скачать книгу бесплатно
The Disappeared: A gripping crime mystery full of twists and turns!
Ali Harper
YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME…A twisty, compelling, characterful crime thriller from a major new talent.NOT TO BE MISSED!A distraught mother…When Susan Wilkins walks into No Stone Unturned, Leeds’s newest private detective agency, owners Lee and Jo are thrilled. Their first client is the kind of person they always hoped to help—a kind woman desperately worried about her son, Jack.A missing son…The case seems simple—kid starts college, takes up with the wrong crowd, forgets to ring his mother. But very quickly, Lee and Jo suspect they’re not being told the whole truth.A case which could prove deadly…Their office is ransacked, everyone who knows Jack refuses to talk to them and they feel like they’re being followed…it’s clear Lee and Jo have stumbled into something bigger, and far more dangerous, than they ever expected. Will they find Jack, or will their first case silence them both for good?
The Disappeared
ALI HARPER
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright (#u8b18ad50-4ff2-540b-a0b0-06902079db6c)
KillerReads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Copyright © Ali Harper 2018
Cover design Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollins Publishers 2018
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Ali Harper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008292652
Version: 2018-04-12
Dedication (#u8b18ad50-4ff2-540b-a0b0-06902079db6c)
For Harvey and Maggie
Table of Contents
Cover (#u0b791527-d8fe-5f64-8d79-8fdaa1179e3b)
Title Page (#u961958a8-e58c-5f81-86d9-5d2a58972994)
Copyright (#u9c869746-8a9e-5ae4-9f84-bc3bb6c7aec7)
Dedication (#ud7afa781-5890-5b6d-9618-75365b030800)
Chapter One (#ua2131139-1bfe-5949-87f8-d6ba22b1b137)
Chapter Two (#u3a769ce7-3317-539f-86c1-544568547a0c)
Chapter Three (#uee8abf20-908c-5c6e-81d1-d0c92d821490)
Chapter Four (#u02f5dc99-3986-530b-ba5c-4ecc20bd9a71)
Chapter Five (#ufadae02d-9b3b-5067-a0b5-93b89255bff3)
Chapter Six (#u065ddda1-8784-51cf-b38c-2f50aff5e3da)
Chapter Seven (#ue370972f-0b87-5c5d-a7bc-3633b252ea97)
Chapter Eight (#ua78aec0d-967b-52c6-8447-bbe20535d249)
Chapter Nine (#u07db7def-c6cf-5134-8bfe-9831a0496e0a)
Chapter Ten (#u4031f1f2-9a7b-58e6-9039-7f331dc3d53d)
Chapter Eleven (#u6f738337-572b-5bcc-84da-23eaef9f9f1e)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u8b18ad50-4ff2-540b-a0b0-06902079db6c)
Had I known our first client would be dead less than twenty-six hours after signing the contract, I might not have been so thrilled when she pushed open our office door.
I once read that hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but I disagree. Hindsight distorts the picture, makes us believe we could have done something different, something better. Hindsight opens the door to ‘if only’ and the ‘if only’ is what kills you.
It had been five weeks, four days and six hours since we’d opened for business and in all that time no one had so much as glanced through the window. Despite adverts in every local listings magazine, the only phone calls we’d fielded were cold ones – did we want double-glazing, roof repairs, a conservatory? Jo had been getting increasingly aggressive with each caller. The strain was getting to both of us.
I was alone in the office that Friday afternoon. Jo had nipped out in the company’s battered Vauxhall Combo, ostensibly to buy printer ink – but really, I knew she’d be checking out the latest surveillance equipment at The Spy Shop, down on Kirkstall Road. Jo’s my best mate, business partner, and a gadget freak: not always in that order.
I’d been at my desk when I’d noticed the woman pacing the pavement opposite. I’d watched her through the gaps in our vertical strip blinds. She’d smoked two cigarettes, crushing out the stubs with the heel of her boot. Truth is, I’d been willing her to cross the street and come on in.
