Read The Judgement Book for Free Online

immoral, criminal or corrupt ways, and that they too will suffer the attentions of what the blackmailer calls the “Judgement Book”. Please try to help these people, find this Book, and destroy it.
    Adam laid the note gently back down on the double bed. He breathed out heavily. Claire said nothing. From downstairs, there was another muffled sob. Adam pointed to a couple of streaks on the paper, icicles of ink where the writing had smudged and blurred.
    ‘Tear marks,’ said Claire quietly.
    Adam nodded slowly. ‘He was crying as he wrote. And he was a decent man, you know. He did a lot for this city. He helped us stop plans for a hostel for sex offenders being set up in a street not far from my house. And he championed a police sports project which turned a load of kids away from crime when the council didn’t want to know. He’ll be missed.’
    The detective’s voice hardened. ‘Get the search teams in. Get them going over the house. Begin in whatever room he used as a study. Get the Square Eyes technical boys in too. They can start on his computer to see if he’s been using it to try to solve this riddle. We’ve got to find the note this blackmailer sent him.’
    He hesitated, ran a hand over the dark stubble on his cheeks. ‘I’m going to talk to Mrs Freedman.’
    Yvonne Freedman was sitting in the living room in the corner of a beige sofa, her legs scrunched up tight to her body, her arms wrapped around them. Her eyes were narrow slits, edged red and angry. Alex sat in a matching chair, staring at her mother. She wasn’t crying, and there was no sign she had been.
    Yvonne was a little younger than her husband, around 40 or so. She had chin length, ruffled blonde hair and was probably beautiful, but it was impossible to tell through the fog of her misery. Her face was swollen and sallow. She hadn’t changed from the white dressing gown she was wearing when she found her husband’s body.
    Alex had inherited her father’s dark looks. Her eyes were brown and her complexion smooth and Mediterranean, the kind that makes other women stare in jealousy. A spray of auburn hair tumbled over her shoulders. She looked a little overweight Adam thought, but that could just be teenage changes. She wore blue jeans and a red-and-white striped rugby shirt. A square silver stud shone in the side of her nose.
    WPC Helen Masters, the Family Liaison Officer, pulled a high-backed wooden dining chair from under a table and Adam sat down. It was unforgiving and uncomfortable, the sort you might offer to a guest who you hoped wouldn’t stay too long. He shifted in the seat, took a few seconds to phrase his questions as gently as he could.
    ‘Mrs Freedman, I’m sorry to have to talk to you now,’ Adam began. ‘I know how much you’re suffering.’ Her mouth started to open, and he continued quickly, didn’t want to get into a discussion about her husband’s suicide note. ‘I just need to ask a couple of questions.’
    Yvonne nodded, a barely perceptible shift of her head.
    ‘Did you have any inkling at all that anything was wrong with your husband? Did he raise anything you thought unusual? Do anything strange?’
    A pause, no reply but a slight shake of the head.
    Adam thought his way through the note. ‘Was he spending a large amount of time working?’
    Yvonne’s tired eyes closed, but she managed a tiny nod.
    Adam waited for her to look back at him, then said softly, ‘Was there anything unusual about that? More time than normal?’
    ‘He was always working.’
    The harshness of the voice was a shock. It came from Alex.
    ‘That was what he did,’ she went on, spelling out each word. ‘He worked. That was all he did.’
    On the sofa, Yvonne Freedman bowed her head and began crying, soft flutters of breath, then shaking sobs. Alex glared at her and snorted unpleasantly.
    WPC Masters sat down beside Yvonne, reached for her hand, held it gently, whispered some soothing noises. The momentum of the new widow’s misery