Read The Dead Dog Day for Free Online Page B

pavements. The taxi slowed and stopped at a red light on Regent Street, and Cora watched as two excited children in matching blue and white striped hats and scarves hauled their mother towards the massive windows of Hamleys toy store. They stopped, the mother hooking an arm round each child and pulling them close. The display was wonderful, thought Cora. A magical Christmas woodland scene, it was filled with movement and colour and light that spilled out onto the darkened street, warming the chill air. Animated fairies looped across a starry sky, sprinkling gold dust onto rabbits and bears gambolling below. On a frosty hillock, mechanical elves jerkily wrapped presents in shiny purple paper. Above them all, a silver moon studded with crystals glittered and shimmered. For a moment, Cora felt the stomach-fluttering thrill she remembered from her childhood but, almost immediately, reality hit and she took a deep breath. It was three days until Christmas, and she was on her own again.
    She rested her head against the icy glass of the side window and shut her eyes as the lights changed suddenly and the taxi jolted and moved away. She couldn’t get Justin out of her head. Despite the CCTV footage running repeatedly on all the TV news programmes for days now, nobody else seemed to have realised it was him and nobody had come forward. But it WAS him, she knew it was. His face was unrecognisable in the video, but the coat had been the first clue – it was the one she’d given him for his birthday just a few weeks earlier. She hadn’t seen him wear it before, but she knew she was right. And then that gesture, when he rubbed his nose … so painfully familiar. There was absolutely no doubt. She’d spoken briefly to the police officer, DCI Bradberry, after the meeting, as instructed by Sam – introduced herself, told him she’d be covering the story for the programme – but she hadn’t said a word about what she’d just seen, not to the police, not even to Sam or Wendy. If it was Justin, there had to be an explanation. It was just that, at the moment, she couldn’t think of one.
    It had gone round and round in her head for days – what on earth could he have been doing there? Had he come to see her, to say he’d changed his mind about leaving her? But if so, why hadn’t he come in? Why hadn’t he just called her? And she couldn’t get hold of him to ask him. She’d tried and tried, but his mobile was permanently off, and she had no idea where he’d gone when he’d moved out of their flat. She’d spoken to all his friends, even called his parents, and they had no idea where he was either. Nor, it seemed, had any of them recognised the hooded figure on the CCTV footage, or at least they hadn’t mentioned it to her; probably, Cora surmised, because nobody except her would have known he had a coat like that. It seemed he hadn’t even told anyone he and Cora had split up. He’d simply disappeared. But she couldn’t tell the police. She just couldn’t. He might have hurt her, but Justin wasn’t a killer – was he?
    â€˜â€™Ere you go, luv. A-Bar, right?’
    The driver’s Cockney tones interrupted her musings, and she clambered out of the cab, paid him quickly and ran across the snowy street to the bar. The black-clad bouncer nodded her in, and as she pushed the door open a tidal wave of heat and noise hit her. A Lady Gaga track was booming, and her mood lifted as she weaved through the hordes of drinkers, slipping off her jacket as she made her way to the corner where, she hoped, Sam and Wendy would be waiting for her at their usual table. This was their favourite bar, with a nice crowd normally – not too young but still quite trendy, mostly media and marketing types, too cool to bother with the odd TV presenter who wandered in. The theory was immediately disproved by a middle-aged woman in a plunging scarlet satin