So when she did step through the door, my pulse quickened and my mouth went dry. I slid my packet of Golden Virginia into the top drawer.
She was nervous, obviously so. She had blonde hair, cut kind of choppy round her face and she kept touching it, scratching at the back of her neck.
‘Hi,’ I said. I almost fell over the desk in order to shake her hand. She allowed our palms to touch for less than a second, but long enough for me to register the coolness of her skin. ‘Welcome to No Stone Unturned.’
She glanced around. Our office used to be a corner shop, situated at the end of a red-brick terrace, so it has windows on two sides. The rent is cheap, and the interior walls are panelled in a wooden laminate that wobbles whenever we shut a door or slam a drawer too hard.
I watched her drink in the details – the cheap brown carpet tiles, the battered filing cabinet we’d bought from Royal Park Furniture Store – purveyor of cheap crap to low-class landlords. I noticed the pot plant Jo had supplied was looking thirsty.
‘Are you missing someone?’ I asked.
‘Sorry.’ Her voice was soft, well-spoken – the kind of voice that could have worked for The Samaritans.
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘It must be diff—’
‘Could I speak to an investigator?’
I straightened my spine, remembered to ground myself through the soles of my feet. ‘You are. I’m the …’ I wanted to say proprietor but settled for ‘lead investigator.’ Jo would have punched me.
‘Oh.’ A crease appeared on the woman’s forehead. I cursed the fact we’d given up wearing suits on day four.
‘I’m Lee,’ I said, ‘Lee Winters.’ It still felt like a lie on my lips, even though three months before I’d made it official. I wasn’t born Lee Winters. The Buddhists believe you shed your skin every seven years, and changing my name was my way of forcing the process. I pointed at the two armchairs and coffee table in the corner of the room. ‘Take a seat.’
She didn’t move. I positioned myself between her and the exit and gestured at the seats again.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said.
‘Give it a chance. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, and we’ll see if we can help?’
‘I didn’t know where else to turn.’ Her right hand twisted the gold band on her wedding finger. She turned it round and round, over and over. The ring seemed loose, a little too big on her slender fingers. I examined my own bitten fingernails, the silver rings I wear like knuckledusters. As she opened her mouth to speak, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see Jo pushing through the door, a box of paper in her arms and a Spy Shop carrier bag dangling from her wrist.
‘Hi, Jo.’ I raised my eyebrows and nodded, trying to telepathically answer her unspoken questions.
Jo dropped the reams of paper on the edge of my desk and beamed at the woman. ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ she said.
Jo sounded so certain I felt my shoulders relax. The woman stared at Jo. Most people do. Jo inherited her Afro-Caribbean curls from her Jamaican grandfather on her mother’s side. Her startling blue eyes came from her Liverpudlian dad. They make a stunning combination. It must have been windy out – her hair was wild even by Jo’s standards. The woman turned to me.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ she said, pushing up the sleeve of her dark jacket.
‘Go through to the back room,’ said Jo, putting a casual arm across the woman’s lower back and propelling her forward. ‘I’ll make you a nice, strong cup of tea. Looks like you could use one.’
We’ve got three rooms out back. I use the word ‘room’ in its broadest sense – you have to step outside the kitchenette in order to open the fridge, and how anyone could ever use the gas cooker is a mystery. There’s a toilet next door, but when you sit on it, your knees graze the door. The windowless back room contains a punchbag, as well as a small wooden table covered with decaying green felt, and three chairs. The bag came from the boxing gym round the corner and dangles from the ceiling. I’d spent much of the previous six weeks in there, punching till my arms ached and beads of sweat flew, trying to fight the worry that I’d blown my inheritance on a business that wasn’t ever going to see a client.
The back room also has a broom cupboard – now converted to Jo’s spy equipment store – which has a safe cemented into the brick wall at the back of it. That small metal box had sealed the deal when we’d been looking for premises. We figured the previous tenants must have been dope dealers.
I cleared a space on the table by stashing the playing cards to one side and setting the ashtray on the floor.
