Read So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) for Free Online Page A

knowing she waited for him.
    But she did not.
    ‘Not here,’ he said to himself. A mix of relief and disappointment flooded him. He let the air out of his lungs, feeling himself deflate.
    McKay backed out of the room, intending to go upstairs to change. It wasn’t until he put his right foot on the bottom stepthat he saw the pair of shoes there, two steps above. Two steps higher, her coat. Halfway up, her blouse, slung over the banister.
    He swallowed and began to climb.
    At the top of this flight, at the turn, her skirt. Then tights, underwear, leading to his bedroom, the door open for him like an eager mouth.
    Roberta lay in his bed, the duvet pulled up to her chest, the flame of her hair lying across her bare shoulders. He knew he should tell her to get out, tell her this had gone far enough, tell her this madness had to end.
    But she threw aside the duvet, offered herself to him, and he pulled the white collar from his black shirt and claimed the madness for his own.
    Now, two hours after McKay had driven her away from her home and her dead husband, Roberta stood at the centre of his small living room, glowering where she had once glimmered. He had left her there earlier while he went to the kitchen, where he had remained until now, unable to face the question he needed to ask. He waited in the doorway to the living room, afraid to cross his own threshold. He cleared his throat. She turned her head to him, her eyes still red and brimming.
    ‘What now?’ he asked.
    She stared at him, as if she expected him to answer his own question.
    He cleared his throat again and said, ‘Maybe we should talk.’
    ‘About what?’ she asked.
    McKay opened his mouth and found no words there. He opened his arms, showed her his palms, tried to speak once more, but fear closed his lips.
    Say it now, he thought. Say it now or say it never.
    ‘About us.’
    Roberta held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. She said, ‘I’d like to be alone for a while. If you don’t mind.’
    He wanted to protest, but tightened his jaw to trap the words in his throat. He brought his hands together, balled them into one fist, felt his nails dig at his palm. Somehow, he wrestled a smile onto his lips that at least felt kindly, even if it might have looked more like a grimace. Not that she could see it anyway. She stared at the fireplace, her arms folded across her breasts.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Of course. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.’
    McKay closed the door behind him and climbed the stairs. No trail of clothes to follow now. No sweet insanity waiting for him in his bedroom. Only the cold loneliness that had slept with him for the last ten years. He sat on the edge of his bed, trying not to remember the scent of her there, how, every time she left, he had smelled her on the pillows and the sheets, how he had brought them to his face and breathed deep.
    He covered his eyes with his hands, rested his elbows on his knees.
    Now he recognised the feeling that had crept in on him as he had watched Roberta go to her husband’s corpse: the sensation of the thing he desired slipping through his fingers.
    ‘Dear God,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t take this from me. Not now. Please don’t.’
    Then he remembered he didn’t believe, hadn’t believed in months, and he despaired.

7
    Flanagan went to the bedroom threshold, saw the front door open and a slender middle-aged woman enter. She carried a large tote bag strapped over her shoulder.
    ‘Hello?’ the woman called as she closed the door behind her. Unbidden, she walked towards the rear of the hall, out of Flanagan’s view. Flanagan descended the stairs.
    ‘Hello? Mr Garrick, where . . . what’s . . .’
    Flanagan saw the woman standing in the doorway to the dead man’s room, her bag hanging from her hand. She wore a nurse’s tunic and trousers, and the kind of plain black shoes favoured by someone who spends the day on their feet.
    ‘Please don’t go in there,’ Flanagan