Bad Tidings Read Online Free Page A

terms of the murders. Henry gazed at the files, nostrils dilating, knowing two things. First, he would not be spending much time with Alison over the next seven days. Second, he had a horrible feeling he’d just been handed the hunt for a serial killer . . . but when FB said, ‘You bloody love it, don’t you?’ Henry had to agree.
    He did.
    The morning was still black, no sign of dawn, as Henry approached junction 5 of the M65. He was now well into the east of the county – dark satanic mill land (though most cotton mills had been demolished years ago, or turned into ‘shopping events’) – and as he looked up to his right he could see the silhouette of the village of Belthorn perched on a high crest of moorland on the edge of some very wild countryside. Over to his left was the town of Blackburn and lit up in the foreground, about a mile distant, was Blackburn Royal Infirmary. He’d had some real fun there this last week.
    He came off the motorway and bore right onto the A6177 Grane Road, which linked Blackburn with the Rossendale Valley.
    Less than a mile distant he turned right onto Belthorn Road and drove up towards the village, over the slight rise, then down into a dip before the steep hill that was the main road through the village. To the right was the Dog Inn, but before Henry reached that, he slowed, then stopped. On his right was a narrow tarmac side road and parked across it was a marked police car, one officer on board, controlling all vehicular access.
    Two hundred metres down the lane was the location – a factory unit – at which Henry had been asked to attend.
    The scene of the crime. Five very evocative words, Henry always thought:
the scene of the crime
.
    At that moment, after a long, fast early morning drive across the county, Henry did not know for certain what he would discover.
    What he did believe was that, based on his knowledge of the two unsolved murders FB had given him to investigate, the link between them would be confirmed. But the good thing was that this one wouldn’t be a cold case. Henry was coming in right at the start. New leads and connections would be generated and – based on what he learned over the week – the killer, he was confident, would be caught. Because he was pretty certain who it was.
    A shimmer of excitement scuttled through him.
    He checked his watch, which read 04:58. Two minutes to five on New Year’s Day . . . what could be better, after the week he’d just had, than attending the scene of yet another horrific murder?
    Don’t answer that, he thought . . .
    The two files were substantial and Henry had to cart them out of FB’s office one under each arm, shouldering his way carefully through doors, down steps, eventually emerging at the front of the HQ building and walking across the footpath that dissected the playing field.
    He hadn’t completely got his head around how he was going to manage the week ahead, personally or professionally, but he knew that some skilful juggling would have to take place.
    What he didn’t expect was to be blindsided by something unexpected – which came in the form of a phone call.
    His mobile started to ring as he was halfway from HQ to his office, situated in a refurbished former student accommodation block at the Training Centre. With both files clamped tightly underneath his armpits, he couldn’t shuffle them without dropping either, so he ignored the ringing and carried on across the sports pitch in the gloom of the evening.
    The phone continued to ring as he walked, with the accompanying sound of text messages pinging as they landed. Something was going on.
    He struggled up to his middle-floor office in a building that seemed to be deserted and dumped the files on his desk, fished out his phone and slid it open: four missed calls, two texts and a voicemail.
    He checked who each was from. One from Alison, two from his daughter