A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) Read Online Free

course . . . I was just thinking . . .’ She paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name?’
    ‘Karen,’ the waitress replied.
    ‘Karen. I was just thinking, that with this being such a big story and the interest from the papers and television, that someone like yourself will be crucial to the inquiry. I wondered how that makes you feel.’
    ‘Well,’ Karen said, tossing her blonde ponytail and pouting her pale-pink lips. ‘I’m doing what I can to help the case. All I can say is what I saw.’
    ‘You were the only waitress here, weren’t you?’
    ‘Yeah. The other girl, Jen, was at the dentist. So it was just me . . . I saw it all.’
    She batted her eyelashes twice, as if she were waiting for a flashbulb to go off.
    ‘I was wondering,’ Rosie said, ‘did you actually serve those guys? . . . The four men the police are talking about?’
    ‘I’m not really supposed to say.’
    ‘I understand that. But what you’re saying to me right now . . . you know . . . it doesn’t have to come from you. I don’t have to put it in a quote. You can be anonymous. I’m just trying to gather information, and you are a very important figure in this whole case.’ Rosie laid on the flattery thick.
    Karen examined her fingernails then rolled her eyes at Rosie.
    ‘Well. As long as you don’t say it came from me.’
    ‘Of course not.’
    She glimpsed over her shoulder to see if her boss was looking. He wasn’t.
    ‘I did serve them,’ she said softly. ‘They were big, kind of Russian-looking guys. Or Polish. Or something. You never know really. You get all sorts in here, so you do. Locals, office workers . . . and all the passing trade from the street. Loads of people with luggage coming off the Eurostar on their way somewhere, usually going towards Euston Station. You see a lot of foreigners. Loads from Eastern Europe.’
    ‘So it would be nothing untoward to see four big Russian-looking men.’
    ‘Not really. They were just customers to me. They ordered the lamb stew and sat there stuffing it down. They weren’t very friendly. Didn’t hardly look at me.’
    ‘Where were they sitting?’
    Rosie watched as Karen pointed to the spot, two tables away from where Mahoney had sat.
    ‘And who was at the table between them. Anyone?’
    ‘Yeah.’ She made an indignant face. ‘Some nasty woman. She gave me a hard time for not serving her coffee quick enough. Like, as if I’d nothing better to do. I was rushed off my feet. She was dead edgy.’
    ‘Was she on her own?’
    ‘Yeah.’ She paused. ‘Actually, she spoke kind of like you. I think she might have been Scottish. Maybe. Yeah. Probably was, come to think of it.’
    ‘What did she look like?’
    The waitress shrugged:
    ‘Dark hair, kind of messy. About thirty. Jeans, shabby looking.’
    Rosie thought for a moment then asked her to describe what she saw from the second the shooting started. Karen told her she’d just cleared a table at the back of the café and had gone to the counter and put the tray down when she heard the gunshots from behind. She’d turned around in time to see the man slip from his chair and on to the floor beneath the table.
    ‘It was like watching in slow motion. I was totally stunned. Terrified. Blood everywhere. Poor guy. He’d been really nice to me, and his pal was friendly too. He was kneeling on the floor beside him and he was really crying sore, trying to stop the blood. I felt so sorry for him. The girl was there too. The angry one. She was crouched on the floor beside them.’
    ‘The girl? What happened then?’
    ‘I can’t remember much. I was screaming and hiding at the side of the counter. I was terrified they were going to shoot more people. I mean, that’s what happens in the movies, isn’t it? I had my hands over my head, so I only saw the back of the men as they left.’ She paused, licked her lips. ‘Then she left, too.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘That girl. The Scottish one.’
    ‘What. She left the café?’
    ‘Yeah.