Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) Read Online Free Page A

not connected to ours.’ He tried to shut the door on me.
    ‘How the fuck would you know something like that? It’s a dark-haired girl almost naked on the banks of the Georges. I’m ticking all the boxes. If I knew what other boxes I could tick, maybe the link would be even stronger. You’re putting me on this task force, Nigel, before I kick you in the face.’
    ‘It’s not the GRK,’ Nigel sighed. ‘Now piss off.’
    He slammed the door on my boot. I shoved forward, slid an arm into the gap and tried to grab him. Pops’s voice sent a bolt of electricity through me.
    ‘Detective Blue!’
    ‘I’m just helping, Chief.’ I pulled the door shut, gave the knob a jiggle. ‘Making sure the case room is secure.’
    ‘You’ve got the dead girl’s parents in interrogation room six.’ He carried his coffee towards me. ‘I’ve put the paperwork in. You’ll share the case with Detective Barnes.’
    ‘Are you kidding me?’
    ‘He was the first responder,’ the old man said. ‘He’s got some good theories. The media has got hold of the case already, so it’ll be all over the news. And she’s a bright, pretty university student. I want to have something meaningful to say at the press conference.’
    ‘University student?’ My mouth fell open.
    ‘She’d just applied and been accepted. Her parents told the patrol cops who picked them up,’ the Chief said. ‘Applied, studied – in the media’s eyes, it’s the same thing. She was full of prospects. We need to get something quickly.’
    ‘Well, you can tell them this is a Georges River Killer case, then.’ I counted off on my fingers: ‘Dark hair, Georges River, semi-naked, university student …’
    ‘It’s not,’ Pops said, and walked away.
    I stood in the middle of the bullpen and looked at the officers all around me, some of them answering phones, some of them clicking away at computers. Had the whole world gone crazy? I felt as if I were speaking a foreign language, and everyone I talked to was pretending to understand and then brushing me off. I was concerned I was getting so frustrated I might be tempted to cry. I generally cry about once a year, so I wasn’t going to waste it on this bureaucratic bullshit.
    ‘This
is
a Georges River Killer case!’ I roared. The men and women on their phones turned to look at me. ‘I need to be on the task force!’
    ‘It’s not,’ Pops said calmly as he closed the door to his office.

CHAPTER 12
    THE
DREAM CATCHER had been in a dry dock at Garden Island for two days. In that time, Hope had cleared it of almost all the Spellings’ possessions. She did keep some things – a nice new laptop that had belonged to Ken, and some of Jenny’s more modern jewellery. She was exhausted from constant trips to the shower cubicle to see if Ken was awake, and, if he was, to hold the chloroform-soaked rag over his face until he slept again. Jenny didn’t stir at all. It was as though she knew her husband was lost in the land of dreams, and she’d chosen to join him there.
    Between trips to check on her prisoners, Hope spent most of that morning lying on the bow in one of the deck chairs in her bikini, reading the yacht’s operating manual and writing down questions for Ken. She needed a tan if she was going to fit in with the other yachties – she couldn’t look like a newbie or they wouldn’t accept her into their world. Sometimes she closed her eyes and pretended she was at sea, sailing across the Indian Ocean, the sun baking her pale skin a deep golden brown like Jenny’s. She didn’t keep her eyes closed too long, or she’d see flashes, electric zings of light that sometimes contained frightened faces, splashes of blood, clawing fingers. The images played about the corners of her eyes, made her chew her nails. They’d go, in time, these memories. She just had to focus on the plan.
    It was almost funny, the way it had all come together one night at the Black Garter while she’d been sitting in the window