Free Evil Valley by Simon Hall Page A

told him about the day.
    ‘Great story, mate, but I don’t think we’ve made a friend in that Assassin bloke. I want to know what it was he did that so upset our friend Adam. And I reckon we might get our killer police marksman story you know. The sister of the guy who was shot is sure he didn’t deserve it and she was pretty convincing. This one’s going to run and run. It’ll certainly make our demonic, ratings-hungry, tyrannical News Editor happy.’
    Rutherford yawned, but at least had the decency to gently thump his tail on the carpet to feign some interest.
    Dan ran some more hot water, and tried not to wonder if his backside was getting bigger. There didn’t seem to be as much room in the bath as there used to be. He wasn’t exactly over-eating, but he was still probably drinking too much beer.
    ‘Maybe it’ll have to be ten laps of the park when we say we’re going to do ten in future,’ he told the snoring dog. ‘We don’t want to put Claire off, do we?’
    He picked up his mobile from the side of the bath – he always took it with him, knew from painful experience that the moment you least wanted a call was the likeliest it would come – and started tapping out a text message. He hadn’t spoken to Claire since the shooting story had broken, had been too busy. He stretched to his side and held the phone over the carpet as he typed. Dropping the last one in the bath had been an expensive mistake.
    “Evening m’lady. Sorry no speak awhile, been hectic with the shooting. You still OK for a walk tomorrow or Sun? Lunch on me too. Looking forward to it … x”
    Lizzie had said he could probably have Saturday and Sunday off. They’d done well on the shooting story and it didn’t look as though there’d be any significant developments over the weekend.
    ‘But keep your mobile on, just in case,’ had been her final warning words. ‘And I mean wherever, whenever and whatever.’
    You were never fully off duty with Lizzie. Dan had a recurring dream, that the day he finally got married, perhaps on some sun-blessed beach in the Caribbean, she’d call, demanding he find a couple of hours to cover a story.
    A strange feature of the dream was his bride was always faceless and wearing a black dress. What did that mean? Some relic of Thomasin, the woman he’d loved at university perhaps, and who still haunted him? But he hadn’t thought about Thomasin so much this last year. Claire had frightened away her ghost, for most of the time, at least. But not all … he didn’t want to think about that. He reached for the hot tap and ran some more water, enjoyed its enveloping flow.
    The mobile rang and Dan smiled, reached for it, expecting it to be Claire. It was Adam.
    ‘Hi mate, where are you?’
    ‘I’m at home, in the bath.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘In the bath. If you want details, it’s …’
    ‘No thanks,’ he cut in. ‘Something nasty’s happened and we need your help.’
    ‘Go ahead,’ Dan replied, wedging the mobile under his chin and hauling himself out of the bath. ‘I was going to call you soon anyway. I want to know about what happened between you and Whiting …’
    ‘Never mind that now. We’ve had an attack on a woman in Plymouth. Well, I say an attack, she wasn’t actually harmed, but she is seriously traumatised. It’s a bloody weird one.’
    ‘Carry on, I’m just fishing some clothes out.’
    Dan started drying himself with the off-white bath sheet, walked into the spare room to check the rack of shirts. Was there a clean one? The end of the week meant they were always scarce.
    ‘A guy pushed his way into her flat after threatening her with a gun. I say a guy, we’re assuming it’s a man. He wore a stocking over his head. He made her sit on a chair and watch while he used the pistol to smash her TV screen in.’
    ‘Uh huh,’ said Dan, putting on a shirt and rummaging through his drawers to find some socks and pants. They were scarce too. ‘Nothing much on the box tonight