Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

working on it. I do want to be with you, you know I do. But you’ve got to let me deal with this in my own way. You just have to be patient. It’s the only way.’
    ‘Amy, I want you to come and live with me all the time, now. Why does it have to be so complicated? Just leave him. What are you waiting for? Pack a bag and come here. Tonight. In fact, don’t even bother going back for your things. We can get you new stuff tomorrow. I’ll take the day off and we’ll go shopping, I’ll buy you anything you want –’

     
    She sat down again, cupping his shoulder in her hand. He seized her wrist and kissed her fingers, one after another.
    ‘Oh Guy, he’d take everything, the house, the car, everything’s in his name. He’d even take the dog from me. You don’t know what he’s like when he doesn’t get his own way. He’s vindictive. I’m scared of him, Guy.’
    ‘Why don’t you let me deal with him then? There’s nothing for you to worry about, trust me. I’ll take care of everything. We don’t need his money. I can take care of you.’
    ‘You don’t know him.’
    She paused, watching his face closely, then looked away.
    ‘Sometimes he can be violent when he’s been drinking. He yells at me – threatens me – it’s happened more than once –’
    Guy sat upright, gripping her hand so tightly she winced.
    ‘What do you mean he threatens you? Jesus, if he so much as touches a hair on your head – Just leave, Amy. Do it tonight.’

     
    His eyes shone with passion and she smiled.
    ‘Oh Guy, don’t be so naïve. I’m not worried for myself. He won’t hurt me, not really. But he’ll kill you if he finds out about us.’
    Guy laughed uneasily.
    ‘Not if I kill him first,’ he blustered, flinging himself back on his pillow. ‘If he so much as touches you, I’ll do it. I swear I will.’
    Amy perched on the edge of the bed without looking at him, her shoulders tense. Although she spoke softly, he heard every word.
    ‘You know what to do.’
    She pulled on her shoes, stood up, smoothed her pencil skirt over her thighs and, with a flick of her blonde hair, was gone.

     
    Guy lay on the bed gazing up at the ceiling, biting his lip. He wished she had the guts to leave her bastard of a husband. It was hard to ignore the nagging suspicion that she was never going to give up her affluent lifestyle to move in with him. What did he have to offer a woman like Amy? Turning his head from side to side on the pillow he considered her suggestion. She made it sound so simple.
    ‘The restaurant’s called Mireille,’ she had told him, warning him not to write it down.
    She made him repeat the address until he knew it.
    ‘He leaves after it closes around one in the morning, earlier on a Sunday. All you have to do is follow him and– Well, just make sure he doesn’t get home, that’s all.’

     
    At first he hadn’t been sure he understood. Finally she had grown impatient.
    ‘Oh do I really have to spell it out to you? Once he’s out of the way, everything will be ours. It all comes to me. We’ll be free of him, and you’ll never have to work again.’
    ‘A kept man,’ he had laughed, not believing she was serious.
    But she had leaned forward until her hair fell across his face as she whispered, ‘You could do it for me. For us.’
    He had kept silent, not knowing what to say. Thinking about it, he still wasn’t sure if she was seriously asking him to kill her husband.

CHAPTER 2
     
    I t was only three o’clock but Geraldine felt like going to bed, she was so tired. She wondered if she was going down with a virus, but decided it was more likely a reaction to all the stress she had gone through in recent weeks. It wasn’t much more than a month since she had moved to North London. Her salary as a detective inspector on a Homicide and Serious Crime Command wouldn’t have stretched to buying her new flat, but her mother’s death a year before had left Geraldine enough money for the move to Islington. The flat was perfect, with two small bedrooms, one of which she would use as an office. It could double up as a spare room when her niece came to stay. After all her enthusiastic plans when she had first moved in, after six weeks she had barely finished unpacking. Arriving in London she had been thrown into a murder investigation, which had only finished a week ago. She had just completed writing up her final report. With nothing pressing to do, she succumbed to a numbing