Cold Blood Jane Heafield (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📖

scrolled through a horde of nonsense texts between the loved-up teenagers that had nothing to do with the stabbing, until he reached Thursday the 16th. Here, Erica besieged The Man with messages. Where was he? Was he with that bitch again? She was going to mess them both up if he didn’t answer. No reply from Don.

Until the following Saturday. At 11.34 in the morning, he finally got back to her with a denial to all accusations that he was with another girl. The following argument took place over ninety-eight texts within under an hour. At 12.27 Erica wrote:

I’ll tell the fucking cops you stabbed that kid.

I’ll fuckin stab you. You threatn me? Yeah, I was with a girl last night. Shaggd her silly and we cussd you down. Better shag than you.

It all made sense now. Erica had called the police on that Thursday because she was angry with Don The Man. Woman Scorned had intended to ruin his life because he’d been with another girl. So, with a voice disguised by helium, she had called the police to say she would meet and give them the killer. This had been her plan right up until her next call to the police, on the Saturday, at which she’d claimed a black man killed Mick Turton. Now, Bennet saw the reason for her change of heart.

Early on Saturday, Don The Man had sent a text:

Sorry babe I love you.

what me and the bitch you mean?

No just you I lied about other girl your only one for me can I come round?

Why should I let you?

The final text from Don The Man that day had been a picture. Another engagement ring. Erica had told him he was forgiven and to come round. End of argument. End of her plan to sell him down the river. It didn’t matter: this was beautiful evidence.

Bennet stood up. ‘No more games. This is serious. Don is going to prison. You need to think about whether you want to go there too. No phones allowed there, Erica.’

‘I don’t.’ She wiped a tear away.

‘Then I need you on my side. Don is done, but you’re not yet. You can still come out of this a free woman. But you have to help me. Invite me into your home. Offer me the text messages on your phone. Don’t fight us and things won’t get worse for you.’

‘You won’t find him, you know? He knows people. He’s been reading spy stuff about counter-intelligence. He’s a ghost. So what are you going to do?’

Bennet had to suppress a laugh. He sat on the sofa, facing the doorway. ‘He’s a ghost who’s planning to share three pizzas and garlic bread with his girlfriend. So I’m going to do what all coppers these days do, according to my son’s friend. Sit on my fat arse and wait for him to come to me.’

THE END

Acknowledgements

As you’ve probably heard before, no one writes a novel alone. Behind the scenes are editors and publicists and publishers, all of whom do their bit to convince an author that the dross she’s so proud of needs work before it can be handed to readers. The convincers in most need of thanks for this book are, as always, Betsy Reavley, Ian Skewis, and Tara Lyons.

All the good stuff is down to them; each confusing or misplaced snippet, and every unfunny joke, is an instance where I put my foot down and insisted I knew what I was doing. However, if you come across certain aspects of police procedure, history or geography that furrow the brow, know that I took few liberties for the sake of drama.

Cold Blood is a loose follow-up to my first novel, Dead Cold. If you haven’t read it but would like to know about the previous adventure of Liam Bennet and Liz Miller, it’s available from Amazon right now. For those of you who already have a big reading list and no time to add my book, I suggest getting friends to download a copy so they can fill you in. If a hundred or so friends read a chapter each, you could know everything by day’s end. #Justsaying.

And a final piece of business for those who also read the thanks page in my second book, Don’t Believe Her: …The Librarian says, ‘They’re beeehiiiind you!’

A note from the publisher

Thank you for reading this book. If you enjoyed it please do consider leaving a review on Amazon to help others find it too.

We hate typos. All of our books have been rigorously edited and proofread, but sometimes mistakes do slip through. If you have spotted a typo, please do let us know and we can get it amended within hours.

info@bloodhoundbooks.com

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