KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) Read Online Free Page A

the old mill town and reached the West Pennine Moors in record time.
    My parents’ home in a handloom weaver’s croft has been entirely rebuilt after the fire that almost destroyed it some years ago. The destruction was a blessing in disguise for Paddy. It’s given him the opportunity to deploy his construction skills on a large scale. The only fly in the ointment is that the rundown farm between his house and the main road is as dilapidated as ever. Dogs, cattle, and broken machinery lie about in a scene of chaos. It provides Paddy with something to grumble at.
    The cottage is perfectly positioned to catch the maximum daylight although a large oak tree at one side casts shadows that would have been unwelcome to the weavers: built of the local limestone the building merges into the landscape. Where the old weavers once pegged out cloth to bleach in the sun there’s a large garden.
    I spotted my mother. She was wearing a battered old Barbour and a shapeless rain hat. She looked like a Russian peasant woman in the bad old days.
    The rain was keeping up; drizzle punctuated by heavy downpours, but even so Eileen was swinging a mattock at the unresponsive soil.
    I parked the car and hurried towards her. I snatched the tool out of her hand.
    ‘What is it with you two?’ I asked angrily. ‘Slavery was abolished a long time ago. You’re both rolling in money yet you can’t let go. You’re bashing the soil and he’s upstairs robbing a tradesman of a day’s work.’
    ‘Oh, don’t be so silly Dave,’ Eileen said, giving me a peck on the cheek with frozen lips. ‘Just think, if we both drop dead from exhaustion, all this will be yours.’
    ‘Don’t talk like that!’ I said sharply.
    ‘It’s better for us to be working like this than toiling on a treadmill in a private gym like you and Jan,’ she replied with a smile. ‘It keeps us fit and it’s productive. I’m putting potatoes in here.’
    ‘The Irish famine was a long time ago,’ I muttered but I knew argument was useless.
    ‘Oh, come in and shut up,’ she said, ‘or at least stop complaining. I don’t ask you to give up your many dangerous activities.’
    ‘What?’ I exploded. ‘You never do anything but that, not that I have any dangerous activities nowadays.’
    ‘How’s dear Jan,’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘That dear sweet girl is trying so hard to be a good wife to you. I wonder if you value her enough.’
    This was tough to take from a woman who barely twelve calendar months previously had moved heaven and earth to marry me off to Kate McKenzie, daughter of an old friend of hers. Kate’s a good woman. She saved my life. She just isn’t the right woman for me.
    ‘Jan’s in good health,’ I said curtly. With my parents I’ve learned to take the rough with the smooth.
    ‘And the baby?’
    ‘She went for a scan yesterday. Baby’s developing normally.’
    ‘Are you both still resisting the temptation to know whether it’s a boy or a girl?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said abruptly.
    I didn’t want to be sidetracked.
    ‘Well, I can see you’re in one of your moods,’ she said, leading me to the door where we were met by Paddy in white decorator’s overalls.
    ‘To what do we owe this honour?’ he asked, bowing to me.
    ‘Oh, be careful what you say, he’ll bite your head off,’ Eileen warned.
    ‘I haven’t bitten anyone’s head off. I think it’s daft for you to be slaving away with a mattock in the teeming rain when the supermarket shelves are groaning with potatoes.’
    ‘They don’t taste as good as my own produce,’ she shot back. ‘I grew some white beetroot that’s just delicious with melted cheese.’
    ‘Right, that’s it! I’m going,’ I said, turning on my heel.
    ‘Hold on, hothead!’ Paddy said, gripping my arm. ‘You must have the wind up about something or you wouldn’t have come up here on a Monday morning. It’s not that Hobby Dancer, is it?’
    ‘No, nothing like that, not a call from a serial killer