The Blissfully Dead Read Online Free Page A

at work?’
    ‘I expect he’s at work, yes. But he’s not my husband anymore. He left us a year ago, so it’s just me and Rose now.’ She had a string of beads round her neck that she fiddled with. ‘Have you foun d her?’
    Patrick braced himself. ‘I think you should sit down, M rs Sharp.’
    And before he’d even managed to tell her that they’d found the body of someone who matched the description of their daughter, that they would need her to identify the body, that her life would never be as happy or bright or hopeful again, she started wailing.
    Patrick went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, while Carmella attempted to comfort Mrs Sharp. He called the station to check that the body had been removed from the hotel and taken to the mortuary so they could organise the identification. Sally had instantly said that she needed to call her sister, and that she would need to tell Rose’s dad, Martin, which had prompted a fresh wail.
    While Patrick was waiting for the kettle to boil, he slipped into the hall and looked up the stairs. Looking over his shoulder to check Sally Sharp wasn’t watching, he went up onto the landing. The first door he opened was the bathroom; the second was the master bedroom . That left Rose’s bedroom.
    He pushed the door open gently and stepped inside. His eyes widened.
    Four male faces stared at him from every surface: three white, one Asian. Every inch of wall was covered with posters and pages carefully torn from magazines or printed off the Internet. The screensaver on the computer showed the four boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders. A T-shirt bearing their logo lay on the unmade bed and a life-size cardboard cut-out of Shawn, the most popular member, stood at the foot of the bed.
    Patrick was in his mid-thirties. He liked indie and rock music. He didn’t watch much TV apart from CBeebies with Bonnie. He didn’t read a tabloid paper or any glossy magazines. But even he knew who this lot were. Rose was an OnTarget fanatic. Now, he thought, the media were going to have one hell of an angle.

Chapter 4
Day 2 – Patrick
    T he MIT9 incident room at Sutton station smelled of machine coffee and bacon sandwiches, making Patrick’s stomach growl and clench simultaneously as he took his place at the front of the room beneath the blown-up photo of Rose Sharp. In the picture, she was smiling, revealing a gap between her front teeth, though there was a far-off look in her eyes. He wondered if she’d been happy and, if not, how far she had been from finding joy in her life. Growing up had been the best thing that ever happened to him, Patrick thought. Getting away. Reinventing himself .
    He mentally glossed over the fact that he was back living with his parents now.
    Half a dozen officers, including Carmella and Gareth, perched on tables or stood, and Patrick found himself appraising them as his eyes passed over them. DC Preet Gupta was leaning against the wall at the back – competent and affable, she was a straight-down-the-line, trustworthy young woman Patrick was always pleased to see on his team. DC Martin Hale, a tall man with thinning hair who reminded Patrick of Kevin Spacey, was older and seemingly happy to stay at his rank forever. He had teenage daughters, and Patrick noticed how Hale’s jaw clenched as he surveyed the picture of Rose. He was sitting at the front of the room, so close to Rose’s photo that he could count the few freckles on her nose – and indeed probably was. That summed him up – keen, with an admirable attention to detail.
    The next member of the team, Wendy Franklin, another detective constable, was a newcomer, having transferred in from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, and an unknown quantity. Patrick’s initial impression was that – as his mum would say – she looked like a stiff breeze would blow her away. She was skinny and appeared to be about Rose Sharp’s age, though he knew she was actually twenty-five. She was one of