Blood Falls Read Online Free Page B

generic middle-aged couple: grey hair, no distinguishing features. Who were they?
    The absence was so disturbing that she let the question sink back into the tar. Another stray thought bobbed to the surface, like an air bubble.
    Party .
    There had been a party—no, talk of a party. She’d been in a pub, or perhaps a cafe, and the idea had been to move on.
    Dirty jokes and dirty hands; streetlights sliding above her as she sank across the seat …
    Somewhere better than this, he had said. In another town, not too far away. ‘Come on, Jenny. You won’t get a better offer than this.’
    Jenny. She was Jenny .
    Sweet relief. She had a name. An identity.
    And maybe, just maybe, the pain in her head was easing slightly. She stopped trying to think and instead she focused on breathing better: slow and deep, not fast and shallow. More time passed, the pain receding like an outgoing tide, and when she felt calm and relatively clear-headed she opened her eyes to find—
    Nothing.
    She blinked, felt the tickle of her lashes. There was nothing over her eyes, nothing impeding her vision. She was in absolute darkness.
    She lifted her arm in front of her face, only inches away, and couldn’t see a thing. The panic squeezed her heart. She could be in a cavern or a coffin.
    Not a coffin. Please, not that …
    Tentatively, she raised her arm again, stretching, waving, and met no resistance. The air she stirred was cool and vaguely damp. Musty. There was no echo from the sound of her breathing. She wasn’t in a coffin, at least. Probably a room of some sort. An underground room.
    A cell.
    And she was warm: a fever heat. She placed her hands on her face. Her cheeks were burning, her palms much cooler, almost cold. She patted her neck, her chest, and gasped. Her hands quickly moved down, confirming what she’d already feared.
    She was naked. She had been stripped.
    Gently, she slid her hand between her legs, provoking a fresh wave of pain so sharp that it made her retch. There was something sticky on her thighs, which dried as she rubbed it with her fingertips. This was blood.
    She must have trusted him. But she wasn’t a fool. How could she have been so careless?
    Come on, Jenny. You won’t get a better offer than this .
    He’d taken her somewhere. She had to find the name. It started with T. Tre … Treb … Tren …
    No. Trel … The first letters were T.R.E.L.
    Concentrate, for God’s sake. Find the name .
    That was Jenny’s brave voice, the one that made her strive for independence. But there was always a competing voice, lazy and cynical, that said: Why? What difference does it make?
    It means I can think clearly. And if I can think clearly, I have a chance …
    She nearly had it. The name of the town floated above her like a banner towed by an aircraft, just a little too high to read. But she remembered him telling her where it was. Along the coast from Port Isaac, not far from that place where the famous chef lived.
    Padstow. The chef was in Padstow.
    And Jenny, Jenny was in …

Six
    TRELENNAN .
    The name had eluded Joe at first. It eventually came to him on the bus to Weston-super-Mare. Later, in WHSmith’s, he looked it up in a road atlas and plotted his route to the north coast of Cornwall.
    In Bristol he’d been wary of boarding a train at Temple Meads. Too much chance that Morton and his men would be prowling the stations. Instead he took another bus. It was an hour’s journey to Weston, which gave him time to think about where he should go next.
    The cash he carried with him wouldn’t last long. He needed someone who could offer him sanctuary. Not family or friends: too dangerous. It had to be a connection that pre-dated his involvement with the Mortons.
    One name popped into his head: Diana Bamber.
    Before leaving Bristol, other precautions had been necessary. In Marks and Spencer he’d used the toilet to clean up, scrubbing flecks of paint from his face, and in the menswear department he had bought a zip-up beige