Free Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) by Malcolm Richards Page A

want me to call this one too?”
    “I can do it.”
    “That would mean switching on your phone, you know.”
    “As a matter of fact I already did.”
    It was true. As soon as she’d returned home, she’d taken the phone from the drawer, switched it on, and held her breath as she waited to see if Lewis had contacted her. She’d pretended to be indifferent to the empty screen. Wasn’t his silence exactly what she had predicted? But then a solemnness embraced her, wrapping its sinewy arms around her neck. Your life means nothing , it whispered in her ear. You have ceased to exist .
    “I’m impressed,” Jerome said. “Maybe I can have your number now?”
    Emily took his pen and wrote it down. She stared across at Alina’s painting.
    “I was going to ask you about that,” Jerome followed her gaze. “Why have you hung it on your wall? It’s a monstrosity.”
    “It got me thinking. Who painted it? Why would they have painted Alina in such a strange way?”
    “Maybe it was Karl. He certainly has a warped view of the world. Especially when it comes to his wife.”
    “I don’t think so. The artist signed it with the initials AC.”
    Jerome wrinkled his mouth in distaste. “If someone painted a picture of me like that I’d be wondering what I’d done to piss them off.”
    With leads to follow in the morning, they soon parted ways. As Jerome headed for the door, Emily stopped him.
    “Here.” She handed him the spare key to her apartment. “In case I’m locked out again.”
    “I’m not sure I’m the best person to—”
    “Yes, you are. Besides, my only other choice is Harriet, and as nice as she is, well, you’ve been inside her apartment.”
    Jerome closed his fingers over the keys. “Point taken.”
    Once she was alone, Emily returned to the laptop and the Ever After Care Foundation website. It really did look welcoming. The staff, whether real or models hired to be in the pictures, had broad smiles and sympathetic eyes. Alina was not among them.
    As Emily waded through the various pages, memories returned to taunt her, pulling on her wrist, dragging her through darkened rooms until she found herself at her mother’s house, perched on the edge of the bed. A crumpled form lay swamped by sheets. It moved, twisting its head around to see her. But Emily would not look. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and pictured Alina. The shape in the bed began to moan; a pitiful drawn-out cry, riddled with pain, that threatened to go on forever.
    Emily shut down the laptop. Tears stung her eyes. She willed them away, willed them to dry until her eyes were like deserts, until her mind was an arid landscape of bones.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The train was half-empty as it pulled out of Liverpool Street station and began its mid-morning journey towards the city outskirts. Office buildings towered on both sides of the track before the train disappeared into a long black tunnel. When it emerged, the scenery had changed. Emily and Jerome stared out at long stretches of industrial estates filled with rows of warehouses and peppered with disused gas holders. She’d read about those enormous, round storage tanks when studying the Industrial Revolution at school. Leftovers from an age when factory chimneys belched out thick noxious gases and tuberculosis rotted the lungs of the poor, they were now an indelible stain on a modern cityscape of steel and glass.
    The train brought them as far as Romford. From there, they took a bus to Yellowpine Way, then began the twenty-five minute walk to the Ever After Care Foundation.
    “Welcome to hell!” Jerome grimaced as they made their way through a labyrinth of identical suburban streets. “You know we could have taken the tube almost the entire way instead of your cross-country pentathlon. It’s bloody freezing!”
    “I don’t like the tube.”
    Emerging onto Romford Road they headed south until they came to an overhead pedestrian walkway, which spanned the width of the four-lane