Read The Careless Word (#8 - The Craig Crime Series) for Free Online Page A

be musical and play instruments; Craig the piano and Lucia the violin. But she’d been horrified by her scientist husband’s preference for technology over music, and her son’s testosterone driven adolescent abandonment of music to run around a football pitch. Craig had started playing occasionally again, but he would never practice often enough to please his Mum, just as in Mirella’s eyes no woman would ever be good enough for her son.
    Tom Craig watched as his wife turned from her Aga and drew breath for her first interrogation of the night, then he glanced quickly at his son and made his move. The worst Mirella could do was huff with him, and he could get past that by puffing his GTN spray and holding his chest in mock-pain. Having a heart attack wasn’t an experience he’d like to repeat, but the one he’d had the year before had got him out of plenty of scrapes since.
    Tom Craig’s baritone reached the air before Mirella’s Italian-English could. “So Katy, Marc tells me you’re a physician at St Mary’s? Do you enjoy it?”
    Katy spotted Mirella’s quick scowl at her husband, immediately knowing what she’d had planned. She answered his cue gratefully, starting a ten minute round table discussion on medicine and science that everyone genuinely enjoyed. As it reached its natural conclusion over pudding Mirella drew breath again, squinting at her husband as if daring him to speak. He didn’t but Lucia did, launching into a Q and A about Natalie and John’s wedding that lasted through coffee and relocation to the living room. This time it was Craig who headed his mother off at the pass, recounting the painting of John’s laboratory with jokes that even she laughed at, although they could all see that her good humour was starting to fray. Craig felt vaguely guilty about blocking her every attempt to question Katy but a quick glance from his father said not to; he knew exactly what was on Mirella’s list.
    At eleven o’clock Craig noticed Katy starting to fade and he grabbed at the opening, retrieving her coat from the hall. As they were leaving Katy smiled at Mirella and said.
    “Ringraziamento per il pasto meraviglioso, la signora Craig. La linguine era incredibile, come era tutto. Spero di rivederti presto” (Thank-you for the wonderful meal, Mrs Craig. The linguine was amazing, as was everything. I hope to see you again soon.)
    Everyone gawped, including Craig, but Mirella beamed from ear to ear, answering Katy in an effusive flood of her native tongue, that said everything from “You’re very welcome, please come again” to “would you like the recipe?”
    As she kissed Katy goodbye they all heard the subtext that said she’d passed Mirella’s first test. When the front door had closed behind them Craig turned to face his girlfriend and smiled. “That was very sweet of you. Did you learn that sentence just for tonight?”
    To his surprise Katy shook her head. “No. I said it on the spur of the moment. I learned Italian at night class a few years ago. I’m not great but I can get by.”
    Craig wrapped his arms around her waist. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there, Dr Stevens?”
    She smiled mischievously. “More than you’ll ever find out, Signore Craig.”
    Craig bent down and kissed her tenderly, picturing two uninterrupted weeks of kissing her under a Caribbean sky, then he took her hand and led the way to the car.
    “What’s the hurry, Marc?”
    Craig smiled. “I think it’s about time I taught you the Italian for romance.”

Chapter Five
     
    St Mary’s. Friday 18th July. 7 a.m.
     
    The small side-room was bright and clean and smelled of a nameless combination of detergent and summer. The sheets on the bed were starched to near-board stiffness and the pale cotton cover was sterile and threadbare, its salad days long gone. Fintan Delaney lay very still, listening to the chatter of nurses in the corridor, and the sharp, delft clatter of breakfast being