Free Want You Dead by Peter James Page A

text. She pulled it out of her bag and looked at the display.
     
    If you want it removed, you’ll have to wait for our next date.
    She texted back, XXX
    And almost instantly the reply came. XXX

20
    Friday, 25 October
    Red sat at her tiny breakfast bar, red-eyed from a sleepless night and her chest feeling raw from having smoked far too many cigarettes. Her flat was a mess – its usual state. Her CDs and DVDs were strewn around on the floor beneath the television and stereo stack. She needed to have a good tidy-up, but at the moment that was the furthest thing from her mind.
    Her laptop was open, displaying the front page headline of the Argus online. Brighton restaurant destroyed in blaze . There was a photograph of the Cuba Libre surrounded by fire engines, its beautiful grey facade blackened. It was 8.20 a.m. and she stared at the television, waiting for the local news to come on, spooning porridge into her mouth with no appetite and sipping her coffee. Outside it was pelting with rain, making her dismal view of the fire escape opposite even more dismal.
    Suicide?
    It wasn’t possible. It was so not possible. It had to be mistaken identity. Whatever had happened to Karl, he had not killed himself. No way on earth.
    She felt terrible. October was always a grim time of the year, with the prospect of months of winter ahead. And the prospect of a lousy weekend in front of her. Karl had talked about them going away to a hotel he knew in the New Forest. That was clearly not going to happen now. Unless, miraculously, he contacted her.
    Otherwise, Sunday lunch with her parents loomed. Red, the saddo single, and her elder, hugely successful sister, married and very smugly pregnant.
    She felt she was the lame duck of the family. Margot, in addition to being married to a successful London hedge-fund manager, had her own meteoric career in a City law firm.
    And here she was, struggling to write sales copy for a grotty little house that no one in their right mind would want to live in. And living in hiding herself.
    Stalked by her ex, and her most recent date dead.
    Could Bryce have had anything to do with that?
    Absurd. She stared down at the bracelet. The one Bryce had slipped on her wrist, unnoticed, that very first date at Cuba Libre restaurant. She remembered that on their second date, when she had told him she could not remove it and asked him how the hell he had ever put it on, he had grinned and told her a magician never reveals his secrets. He would only take it off, he said, when she was no longer his.
    The tarnished thin silver band had been on her wrist for so long she rarely noticed it. But she stared at it now. She had lost over a stone in weight in the past few months from worry, and the bracelet hung looser on her wrist. But still nowhere loose enough to slide it over her hand. She had toyed with going to a jeweller and asking them to cut it off, but something held her back from doing that. Fear?
    Fear that if Bryce saw her in the street without it, it might antagonize him further?
    Then she heard the words golf course on the television, and instantly looked up at the screen. She saw a cluster of police vehicles in front of a wooded area. Crime scene tape. Officers in blue protective over-suits and a large screen. A male presenter, holding a microphone in his hand, hair matted by the rain and looking like he would rather be anywhere but here, said, ‘Sussex Police have not yet released the identity of the charred body of a male found in a ditch, close to the third tee of Haywards Heath Golf Club yesterday.’
    Red felt a tightening in her gullet. Was this Karl? God. Was it? She grabbed her phone and dialled Raquel’s surgery number. But the answering machine kicked in. It was out of hours. She hung up and dialled Raquel’s mobile number. She’d left messages the night before, but her friend had not got back to her.
    ‘Sorry to call so early, Raq. Can you just tell me something – has Karl Murphy been in the