Death's Cold Hand J.E. Mayhew (best romantic novels to read TXT) 📖

A few bags of crisps here, a few printer cartridges there. Pretty soon, you just think anything is up for grabs and start syphoning off actual money.

Well, that was all over. Pretty soon, it would all be over. He’d make sure of that.

*****

Rock Park, where Blake lived was only a ten-minute drive from Nicola Norton’s house but Blake drove deep in thought. Something nagged him about this whole business. He’d handed over the financial investigation side of things but part of him still wondered if there was something connecting the murders to financial impropriety at the charity.

Wearily, he pushed the door open, bracing himself for the onslaught from Charlie but nothing happened. “Charlie?” he called. The little dog never failed to greet him. In fact, Serafina usually sauntered after him and neither of them were present. “Serafina?”

With a mounting sense of dread, Blake crept into the kitchen but found nothing. “Where are you?” he whispered as he entered the living room.

Blake’s stomach lurched. Serafina lay still on the sofa. Very still. Charlie whimpered, softly and licked at her ear. “Serafina?” Blake gasped hurrying over. The cat felt cold and she stared at Blake with glazed eyes. “No, no, no, no,” Blake hissed as he felt her flank. Her breathing was weak. Charlie whined and Blake scratched his ear fleetingly. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, boy.” He pulled his phone out quickly and called the vet. It went to answerphone and gave another number for emergency calls. Hissing with frustration, Blake hung up and rummaged in his pocket for a pen and paper. With trembling fingers Blake called the vet again, scribbling the new number frantically. “Don’t worry, girl, we’ll get you help,” Blake said. Serafina gave a pathetic rumbling growl and tried to scratch Blake, then slumped back onto the sofa.

Chapter 34

Chopper blades cut the air, sending sand and exhaust fumes spiralling outwards towards Terry. The constant whup, whup, whup sliced into his brain and made him scream for mercy. Graves sat in the cockpit grinning and beckoning for Terry to jump aboard but he knew that if he did, then the chopper would fly off with him dangling from the landing skids. He’d fall to his death. And all the while, Graves’s face closed in on him, laughing with that mouth filled with tombstone teeth that looked yellow and cracked against the leathery, suntanned skin.

Terry’s eyes flicked open.

Noel leaned over him. “Are you okay son?”

Terry scrambled back across the floor, pressing himself against an old cupboard. “Leave me alone.”

“Okay, okay,” Noel said, holding his hands up and stepping away. “You must’ve been having a bad dream or something. Yelling out like that.”

“I- I’m sorry,” Terry panted. He shivered, dragging the blanket up around him. Sweat beaded his forehead. He looked up at Noel. Maybe Graves could reach them, after all. Maybe Graves was in this very building with him now, seeping into Noel’s body, infecting his blood and nervous system. Terry shook his head. “Mustn’t think like that.”

“Like what, son?” Noel said, squatting down. “Are you ill?”

“I-I’m fine. I just need my tablets. Can’t think straight without them.”

“And where are they?”

“At my flat but I can’t go there.”

Noel shook his head. “There must be some heavy-duty lads after you, mate. What if I went?” Noel said. “If you give me your keys, I could get your medication for you.”

Terry tried to read his face. Once he could just look at people and know if they were joking or lying. It had never been easy but he had learnt to be pretty good at it but now, he had to think. Noel’s eyes were wide and he had a slight smile on his face but not a broad grin. “Okay,” Terry said at last and fished his keys out of his overall pocket. “I’ll give you the address. Thanks.”

*****

Serafina had just appeared one day as far as Blake could remember. He’d come home from a late shift and the cat had been there on the sofa, growling at him. “She’s had a tough life, Will,” his mother had said at the time. “She needs a little TLC.”

“But where did you get her from?”

After all this time, he’d forgotten the answer his mother had given him. It was lost in the distress of her subsequent disappearance. Now he remembered it clearly, she’d looked up at him with twinkling eyes. “I rescued her,” she said. Blake just assumed she meant that she’d got her from a cats’ home or something but now, it hit him like a thunderbolt. The way his mum had looked, the proud defiance on her face, all told him that she had got Serafina from somewhere else. Why he suddenly realised that, he didn’t know. Mum had been at the beginning of her slide into dementia. It wasn’t apparent when Serafina appeared on the scene but, looking back, there were little signs; bouts of forgetfulness or slightly odd behaviour. What if stealing someone’s cat had been part of it?

By the time Blake’s mother wandered out of the house one dark night, Serafina had become part of the furniture and Blake never questioned where she came from again. He sat up and stretched, trying to get comfortable on the plastic chair that had tortured his big frame all night. The vet had tried to get him to go home but Blake couldn’t leave. He wouldn’t have slept anyway. So he twisted and turned on the seat, jumping up occasionally to read posters about ticks, canine flu and vitamins then settling down again.

“It looks like the infection from the abscess on her tooth has spread,” she had said. “We’ve put her on intravenous antibiotics and some drugs to stabilise her blood pressure. We’ll keep her sedated and comfortable but all we can do now is wait and hope.”

Serafina had become so important to him because she was a link with his mother, despite the cat having a seemingly psychotic hatred of Blake to begin with. When Laura came along, she’d