Read Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) for Free Online

shouldn’t. I’ve got to knock on quite a few doors before I can have a break,’ I said. I flashed a smile at him to take the edge off it, and he looked encouraged.
    ‘Glass of water?’
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘Because I was just thinking I might have seen something.’
    It was bullshit. I knew it was bullshit.
    But still … he might have seen something and not realised it was significant. I wavered. Maybe it was worth checking.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yeah. When I went for a p— when I went to the toilet. Got to go upstairs, you see. I’ve only got the one.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘It wasn’t as late as you said. Not half past eleven. More like nine o’clock.’
    When there would still have been plenty of light in the sky so he might have been able to see quite a lot. ‘Go on.’
    ‘I looked out the window and I seen a man walking around near the garage. Skinny chap. Hood up, which was why I noticed him because I was wondering if he was cold on a night like tonight.’
    ‘That doesn’t seem likely, does it?’ Look at us, all chummy together. I grinned at him and got a leer in return and felt like less of a person. ‘Can you add anything to that description?’
    ‘Jeans. White trainers. Navy hoodie.’ He jabbed the paper. ‘Face like that. Mean-looking. I didn’t recognise him. Hadn’t seen him before. I didn’t like the look of him, but the garage and the scrapyard have good security. I didn’t think he’d be able to break in.’
    ‘He didn’t try.’
    ‘Doing a recce, was he?’
    ‘So it seems.’ Looking for somewhere he could take an unwary victim. Which meant that he had probably been hanging around the area in general, near the commercial premises and bits of waste ground and unattended patches of greenery – anywhere there weren’t manyneighbours and it wasn’t particularly overlooked. Anywhere he could control the woman he’d selected. Anywhere he could take his time and enjoy violating her. I made a note to mention it to the inspector, in case he’d been seen in other locations. If we could get a CCTV image of him, we’d have a far better chance of spotting him. As it was, I wasn’t altogether sure that Number Thirty-Seven had actually recognised him from the e-fit, but I was prepared to believe he’d seen someone wandering about the yards. And where the perpetrator had been, there was a chance of picking up forensic evidence. DNA, shoe-prints, fibres … it was worth a shot.
    ‘Do you mind if I have a look from the upstairs window? I’d like to see what you saw.’
    ‘I couldn’t let you go up there alone, love.’ He grinned at me again and I felt my flesh crawl.
    ‘No, of course not. You could show me where he was when you saw him. That would be very useful.’
    ‘I’d like to be useful.’ He stood back – not quite far enough – and I walked past him, trying not to flinch when his stomach brushed against me. I couldn’t swear he’d done it deliberately. I chose to believe it had been an accident because the alternative was too grim to contemplate.
    He shut the door and the small hallway felt very claustrophobic indeed as I turned to find him inches away, peering at me with piggy eyes. The house smelt of bacon grease and cigarettes, damp clothes and a rank undernote that I recognised as body odour.
    He waved at the stairs. ‘Ladies first.’
    ‘You know the way.’ The smile felt stiff on my face. I was not going to give him the pleasure of staring at my bottom as I went up the stairs in front of him, even if my uniform trousers did a pretty good job of disguising the details.
    ‘Just trying to be polite.’ He sounded hurt but I didn’t care. Up the stairs, into the front bedroom, a quick look out and then I was gone, never to return.
    Grudgingly, Number Thirty-Seven started up the stairs, heaving himself up by clinging to the banister. I let him get a good head start before I put my foot on the bottom step. The more space there was between us, the better. When he was