Free NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer 5) by Adrian Magson Page B

into the distance. ‘We didn’t exactly get round to photos.’
    ‘Well, whatever
it was, she must have thought it was important.’ She ran a finger through the
mess on his desk. ‘Believe me, women don’t send ex-boyfriends the dross from
their bedrooms. Not unless they’re trying to make some obscure point. Did she
have your email address?’
    ‘I don’t know.
Probably.’
    Riley reached
beneath his desk and switched on his computer. ‘It could have been a shot she
took of something, or maybe she scanned it in from a hard copy.’ She sat back
to wait for the machine to boot up, then studied the icons on the screen to
call up the email. ‘Christ, Palmer, you make it so easy for people to access
your PC. Don’t you have any passwords?’
    ‘You know me,’
he said dryly. ‘I’m an open book.’ He stood behind Riley to watch his inbox
fill up. It was mostly Spam, dozens of them. He ran his eyes down as Riley
scrolled through the list.
    She stopped the
cursor on an untitled message with an attachment. It was dated five days ago.
The sender tag was Hellsbells.
    ‘That’s her,’
Palmer breathed. He recalled them laughing over her email name, which she
thought summed her up fairly well. There was no message, just the attachment.
Riley clicked on it and waited for it to open. The screen flickered and they
were looking at a photo of an office building.
    ‘That’s
romantic.’ Riley glanced up at him. ‘Does it look familiar?’
    ‘Never seen it
before.’ Palmer was puzzled. It was a standard glass-and-concrete panel building,
maybe seven floors high, with a pale facia and a sloping canopy over the
entrance doors. A couple of trees stood in circular beds set into a
block-paving forecourt, with metal bollards to prevent vehicles parking too
close to the glass frontage. It could have been any building from Aberdeen to
Zanzibar: functional, unremarkable and built by numbers.
    He tried to
think what significance an office building might have held for him and Helen.
Clearly she had thought it had some relevance. But nothing came to mind. Why
was there no accompanying message?
    Riley voiced
his thoughts. ‘Would you send anyone a photo of a building without at least a
word of explanation to go with it?’
    ‘No. Unless
they were expecting it.’
    ‘And you
obviously weren’t.’
    ‘No.’ He
sighed, frustrated by the lack of clear answers as to what had happened in
Helen’s life over the past few days. Yet surely this must have held some
special meaning, otherwise she wouldn’t have been trying to contact him.
    ‘Unless,’ said
Riley sombrely, ‘she couldn’t add a message in the normal way.’ She
right-clicked the mouse button and a box appeared marked ‘Properties’. She
studied it for a moment, then said, ‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think this
photo came from a mobile phone camera. Did she have one?’
    ‘Yes. She got
it just before I met her. I’m sure it had a camera. It did everything but make
coffee.’ 
    Riley gave him
a sideways look, and Palmer knew what she was thinking. He had a basic brick of
a model which did nothing but make and receive calls, and which Riley had once
commented was heavy enough to double as a cosh if he needed one.
    ‘It’s called
progress, Palmer. I’m surprised you haven’t got one. In your line of work,
you’d find it useful, taking snaps of adulterers in their frillies.’ She moved
the cursor and the picture became larger as she zoomed in. A couple of clicks
and the area above the entrance moved into the frame. ‘Got you,’ she breathed,
and moved the cursor to a faint outline of a sign above the doors. It read:
Pantile House.
    Riley opened Google
and typed in the name of the building. It came up with ten pages of hits. Many
were of buildings with the name Pantile all over the country, including several
commercial properties.
    ‘This could
take some time,’ she warned him, after several false starts. ‘We’ll be dead
lucky to get a match on the