Read Charley for Free Online

Taylor.
    ‘Pass me her bag will you, Sarge,’ I said to Taylor. ‘It’s just that I thought I saw something when you had it open a few minutes ago.’
    Taylor passed me the bag. I opened it, praying that I hadn’t been mistaken. With some relief, I held up the twenty and ten pound notes. ‘She had the money to get a cab – she didn’t have to walk. She must have been pissed out of her brains to choose to walk in the dark and in this weather.’
    ‘Like I said, she was pissed,’ Jackson barked. ‘She didn’t know what she was doing. She staggered out onto the tracks and collapsed unconscious because of all the booze sloshing around inside of her. She was as pissed as a fart.’
    ‘Pissed?’ I shot back. ‘She would’ve had to have been absolutely legless to decide to walk home. Marsh Lane has got to be at least five miles from town, four with the short cut.’
    ‘That’s what I’m telling you, numb-nuts. She was so drunk she collapsed onto the tracks. She was so drunk she didn’t even hear the driver blowing the horn. I just don’t get the point you’re tryingto make.’ Jackson looked at me as if I were something he had just scraped from his boot.
    ‘My point is if she was so pissed that she decided to walk five miles home in the pouring rain, how did she get this far?’ I asked him. ‘To be that pissed she would have been all over the place, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Also, the driver said she was lying on her back with her arms folded neatly across her chest. That doesn’t sound like someone who has collapsed. If that’s what had happened wouldn’t she have been sprawled across the tracks?’
    ‘Oh, this is such a load of old bollocks,’ Jackson said, looking at Harker.
    Harker stood silently for a moment, his eyes never moving from mine. Then, turning to the uniformed officer, he said, ‘Okay, get the circus rolling. I want Scenes of Crime and a search team.’
    ‘SOCO?’ Jackson said. ‘A search team?’
    Ignoring him, Harker looked at Taylor. ‘You and Jackson speak with the coroner’s office and tell them I want the toxicology reports ASAP. I want to see how pissed this Kerry Underwood really was. Then, start knocking on a few doors. Get the CCTV from the pubs in town. And look for her phone.’
    ‘Phone?’ Jackson asked, glaring at me.
    ‘She was eighteen, for crying out loud, not eight,’ Harker said. ‘She’d have a phone. If you find it get the tech guys to go over it. She might have made a call or sent a text to someone.’ He pointed his finger in my direction. ‘You’re coming with me.’
    ‘Where?’ I asked, following him up the tracks towards the dirt road.
    ‘To tell the Underwoods that their little girl is dead,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
    ‘Good luck,’ Jackson sniped.
    ‘I wish I’d taken that bet now,’ I said with a smile.
    Jackson waved his middle finger at me. ‘You’re wrong. This is just one big waste of time.’
    As I turned away, I wished in a strange way that he was right. Because to me it sounded very much like Kerry Underwood had been deliberately placed onto those tracks.

CHAPTER 6
    Tom – Monday: 03:34 Hrs.
    T he house was in darkness and situated in a nice part of town. I could see by the hanging baskets at the front door and the neatly cut privet hedge that the house was lovingly looked after. The Underwoods were obviously the kind of people who took pride in their home.
    ‘Whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t tell them their daughter has been involved in an accident,’ Harker whispered at me as we waited on the doorstep.
    ‘Why?’ I whispered back.
    ‘An accident means that there is someone to blame,’ he said, looking at me through the driving rain. ‘It means that it was someone’s fault.’
    The hall light came on, and I saw a vague outline of someone approaching the front door. The lock was turned and the bleary-eyedface of a middle-aged woman peered around the edge of the door.
    ‘Maybe