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

“Your dad?” the man asked.

“Yes, the bloke who brought me here.”

“Oh, you mean Detective Varley?”

“My dad’s a detective?” That was odd. Maybe the shiny building had once been the police station and they’d moved it here. He remembered his dad had used handcuffs in the pub—so of course he was a detective. Even more exciting.

“Er, Detective Varley isn’t your dad, mate.”

“What?” His pulse pounded. “So who is he then?”

The man made a sound like he was going to cough. “Best you ask him that.”

The hatch snapped shut.

Gordon frowned, trying to work out what was going on. If the detective wasn’t his dad, why didn’t he say so in Squatter’s Rights? Why make Gordon look a fool by allowing him to continue calling him dad?

“Fucker,” Gordon muttered.

He didn’t feel like a child anymore. He felt like the Gordon who had recently scribbled in his notebooks. The Gordon before Anita and the tramps had been killed.

No. Don’t let the contentment go. Keep hold of it.

A vicious twist wrenched at his stomach.

“That didn’t last long this time, did it, Ugly Little Fucker?”

“Go away, you.”

“What are you going to do now? You’re in a police station. You can’t get out to find another me. Another Thomas, my bloody husband. That’s got to be unsettling, hasn’t it?”

Her laugh hurt his ears. Turned his blood acidic, as it always had. He drew his legs up so he could hug his shins. The clothes he had on weren’t his and didn’t smell right. The policeman who’d brought him to this room had told him to put them on. His own clothing had been taken away in a large brown paper bag, and at the time he’d thought his dad had purchased new things for him and Gordon had been fine about wearing them then.

Not now.

To stop himself from stripping off, he thought of his spider quilt, so far away in his flat where those policemen might still be. But why would they be there when his dad—“He’s not your dad!”—had found him? There was no need to worry now Gordon had been located, no need to be inside his home.

“Don’t you touch my spiders, you fuckers,” he said.

“Oh, they’re touching everything. They’ve found your weird little books, too.”

That wouldn’t have bothered him had he still been content, but the bitterness of disgruntlement was taking over, and he knew those books were going to be the end of his dream of living a happy life. How could he be content again without access to the people who could give it to him? The wife, the children, the dog? He had to get out of here so he could—

I’M GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

“You fucking bitch. Don’t you dare come back here bothering me.”

“I’ll bother you all I bloody well like. You belong to me. Unfortunately.”

Her laughter came once more, all raw and malevolent. He clutched at the sides of his head, pushing in an attempt to squeeze the echo of her laughter out. His books—he needed one now, to write things down so her presence went away for a while. He rocked, digging his nails into his scalp, and the tears came, burning his eyes.

No. I won’t cry. Not again. Never again.

But they didn’t stop, those tears, coating his cheeks and dripping down to his chin.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whispered. “Please don’t smack me.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Shaw had buggered off somewhere or other, so Burgess read the partial report Lewis had left on his desk. Lewis had so far managed to find then contact five of the seventeen people who’d left the building at the same time as William back in the past. Only one of them, a Miss Kadis—and still a Miss after all this time—recalled seeing people other than employees in the area, and she hadn’t been interviewed. But only one of them was enough—more than they’d had in the first place. The lack of witnesses seeing anything had been the major stumbling block in his father’s case—and it had frustrated the fuck out of Burgess for many years.

He scanned the report some more.

Back then, Miss Kadis had been sent home ill after lunch, and no one had come to take a statement from her once she’d returned from sick leave. She hadn’t offered one, either, thinking her testimony wouldn’t be needed seeing as there had been so many other folks from the office who’d spoken to the police. She’d assumed a description of the woman and a small boy had been given already—and hadn’t known what anyone else had said about the incident as she hadn’t become involved with those she’d worked with, preferring to keep to herself the moment she’d realised she hadn’t fitted in there.

A woman and a child.

The woman had had brunette hair in a short bob, had been about twenty, of slight build, and a little ‘mucky’ according to Miss Kadis. The child had looked about five or six, mucky, too, with brown hair and bright-red cheeks. She’d remembered that because she’d felt sorry for him being out on such a hot day in a woollen jumper.

That had to be Emily Hornton, didn’t it? And Gordon Varley?

So Gordon’s claim to have witnessed his father’s death wasn’t something to be dismissed as the ramblings of a confused man then. Not that it would have been. No stone left unturned and all that, especially after Burgess gathered there had been a monumental fuck-up in no one returning to interview Miss Kadis.

Shaw came in, although Burgess didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. The way Shaw always wrenched at the handle before opening the door kind of gave away that it was him. What he was doing farting about over there was anyone’s guess, but Burgess couldn’t