Road of the Dead Read Online Free Page B

something. I don’t know why. A couple of years ago her mum got cancer and Abbie left London and moved down to Dartmoor to look after her. I think she must have been about sixteen or seventeen then. She met this local boy—I don’t know his name—and when her mum died, he moved in with her, and then a few months later they got married. Rachel went down for the wedding—remember?”
    Cole shook his head again.
    “Yeah, you do,” I said. “She had that cream-colored dress and the big hat and everything—you must remember. When she came back she showed us all the photographs and the video…” I suddenly realized that Cole was upset with himself for not remembering, so I shut up about it and changed the subject. “We’re nearly there, look.” I pointed through the window at the approaches of a sprawling gray town. Cole made a show of looking, but I knew he wasn’t interested. His face had died. It wasn’t that he cared about Rachel’s cream-colored dress or her big hat or the wedding photos or the video, he was just sad that he’d forgotten a moment when she was happy. He’d been there, and he’d missed it.
    He’d lost it.
    We got off the train and made our way out of the station to the taxi stand. There was a long line and no taxis. I followed Cole to the end of the line and watched him light a cigarette.
    “You ought to give that up,” I said.
    “I ought to do a lot of things,” he replied, breathing out smoke and giving me a look.
    A taxi trundled past us and stopped at the front of the line. A woman with a trolley full of suitcases loaded up and got in. The taxi pulled away and the line shuffled forward.
    “You’re not sending me back then?” I said to Cole.
    “I will if you don’t stop yakking.”
    It wasn’t much of an invitation, but coming from Cole it was about the best I was going to get. He still didn’t like it, but I think he’d realized that if I was determined to be with him, there wasn’t much he could do about it. And besides, he liked being with me. He always had. He’d never admit to it, but I could feel it—buried deep down inside him.
    He was keeping a lot of other stuff buried, too—but most of it was buried so deep that neither of us knew what it was.
    I didn’t mind.
    As long as we were together, that was enough for me.
    I kept my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.
    Half an hour later we were sitting in the back of a black taxi and the driver was asking us where we were going. I looked at Cole, wondering if he’d given it any thought.
    “Police station,” he told the driver.
    “Which one?”
    “What?”
    “Which police station d’you want?”
    Cole hesitated. He hadn’t given it any thought.
    “Breton Cross,” I told the driver.
    He nodded at me and pulled away, and I settled back and looked out of the window. Cole didn’t speak for about a minute.
    Eventually he said, “I suppose you think that proves something, do you?”
    “What?” I said innocently.
    “There’s no need to look so pleased with yourself. I would have gotten there in the end. It just would have taken me a bit longer, that’s all.”
    “Right,” I said.
    “How do you know which police station we want, anyway?”
    “I looked it up on the Internet. Breton Cross is the main one. It’s where the officer in charge of Rachel’s investigation is based. That’s who we want, isn’t it?”
    Cole looked at me. “What’s his name?”
    “Pomeroy. He’s a Detective Chief Inspector.”
    Cole nodded. He almost said thanks, but then he remembered who he was and just nodded again instead. I looked out the window and allowed myself a secret smile.
    Breton Cross Police Station was a five-story building that looked as if it had been dipped in shit. God knows what color it was supposed to be. It was the kind of color you getwhen you mix up all the colors in your paint box. A shitty color, basically.
    Cole paid the taxi driver and we went up some steps and through some doors into the reception