Now You See Me Read Online Free Page A

it.’ She got the photocopied page out of her bag and passed it across the table.
    She watched as Sharon read it once, fast, then again more slowly, her sharp attractive features drawing into a frown as she took in its meaning. ‘It’s bullshit,’ she said. ‘I know this guy — Albert Spinks. He’s a bit of a weirdo, anyway. Thinks he’s a hotshot detective or something. Always hoping he’ll solve some major mystery, make the cops look stupid.’
    She shoved the article back at Noel. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said. ‘It’s not just the circumstantial evidence, there’s a background there. There’s everything you amateur sleuths want — motive, mean s an d opportunity, as well as absolutely cast-iron evidence.’ She shook her head, her curly dark hair bouncing. ‘Jesus Christ, you must be desperate to fill pages.’
    ‘But I’m right about what he’s saying, though, aren’t I? The coroner ...’
    ‘Listen,’ Sharon said, not trying to hide her anger. ‘I dealt with this kid, Belinda, once. I helped bring her in after the neighbours rang triple-0. She’d been raped with a broom handle — we didn’t know that then, just a “smooth blunt object”, but we found it. The broom in question. In the family home. He hadn’t even bothered to wipe the kid’s blood off it. They had cleaners, you see. Posh solicitor, comes from family money. It didn’t seem to occur to him that anyone’d look at anything as .. . lo w clas s as a broom. And the mother’s thick as a brick. Fucking vacant blonde, used to be a model, out of it on valium and slimming pills half the time. Probably didn’t even know they owned a broom. The kid was only three, then, too young to testify adequately and the mother went ape at the suggestion.’ She sat back and took a deep breath. ‘She said the kid was a problem — always playing with herself, shoving things up herself. She’d told the same story to several doctors before. And, as I said, the stepfather’s a posh solicitor — he knew all the right buttons to push.’ She shook her head again and laughed softly. ‘Sorry. My class prejudice rearing its ugly head. Jesus, I liv e with a posh solicitor myself.’
    ‘All right.’ Noel spoke carefully. ‘He sexually abused her. He’s an animal. But did he kill her? This bloke, this coroner, seems to be saying there are anomalies, that it doesn’t look like an incestuous rape gone wrong, it looks more ordered, more psychotically patterned ...’
    ‘The trouble with freedom of information is that any Joe Blow can set himself up as an expert,’ Sharon said with no apparent irony. ‘This fuckwit, Albert Spinks, he’s read all the FBI stuff on serial murderers, in thrillers, or on the Internet or some-fucking-where, and he’s got himself all excited . W e read it, too, you know. We know all about organised and disorganised killers — all that computerised shit — and that the FBI itself has never actually caught a real live serial killer with all its patterns and profiles. But we also know when we’ve got real people committing real crimes, and the evidence to prove it.’ She stood up and gathered her coat and bag. ‘It’s been a pleasure talking to you. No, really.’
    ‘Sharon ...’ Noel sighed. ‘Look, you’re probably right. But I have to follow it up. It’s my job.’
    ‘How do you cope with it?’ Sharon mimicked her. ‘How come you’re not all cynical and burnt out like other journalists? How do you sleep at night?’ She smiled briefly, with no warmth, and walked out of the cafe.
    *
    ‘I lost it a bit, today,’ Sharon said to Mick. They were in the bath together, late at night, the spa jets bubbling through the fragrant salts. ‘That Noel Baker, the journalist. I’d better ring her up and apologise. She’s not as full of bullshit as most of them, though she’s a bit gung ho. I actually quite like her.’
    ‘Do you? Actually?’ He leered at her through the steam, reaching for her breasts.