Читать книгу For All Our Sins - T.M.E. Walsh - Страница 11

CHAPTER 2

Ice-blue irises pulled tight leaving the pupils the size of a pin prick as she stared skyward, hand raised to her brow, useless against the might of the sun’s rays.

Detective Chief Inspector Claire Winters felt a shiver shoot up her spine, like icy skeletal fingers scraping against her skin, despite the heat of the day. It was early morning, but the temperature on the dash of her car had said it was close to 24 degrees already.

Her shirt was sticking to her back underneath her suit jacket like a second skin. The air was muggy, close, pulling at each breath she took, yet despite this she still felt like ice, right down to her bones.

A feeling of dread pulled at her inside as she lowered the sunglasses from the top of her head, back down on her face.

She stared at the door ahead, the entrance to the looming tower block opposite her. A place she’d just left. A place she hated. A place that had become more somewhere to call home than her house several miles out of Haverbridge.

Claire’s mind drifted to dark thoughts. They came thick and fast lately. Like a nightmare that didn’t end after she woke each morning. It continued long through the days. Sometimes it threatened to swallow her whole.

Sometimes Claire wondered if perhaps that’d be easier.

Just let all the fight be torn out of her and scattered to the wind, until all that remained was an empty shell.

Wouldn’t that be too easy?

She felt her BlackBerry vibrating inside her trouser pocket. She’d turned the ringer off whilst she’d been inside the building, inside that wretched flat that housed someone she’d long since come to loathe and love in equal measure.

She glanced at the screen, her grip tightened on the phone resting in her palm. Her finger hovered over the Answer button.

How easy it would be to just throw it away, forget her job, forget this life. Forget everything that’d passed and start again.

This is not you, she told herself. He does not define who you are, what you do, what comes next. She glanced up at the tower block again as she answered the call.

Take back the control.

‘DCI Winters,’ she said. Her lips were dry, cracked, sore. She touched her fingers on her free hand to her bottom lip, pulled them away. Tiny dots of blood were on her fingertips.

‘Guv?’ said Detective Constable Gabriel Harper at the other end of the phone.

Claire snapped back to the here and now. She’d detected something in his voice that was different. Whatever he was going to say, wasn’t going to be good.

‘What is it, Gabe?’

There was a drawn-out pause. Claire could hear his breathing. It was far from normal. A new sensation gripped at her insides. She bit down on her bottom lip, made herself turn away from the tower block.

‘What’s wrong, Harper?’ she said as she crossed the road towards where she’d parked her car earlier, a steely edge returning to her voice.

She heard Harper’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Guv, this isn’t something I can explain over the phone.’ He paused. ‘We need you back now, something’s happened at one of the local churches. Reports are coming in about a woman collapsing outside St Mary’s, completely covered in blood…someone else’s, not her own.’