Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

Coffee gone, Burgess stood. “We’ll need to be off in a bit, Mum, but we’ll hang around for a while. Me and Shaw will need to hash out a few things before we move forward. You’ll be okay once we’ve gone, though, won’t you?”

“Of course,” she said. “Aren’t I always?”

That was what he was worried about. She had always been okay. On the outside. The inside? He dreaded to think. But he couldn’t allow that to enter his mind now. He had a killer to catch and, brother or not, he was going to fucking catch him, come hell or high water.

Chapter Seventeen

She dragged him along a street where posh people lived. “You need to keep your mouth shut when we see this woman, Ugly Little Fucker. You got that?”

“Yes,” he said.

She squeezed his fingers so hard they mashed together and hurt. He thought the bones might break. He’d had one of those before, a broken bone, when she’d yanked at his wrist and twisted it. She’d told the hospital he’d fallen, and he’d worn a cast for six whole weeks. It had started out white but ended up beige from the filth in their home. And no one at school had wanted to sign their name on it like they had that time Jimmy Tamlins had broken his.

He took in the sight of all the houses with their clean driveways and well-kept gardens. It was such a far cry from where he lived that he thought he might be dreaming. The area was kind of similar to Gran’s, but Gran’s wasn’t quite as rich-looking as these places. He remembered Jimmy bragging about living in this street.

I don’t know which house it is.

She hauled him up a path between a driveway and short-cut grass. Flowers bordered the small lawn, bobbing their pretty, colourful heads as if weighed down by the heat of the sun. He imagined the stems as their necks, bowed in a perfect arc. Did he resemble those flowers when he got told off? When he stared at the floor and waited for the hits to rain down on him? He was sure he did. It was a shame he wasn’t as pretty as the flowers. Maybe she would love him then.

Heat blazed, his skin itching beneath the woolly jumper she’d forced him to put on before they’d left the house. The cuffs were damp from sweat, and the neck, and the wool was heavy, dragging down his shoulders.

Pressing a golden doorbell button, she squeezed his hand harder. “Remember, mouth shut. Oh, and give her your best pleading face. You know the one. You make me look at it often enough every time you’re bad.”

He didn’t know what she meant about his face but nodded anyway.

The door swung open, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen stood on the threshold. She was just like the fairy godmother in the book at Gran’s, all blonde hair hanging down in waves, pink lipstick, and twinkling blue eyes. A boy stood behind her, a few metres back in the hallway. Wasn’t that the kid he’d seen in the park that time? When she had tugged him away, muttering that it was all right for some, whatever that meant?

He blinked then returned his attention to the pretty woman.

“Yes?” Beautiful Lady said. “Can I help you?”

“I may as well come straight out with it instead of beating around the fucking bush,” she said. “I’m tired of this kid, and William needs to take some responsibility for a change. I mean, I’ve brought him up alone so far with no money from your old man. About time he dipped his hand in his pocket instead of inside other women.”

“William?” Beautiful Lady’s hand shot up to a silver locket that rested against her chest. Her blouse must be silk—it looked that expensive. It rustled with her movement. “What has William got to do with your boy?”

Beautiful Lady’s cheeks went as pink as her blouse, and he thought she might be about to cry, because her eyes were shining, different from how they’d been when she’d first opened the door.

“Duh,” she said. “He’s his father.”

Beautiful Lady winced. It took a second or two for her to stop her mouth from opening and closing. “I really do think you have the wrong house, the wrong William, dear. Perhaps you mean George Williams over the road in number nine?”

“What, you don’t think I know who I’ve shagged?” she said. “Like I’d forget the difference between someone called William and George? Like I’d forget that William has a mole on his bollocks and he likes a finger up his arse? On your bloody bike, missus.”

He glanced between her and Beautiful Lady, confused. What was a mole? What were bollocks? And why would anyone want a finger up their bum? He didn’t want that. One of her boyfriends had done that to him once. It had hurt.

“Oh! Really!” Beautiful Lady said. “You’re disgusting. Please go away.”

“Go away? Yeah, I bet you’d love nothing more than for us to scuttle off,” she said. “Woman of your sort wouldn’t want to admit her bloke shagged around, let alone produced a kid out of it. An ugly kid, I’ll give you that, but he’s still William’s, and I can’t be doing with looking after him no more.”

“Dear Lord… I really do think you have the wrong house.”

Beautiful Lady stopped playing with her locket. The sun glinted off it, paining his eyes, and he squinted, catching a glimpse of the boy again, who had moved closer to the door. The kid’s eyes were wide, and his white T-shirt was like the sun, a bit blinding, and it was so clean it must have just come out of the packet. To have a T-shirt like