Shadows on the Nile Read Online Free Page A

studio in the Fulham area of west London and she usually cycled home the few miles along Fulham Palace Road and overPutney Bridge, enjoying both the exercise and the sight of the River Thames. It slid under the bridge like a dark thread of history – King Henry VIII himself had skated on its surface four hundred years ago in the days when it used to freeze. Prime Minister Gladstone had escaped from under the eagle-eyed gaze of Queen Victoria to prowl its muddy banks in search of prostitutes to save. Sherlock Holmes had slunk through the foul mists that coiled from its polluted depths.
    The last thought made Jessie smile and she reminded herself sternly that the inimitable Sherlock was nothing more than a figment of Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination. But today she had walked home. A furniture removal cart had clipped her front wheel and buckled it this morning. She had sat in the gutter nursing a grazed shin and cursed all carts. Cursed October. Cursed her luck. When a passing car had offered her a lift, she had glared at the driver, rejected his undoubted kindness and hobbled the last half mile to the studio pushing a wonky bicycle. She had deposited it in the oily but capable hands of a bicycle shop mechanic on the corner of Fielding Road and at the end of the day she’d headed home on foot.
    She quickened her pace now. On each side of the road perched rows of discreetly respectable houses, the kind of houses where librarians and undertakers lived, curtains already drawn like armour against the outside world, the smoke of coal fires gusting down from the chimneys into Jessie’s nostrils along with the rain. As she reached the turning to her street, she glanced over her shoulder. It was automatic. This need to check.
    Behind her, Putney Hill fell away, gleaming wet and secretive in the dark, its pavements lit by an occasional street lamp or car headlight. There was no one in sight. Hardly surprising, as it wasn’t a night for an evening stroll. A dog with long yellow ears and sodden flanks was mooching around dustbins, but otherwise the street lay lifeless. That suited Jessie just fine. She felt her heart steady to no more than a dull thump. All week this had been going on, thisneed to search behind her.
    All right, tonight she was mistaken. Tonight there was no one. But other nights, footfalls echoed behind her so clearly that she would swing round to confront, face to face, whoever it was who was following her all over London. Yet there was never anyone she could pick out of the shadows by night, and by day there was only the usual flow of pedestrians going about their business, no one’s eyes meeting hers, just the stolid indifference of city-dwellers to those around them. Some nights she hesitated to turn, afraid that she’d see behind her a lean and hungry figure with blue eyes.
    ‘Jabez!’
    No answer. Her flat felt cold as a tomb as she closed the curtains. October was seeping through the cracks in the plaster.
    ‘Jabez!’ she called again, switching on the overhead light, but there was no sign of activity.
    She dropped her coat and scarf on the sofa and unwrapped a newspaper packet of sprats. Instantly the stink of raw fish permeated the air, thick and salty, and Jessie was thankful that Tabitha was out at work, so there would be no complaints. Jessie headed towards her bedroom, frowning slightly at the sight of the door ajar, because she distinctly recalled making a point of shutting it before leaving for work this morning. There was mud on her eiderdown.
    ‘Jabez,’ she said sternly.
    No answer.
    ‘Where are you hiding?’
    She wafted a sprat by its tail through the air and her pillow trembled. A small heart-shaped face and two pointed ears emerged from under it. A pair of vivid green eyes blinked at her and a loud purr shook the bedding.
    ‘Jabez, you are not allowed in here when I’m out. You know that.’
    The cat stretched one coal-black front leg and pretended to ignore the silvery offering that