Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

would.

     
    She gazed miserably around her living room, dull and unremarkable, just like her. She watched her forearm rise, fat and white, as her fingers reached for the framed picture of Patrick standing on the shelf. He hadn’t forgotten about her. He had left her nearly a million pounds in his will. She sat down on her one comfortable armchair and looked from the small picture in her hand to his large face beaming down at her from the wall. Several times she had taken his picture down in a burst of anger. Once she had chucked it in the bin so viciously, the glass had shattered. Her fit of weeping over, she had rescued the photograph. A week later he was back on the wall, smiling down at her from a new frame.

     
    She had never had any money to spare. Now he had made her rich. She smiled at the picture in her lap, lifted it to her lips and kissed it. Tracing the familiar contours of his face gently with one finger, she smiled again. It was the best of all worlds, she told herself fiercely, as tears threatened to overwhelm her again. Kissing the photograph one more time, she replaced it carefully on the shelf, exactly where it had stood before. Tomorrow she would have to go to the police station for a DNA test, but in the meantime she was going to enjoy her evening.

     
    Getting a piece of paper and a pen, she sat down to make her plans. In neat columns she wrote down how she might spend all that money. She could buy a flat of her own, travel the world, or invest the money so it gained interest. Patrick would approve of that. In her head she began to discuss the possibilities with him, imagining what he would say in response to each of her proposals.
    To begin with, Patrick would suggest that she go to all the local banks and find out what interest rates they could offer if she was to invest her money with them. It was a sensible idea, and would help ensure the money didn’t all disappear. She had never been one for spending, but the temptation might easily prove too great. It would be better to invest Patrick’s gift wisely, so that she would be taken care of for the rest of her life. “Nine hundred and seventeen thousand pounds to Stella Hallett,” she repeated to herself. It was a serious amount of money, hers to spend as she chose. She couldn’t help smiling.

CHAPTER 26
     
    I f it hadn’t been for planned engineering work on the underground, Gideon wouldn’t have been stuck in a train outside Rayner’s Lane station. He stared at his fellow passengers: a bespectacled middle-aged man engrossed in a document, a large woman with a clutch of carrier bags at her feet, a young woman in a distractingly short skirt who wriggled uncomfortably on her seat as she tugged at her hem and a teenage boy, the beat from his headphones audible on the opposite side of the carriage.

     
    Gideon had been tempted to give the visit a miss. After a late night on Friday the prospect of dragging himself out of bed to travel all the way back into London from Ickenham on Saturday was off-putting, but he knew he would never hear the end of it if he didn’t turn up for the birthday party his mother was throwing for his step-dad. He had felt a brief flicker of hope on discovering that the Metropolitan line was closed west of Baker Street that weekend, but his mother had pointed out that he could take the Piccadilly line to Kings Cross and change there for the Northern line just the same.
    ‘It’ll take forever,’ he protested.
    ‘It’ll take longer, so make sure you leave in plenty of time,’ was the last thing she had said before she hung up.
    ‘Yes alright, but is it–’
    There had been no point protesting. No one was listening.

     
    The train juddered feebly, engine whirring, but it didn’t budge. None of his fellow passengers appeared concerned that the train wasn’t moving. Gideon fretted, isolated in a carriage of strangers.
    After a week of showers the weather had turned sunny. Walking to the station he had enjoyed the unexpected heat but the train was airless, stifling, even though they were no longer underground. The windows on the carriage could only be opened a crack. It was better than nothing, but only just. As he looked over his shoulder to see if the window above him was ajar he glimpsed a bundle in the rough weedy strip of waste ground that ran alongside the track. Distracted by sweat dripping from his brow, he turned back and wiped it on his sleeve. The train gave another jolt and as it did so he