you told us you lost. The one that, somehow, all your friends and family didn’t have the number for.’

Erica clutched the phone with both hands, as if Bennet might just rip it from her with telekinesis. ‘How did you know?’

He couldn’t help a grin. Liz’s use of police slang in the restaurant had sparked a connection between two people. Helium Girl, who had called the Buttery Park stabbing incident room from a phone box: ‘I don’t have anything for you peelers. I was wrong. So I won’t be coming in. But I know it was a black man from Bradford what did it.’

And this young lady, Erica Smith, girlfriend of the prime suspect in the murder of sixteen-year-old Mick Turton. When defending her partner’s alibi for the night of the stabbing, she had said to Bennet: ‘So, what, you peelers saying I’m lying as well?’

But he explained none of this to Erica. He just continued to hold out his hand. ‘I don’t know where Don is. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

Bennet said nothing. His hand waited. Eventually, Erica tossed him the phone. She then stood, but he suggested she should sit. She did.

Bennet cycled through text messages, rolling back the days. Such was the text energy of youngsters these days, it took a while. Hundreds of texts. Erica just sat there, watching.

Soon, he found the all-important date. Thursday January 2nd. He flicked by inert morning texts from Erica to a friend, and then the afternoon flicked by with only a single contact with her mother, and then the evening of the stabbing came onstage with an explosion of messages.

At 1959, eleven minutes after he’d slid a blade into a boy’s flesh, Don The Man wrote:

Hey babe.

Her return message:

Whos this?

The Man. New phone. Tossd mine cos cops can work out where it was. You gonna have to toss yours. Cant tell police what phone numbers we have. Trace.

What talking bout? Why cops want phone?

I stab someone babe. Kid in park tried it on stab him.

Bennet’s heart almost stopped. The proof he needed.

He dead? You dick.

Dunno. I’m coming round to yours, need you to say I was there all night. You watch summat on tv?

You dick. Gotta stop doing that. Just watching Australian bushfires. Carla reckons they could burn all earths oxygen away.

Then thats what we watchd together. Be there in twenty. You gotta tell me some things the people on tv said so it looks like I watchd it.

You owe me for this.

Love you babe.

Not enough. Owe me.

Tagged onto that final message of Erica’s was a picture. It was an engagement ring.

Bennet