Drop Down Dead – Michael Dylan

And the pills she was popping were only adding to the risk. Hannah might be dumb, but she wasn’t stupid. ‘What do you think?’ Millie said as she turned the car engine on. ‘About ‘The Yank’ and stuff?’ ‘I think we have to have a proper chat with Joe Russell. Maybe even bring him in and talk to him at the station,’ Hannah said. ‘What if he doesn’t know that he’s not the father?

We’ll just be ruining his life even more.’ Millie turned the demisters on to clear the steam from the windscreen. Hannah had to raise her voice over the sudden roar of the air vents. ‘Yeah, but if he does know and he got someone to kill his wife and get rid of her baby, then he needs to go to prison for a very long time.’ Hannah wiped some rain from her face. ‘Fuck his feelings.’ OceanofPDF.com CALLUM LOITERED IN A DOORWAY, trying to stay dry while he watched the chaos around Havingstock House.

Paquet’s body was at least hidden under a tent, but that was about the only bit of good news. The SOCOs had set up halogen lights around the area so they could carry on working despite the darkness of the late afternoon. However, they might as well have put up neon signs saying ‘police at work’. The bright lights had brought out a load of gawpers, who didn’t seem to care that it was slashing down with rain and freezing cold.

Not if they had the opportunity to see a dead body or shout insults at the police. A team from the coroner’s office had turned up too. They were sensibly waiting in their car until they were given the green light to take the body away. Callum doubted they’d have to wait long. There was no big mystery as to the cause of death, after all. Upstairs was another matter. The SOCOs up in Paquet’s flat had their work cut out for them.

Some were bagging and tagging all the sick shit Paquet had stashed in his bedroom, while others were checking if Baby Katie had been there at any point. Callum wasn’t holding out much hope that they’d get lucky on that score, though. From what he’d seen, Paquet liked them young but not that young. Palmer was up in the flat too, with Riddleton. They’d gone up there the moment Riddleton had turned up at the scene about twenty minutes ago.

God only knew what they were cooking up. Palmer was a nutter, but Riddleton brought out the worst in him. And it was clear that neither of them were fans of the governor. Now that the arrest of Paquet had gone tits up, Palmer was determined to blame Wise for Paquet doing a swan dive out of his window.

TRAINEE POLICE CONSTABLE GEMMA KHAN wasn’t in the best of moods. She was never happy when she had an early start at Hendon, but that morning had been particularly bad. Her father had woken up early as well — for no apparent reason other than to shout about how disappointed he was with her while Gemma tried to eat her cornflakes. He’d gone on and on and on into excruciating detail about how Gemma had shamed her family and his good name by joining the Metropolitan Police Service.

Worst of all, according to him, it was going to be impossible to find her a suitable man to marry. Normally, she kept quiet when he went off on one of his tirades. Eventually, he’d lose steam, and Gemma would get on with her day. But that morning, she couldn’t help snapping back. So Gemma said that she didn’t want his help to find a husband or his advice about how to live her own life.

And her Dad went ballistic on her the moment the words escaped her lips. Hearing the noise, her mother had rushed out of her bedroom to play peacemaker, but it was far too late. Gemma’s father roared and shouted, demanding to know what he’d done wrong to be treated with such disrespect. He’d said more — much, much more — but Gemma stopped listening. She just shoved the last of her breakfast in her mouth and left the house while he was still spouting off.

She only hoped he’d have calmed down by the time she finished later. And, not for the first time, Gemma spent the tube journey thinking about how nice it would be to have her own place. But there was the small matter of her salary getting in the way of that dream. She only earned thirty- eight grand a year. Even with living at home, it was barely enough to survive on in London. There was no way she could afford to pay rent as well. Certainly not to get a place by herself.

A few of the other cadets had talked about getting a place together, though, and they’d asked if Gemma was interested in joining them. And she was. Very much so. House-sharing made sense to anyone with a brain. However, if she agreed, she’d be living with a mixed group of male and female cadets.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 777b8d73a867e896
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,032,523 bytes (1.938 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 343
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 525.17 minutes
• Total Words: 105,034
• Total Characters: 574,832
• Average Words per Page: 306.22
• Average Characters per Page: 1675.9

Most Frequent Words

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