Read The Backs (2013) for Free Online Page A

was now watching her keenly.
    Barnes wiped his palm quickly on the thigh of his trousers before they shook hands. The man’s skin remained damp and, although his grasp was firm enough, Goodhew detected a slight hesitancy. Maybe nerves?
    Goodhew took a seat to one side of Barnes but, rather than joining them, his grandmother draped her jacket over the back of the nearest available chair and headed back towards the stairs. He was about to speak when Barnes drew himself closer and whispered, ‘I know you’re a policeman and I’m not asking for anything but advice. Well, that’s not true, I want help. But most of all I don’t want to be ignored. Do you understand?’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘It’s my wife.’
    And before Jimmy Barnes said another word the familiarity of the surname finally took shape. ‘Genevieve Barnes?’ Goodhew asked sharply.
    Jimmy nodded. ‘Your grandmother told you, then?’
    ‘No. I’ve just heard the name recently.’ He wasn’t about to admit to knowing the case closely, even though copies of all the documents he’d read on it were currently sitting in a drawer at home. Nor could he ignore the fact that the previous evening had been spent fetching Jane Osborne back to Cambridge. The timing was interesting. ‘She was injured whilst treating a stab victim?’
    ‘That’s right. I was due to meet her at the beer festival, and she cut through all the back streets when she headed through town. Not just the back streets, but back alleys too.’ He glanced sharply at Goodhew, as though expecting interruption. ‘That was just her. She liked spotting things she hadn’t seen before: unusual buildings or a beautiful garden hidden behind a fence. But they queried that explanation in court, like she had made a gross misjudgement or something. As though in some small way she’d brought it on herself.’ He pressed both index fingers to the gap between his eyebrows and pressed them hard against his brow. He drew them apart slowly, his eyes closed, as if concentrating on his breathing. ‘I was so angry,’ he muttered to himself.
    Goodhew waited until Jimmy’s eyes reopened. ‘Then what?’
    ‘Gen found a girl lying injured . . . young woman I’m supposed to say. Gen was a paramedic, so of course she went to help. Luckily she phoned for an ambulance. Because by the time it arrived she’d been attacked too. It was her own phone call that saved her life – how ironic is that?’ Jimmy’s voice had risen noticeably and all the other occupants of the balcony now had the opportunity to consider the irony, too.
    This had been a stupid place to meet.
    Goodhew leant closer, speaking quietly, and hoping Jimmy would follow suit. ‘I know Rebecca Osborne was the woman that died.’
    ‘So you know they arrested her boyfriend?’
    ‘Greg Jackson.’
    Jimmy’s gaze darted away. ‘Gen lost a huge quantity of blood. The knife was rammed in so hard it broke two of her ribs. Yet, from first bending over the Osborne girl’s body until Gen herself woke in hospital, she remembers nothing. I thought that would be a blessing, because surely there would be less trauma from an attack you can’t even remember?’
    Goodhew shrugged. ‘There’s also the trauma of not knowing what happened.’
    ‘I see that now.’ Jimmy had thick straight hair that could easily have been styled to make him look like a seventies ad for Grecian 2000. He pushed it back from his face, then pressed his hand to the back of his neck, again shutting his eyes as he continued. ‘That day was terrible. I’d already spoken to her when she was on the way to meet me, so when she didn’t show, of course I phoned her. Each time the call I made went to voicemail. Gen was almost two hours late by the time I received a call from the police. I rushed to the hospital but she was in theatre and no one seemed to know whether or not she would survive.’ His eyes snapped open. ‘Of course, I prayed desperately for her to pull through. But I was stupid