A Room Full of Killers, Michael Wood [best books for students to read txt] 📗

could talk to the press. She would hate it but if it was her job then she would bite the bullet and do it.

Matilda pressed her foot to the floor and headed, without realizing it, for home. She needed familiarity. She needed somewhere she could fully relax. She needed James.

Following James’s death one of the things Matilda hated more than anything else was coming back to an empty house. As a freelance architect, James often worked from home, and whenever she stumbled in James was either working in the office with music blaring, or watching some ridiculous sport on television and shouting mercilessly at the officials.

Now when she entered the house she was presented with a heavy silence. The ticking clocks drove her mad, and was the fridge supposed to be that loud or was it on the verge of breaking down?

Leaving the Land Rover in the drive, she threw open the front door and slammed it behind her. She needed noise. She needed to hear activity. She felt James’s presence everywhere in the house but couldn’t hear him and she couldn’t see him.

‘Hello? Hello? James, it’s me. I’m home,’ she called out. Her voice, loud and maniacal, echoed around the large hallway. ‘Is there anyone home?’

If I receive a reply, I’ll probably wet myself.

She suddenly remembered that when she left the house in the early hours of the morning her father was there. If he was still here and heard her calling for James, he would think she had completely lost it.

Maybe she had.

There was a note held down by an ugly ornament on the hall table. Matilda picked it up and smiled at her father’s handwriting:

Matilda,

Thank you for the chat and keeping me company last night. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. I suppose you’re used to it by now.

I finished off the cheese in the fridge and I washed everything up and ran round the living room with the hoover. I’ll give you a call later tonight. Don’t work too hard.

Love, Dad. xx

She wiped a tear from her eye and walked into the large kitchen, which was showroom-clean. She hardly used it anymore. When she did decide to sit down for a bite to eat in the evening it was either scrambled egg on toast or beans on toast. Sometimes she would go crazy and mix things up and have scrambled egg with beans on toast.

Matilda pulled open the fridge door and saw the packets of ready-made salads and microwavable meals for one. Her whole life was pathetic. She was completely alone. Yes, she had a friend in Adele Kean, and Pat Campbell was starting to feature in her life more, but they had their own lives. Adele had her son, Chris, and Pat had Anton and her army of grandkids to contend with. They didn’t want a manic depressive on their doorstep every night looking for company.

She took a bottle of water from the fridge and drank half of it in one gulp. Her mouth was dry. A drawer next to the sink contained her antidepressants. She didn’t like taking them. The thought of pumping goodness knows what inside her on a daily basis filled her with horror. Nobody knew what prolonged prescription drug use did to inner organs. However, occasionally, help was needed in the form of medication.

She felt angry at being told to lay off the Thomas Hartley case despite the fact that an innocent young man could be languishing in prison while the real killer was still at large. Surely even the slightest hint of suspicion should be followed up, not ignored for fear of upsetting someone across the Pennines.

She popped three Venlafaxine from the blister pack and threw them to the back of her throat, followed by another large slug of water. Hopefully they would start to kick in soon. She needed to get back to work. The floodwater at Starling House should have been pumped out by now so a minibus could collect the inmates and take them back to HQ. Or should it wait until tomorrow? It was gone three o’clock now. There was no chance they would be able to question all six remaining inmates. And what about Richard Grover, Fred Percival and the other staff who would need interviewing?

‘Fuck!’ Matilda kicked the dustbin, sending it skidding across the kitchen floor. It hit the dishwasher and toppled over, spilling its load all over the clean floor.

Her head was heavy with thoughts, doubts, questions, and Carl bloody Meagan.

Somewhere in the distance, Matilda’s mobile phone started to ring. She had no idea where it was. She didn’t care. She had no intention of answering it. All she wanted was some time on her own, an hour, half an hour, even ten minutes would do, but it would appear nobody could think for themselves anymore. They had to run everything past Matilda. DI Brady should be taking on more of the hassle.

The phone stopped ringing and then started again almost immediately.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Matilda hissed. ‘Can’t you leave me alone for just five minutes?’

She headed for the hallway where she had thrown her bag. The screen on her mobile phone was lit up and told her Rory was calling. Of course it was going to be Rory. It couldn’t have been anyone else, could it? DC Rory Fleming – all style and no substance.

‘What?’ she barked as she swiped a finger across the screen.

‘Sorry, boss. Am I interrupting?’

‘Not in the slightest, Rory. You know I’m always pleased to hear from you,’ her reply was laced with sarcasm but the thick-skinned DC didn’t acknowledge it.

‘We’ve found Jacob Brown.’

So much for an hour or two on my own.

FORTY-NINE

Scoutmaster, Murray Beck, was a difficult man to get hold of. Since he retired six months earlier from being stock controller of The Norwich Packaging Company, he had been busier than ever. He was an organizer of clubs and social events for the neighbourhood he lived in, helped out at the church and