The Killer Inside Read Online Free

others at ease, no matter how worked up they were. But he hadn’t spoken since they had left Carl Kelly’s cell. He was sitting, bent over, with his head in his hands as if he was racking his brains for an answer to what had happened.
    ‘Do you think it was an accident?’ Megan wasn’t sure if he had heard. His shirt collar was up over his ears. ‘Dom…’ she began again, but in a quick movement he sat up.
    ‘What do you mean?’ His eyes locked on hers for a second before turning back to the floor. She couldn’t read his expression. There was genuine grief in those eyes. But there was something else as well. Despair? Anger? Clearly Dom and Carl had been close friends. Just how close she wasn’tsure. Did Dom blame himself for Carl’s death? Did he feel he’d failed him some way?
    ‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is that the overdose could have been deliberate.’ She paused, waiting for him to give her more.
    ‘He told me he was off the gear.’ The pale skin below his hairline puckered into frown lines. ‘Carl was doing a lot of brown when I first got to know him. He’d done just over a year of his bird when I arrived.’ Megan nodded. She knew Dom Wilde had been in three other prisons before being transferred to Balsall Gate. ‘He had regular suppliers,’ he went on. ‘Screws, mainly.’ He glanced at her again. Probably to see if she was surprised by this revelation. She wasn’t. ‘Anyway, he really wanted to get clean,’ Dom went on. ‘He knew he’d never get parole if he didn’t. And fair play to him, he did it. Took about six months, but he really kicked it. Started going to the gym, reading books – even got himself a girlfriend.’
    ‘A girlfriend?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He blinked, then rolled his eyes. ‘This woman had been writing to him. Started visiting him a couple of months ago. She was…’ He hesitated, shrugging again. ‘She was what the lads in here would describe as “very fit”.’
    Had Dom been jealous, she wondered? He didn’t sound it. Perhaps he and Carl hadn’t been lovers, then.
    ‘Are you sure she hadn’t finished with him? I mean, that could’ve been a reason…’ She tailed off. His pain was tangible. She felt uncomfortable about saying the word ‘suicide’ now.
    ‘No,’ Dom cut in, ‘she hadn’t. He showed me a letter she sent him this morning – she said she couldn’t wait for him to get out.’ His eyes clouded and he turned them to the floor again.
    ‘Dom, what was Carl in for?’
    ‘Dealing.’
    ‘Heroin?’
    ‘Yeah, and the rest,’ he said. ‘Carl was in and out of prison from when he was a teenager. He was on a five-year stretch this time.’ His eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth as if to add something, then shut it again.
    ‘What?’ Megan asked.
    Dom pursed his lips, shaking his head.
    ‘Please, tell me.’
    ‘It’s not important. Not now.’
    ‘Dom, if this was deliberate…if Carl overdosed on purpose…’
    ‘I know what you’re saying: you want to know if someone drove him to it. Well they didn’t. Not anyone on this earth, anyway.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Something he told me. I promised I’d never tell anyone. But now he’s…Christ!’ He broke off, cupping his face in his hands.
    ‘What was it? Please, Dom, it might be important.’
    There was a muffled sigh. When he answered her he uncovered his mouth but not his eyes. ‘He said he killed a man and got away with it.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Stabbed him in a row over money he was owed for drugs.’ Dom rubbed his eyes and jerked his head at the tiny, barred window. ‘He said the bloke was buried over there.’
    Megan gave him a blank look. Then she twigged. ‘In St Mary’s? In that graveyard near the prison gate?’
    ‘Yeah, it used to freak him out. See, if you stand on a chair you can see the graveyard through the cell window. Carl said he used to lie awake at night thinking the bloke was coming back to haunt him.’

Chapter 3
    The police didn’t seem interested