The Death List Read Online Free Page A

nothing to be ashamed about. Even though your real mother was a Cockney slapper called Mary Price. Good name for one of her kind! Except, I think her price was never more than a few port and lemons.
    There was a gap of several lines. I let go of my cableless mouse and leaned back. Normally I could make out patterns in the cracks on the ceiling, rivers winding and splitting like the Amazon or the Nile. But now I couldn’t see anything. My vision was dulled. Was the bastard telling the truth? What right did he have digging into my past? I blinked and ran my sleeve across my eyes. I was about to click on the reply button and terminate the exchange when I saw the next line after the gap.
    KEEP READING, MATT! I realize you’re pissed off with me now. You didn’t know, did you? You didn’t want to know. I just want you to understand that I do. I know everything about you. Your other mother, so to speak, is Frances, known as Fran, age sixty-three, address 24 Collingwood Grove, Muswell Hill. Profession—children’s author. Surely she could give you some hints about how to get back into the publishing business. She still produces a book a year. The last one was Milly’s Excellent Adventure, wasn’t it? DO NOT STOP READING, MATT! I’ve got much more to tell you.
    My heart was pounding. He knew where my mother…my adoptive mother lived. And the tone had changed. This was no longer a besotted fan; this was someone who was able to manipulate. I glanced down at the wads of money in my lap and pushed them to the floor.
    Good, you’re still with me! What else have I got for you? Father—not your real one, of course, even I couldn’t find that out; I don’t suppose your birth mother knew herself—father, Paul Jeremy Wells, born September 2, 1932, first secretary at the Department of Transport.
    I felt my eyes dampen again.
    Killed in a hit-and-run incident in Fortis Green, July 8, 2004. The driver who ran him down was never found. Would you like me to try to find him or her, Matt? My powers of research are formidable, as you can see. Just let me know. You attended Tumblegreen Primary School and Fortis Park Comprehensive. Your parents were—Fran still is—in the Labor Party, the old-style Labor Party, so no hoity-toity private education for you. But you were a good student, you got yourself two As and a D (what happened in that Modern History A level, Matt?) and went off to University College, Durham, to study English. You were on the rugby team there, not the union game that the toffs play, but league, the sport of the northern working man. Bravo, comrade. You were a fast and slippery winger who scored a lot of tries. But you let your studies slide, getting yourself covered in mud most afternoons and pissed most nights, so you ended up with a pretty average two-one. Were Paul and Fran impressed?
    The bastard had left another space in his text, no doubt because he guessed that I was smarting. WD1612 was really sticking it to me, the pretence of worship completely abandoned. Maybe he thought that the five grand bought him mocking rights. He’d soon find out otherwise.
    No, they weren’t, were they? And Paul was even less pleased when you went off to Cardiff to do a journalism course and got yourself on the staff of Melody Maker before it went down the toilet. Still, I suppose he must have been proud of you when The Italian Tragedy was published. And when it won that award. What was it? The Lord Peter Wimsey Cocktail Glass? Handy.
    I looked up at the red display case on the bookshelf above my desk. The tacky piece of engraved glass stood there as a symbol of my pathetic career. I should have smashed it years ago.
    Still, I read, Paul and Fran must have been pleased when you and Caroline got married. Caroline Anna-belle Zerb (crazy name…), born Bristol, December 27,1969. Studied economics at Durham and the LSE. City highflier. How on earth did you two get together? Were you her bit of rugby-playing rough?
    I clenched my fists.