Blood Reckoning: DI Jack Brady 4 Read Online Free Page A

you placed them all together, the result was breathtaking. It was someone’s life.
    Edwards interested him. Reminded Macintosh of his first kill. The ones afterwards had paled into insignificance. Nothing could ever match the high he had first felt. He had tried. Tried to rediscover that all-consuming feeling of euphoria that had immortalised him. But nothing had come close.
    He decided not to reopen old wounds. He had taught himself to stop the self-destructive thoughts. Even when they bombarded his brain he had trained himself to look the other way, to focus on something else.
    Jonathan Edwards: probation officer, thirty-one years old, five foot ten, married with two children and current resident of Whitley Bay. Receding blond hair, short-sighted blue eyes, doughy, pockmarked skin – nothing to write home about. But he was different from the rest. He was hiding something which made him very interesting. Macintosh could smell it on him. It secreted from his pores. Betraying him.
    He had guessed the moment he met him. Whether Edwards knew that he knew didn’t matter. What was important was what he was going to do about it. Inside prison, he was powerless to act. But now he was out.
    Yesterday evening he had wandered the streets of Whitley Bay looking for him. Searching for his new Volvo V40. And he had found it. Along with the four-bedroomed semi-detached house in Queens Road. Exquisite location. Splendid house. Then again, the couple were both professionals. He was sure the Edwards could afford it. He had seen both children. The baby. And Annabel. Petite, with Nordic white-blond hair that cascaded in perfectly formed ringlets. Eyes as bright as shiny black buttons, dominating a perfect porcelain face. He liked her – a lot. She reminded him of her . He had failed then. But now, he had a second chance.

Chapter Six
    Sunday: 1:39 p.m.
    Brady stood in the doorway, watching her. She was asleep on his couch. Faded patchwork quilt covering her as she slept with her back facing the world, curled up in a foetal position. That had been her tactic for the past five or so months. She had turned her back on the world and on him.
    He crept over, making a mental note to avoid the loose wooden floorboard that protested too loudly if he dared step on it. He placed the fresh black coffee on the floor, at arm’s length away from the couch. Beside it, he laid down the Observer and a plate with a bacon sandwich on it. The two things she would want when she decided to wake up were coffee and the paper. The bacon sandwich was wishful thinking on his part. A longing to return to normality.
    He wasn’t sure if she was really asleep. He knew she pretended, to avoid talking to him. Not wanting to face him, or to deal with what had happened to her – to them – all those months ago. To face the fact that someone had brutally murdered her boyfriend and then come after her. He could only imagine what they had done to her. Claudia had never talked about it. Like him, she had refused counselling at the time. But he was stronger than her. Brady had had a childhood of pain and abuse that had prepared him for a life that could kick the shit out of you and barely leave you breathing. But still, you breathed. Still, you lived. At least, he did. As for Claudia, she simply breathed. It was the living part she had given up. The one thing she could control. Her problem was that she had never really known anything bad. She had never wanted for anything as a child, nor as an adult. Loved and adored by all. Admittedly, he had given her good cause to walk out on their marriage when she did. But apart from that, she had had a blessed life – until now.
    Who could blame her for attempting to block it out? Pretend that it hadn’t happened?
    But he knew that she was drowning in self-denial. That her way of dealing with it – or not – was slowly killing her; and in turn, killing him. Brady sat down carefully on the floor beside her. Careful, for two