Death Day Read Online Free

into an eternity. He glanced down at the phone on the table beside his chair and rubbed his chin contemplatively. Should he ring the station? Just to find out if they needed him for anything?
        He grunted and turned away, warming his hands around the mug of steaming tea. He eyed the phone again but, instead, went and retrieved the letters from the kitchen. He tore the first of them open, knowing from the 'Private' stamp on the top left hand corner that it was a bill of some sort. Electricity. He muttered something to himself and re-folded it then tore open the second.
        It was from his mother. He read it briefly, not really seeing the words on the blue tinted pages. Everything was all right, his father was fine. Hope he was feeling better. Etc., etc., etc. Tactfully no mention of Mike. He pushed the letter to one side and finished his tea. The same old crap every time. Debbie usually replied to them. Lambert picked up the letter once more and read the line which never failed to annoy him.
        'Your father is fine.'
        He threw it down. Father. Fucking stepfather. His own father had been dead for ten years. Lambert had watched him die, day by day. A little at a time. He remembered coming home from school every dinner time when he was twelve and finding his father sitting at the table, the bottle of whisky gripped in his palsied hand. Lambert hated him for his drinking, he hated him for what it had made him. But most of all, he hated his mother because she was the reason his father had begun drinking in the first place. Her and her fancy man. Mr Ted bloody Grover. 'Your father.' His new father, his fucking stepfather.
        He tore the letter up savagely, hurling the pieces away from him in rage, his breath coming in short gasps.
        Cirrhosis of the liver had caused his real father's death. Or precipitated it anyway. Lambert remembered finding him that day. His head thrown back, his eyes open. The yellow blobs of vomit still on his lips, the empty bottle gripped in his rigid fingers. Choked on his own puke.
         Why was it, Lambert thought, that the painful memories always stayed more vivid than the pleasant ones? To him at any rate.
        He reached for the phone and dialled Medworth police station. The phone rang a couple of times, then was picked up.
        'Medworth Police Station,' the voice said.
        Lambert smiled, recognizing the voice as sergeant Vic Hayes.
        'Morning, Vic,' he said.
        'How you keeping, sir?'
        'Not bad. What's doing?'
        There was a pause at the other end as Hayes tried to think of something he could tell his superior. His tone sounded almost apologetic, 'Nothing really. Mrs Short lost her purse in the Bingo hall, she thinks it was nicked. Two kids took a bike from outside old man Sudbury's shop and I've got bloody flu, that's all I can tell you.' The sentence was finished off with an almighty sneeze.
        Lambert nodded, 'So there's nothing worth me coming in for?'
        'No, sir. Anyway, aren't you supposed to be resting? I heard that the doctor gave you a month off.'
        'How the hell do you know that?' asked Lambert, good naturedly.
        'I bumped into your wife the other day,' Hayes explained. There was silence for a moment, then the sergeant said, 'By the way, sir, we were all very sorry about what happened.'
        Lambert cut him short, 'Thanks.' He moved hurriedly on. 'Look, Vic, if anything does turn up, let me know, will you? Sitting at home here is driving me up the bloody wall.'
        'Will do, sir.'
        They said their goodbyes and Lambert hung up, plunged once more into the silence of the room. He clapped his hands together as if trying to shake himself free of the lethargy which gripped him. He got up, tired of the silence, and crossed to the record player. He selected the loudest recording that they had in their collection and dropped it onto the turntable.
        Someone thundered