Cold Revenge (2015) Read Online Free Page B

said.
    She shook her head with affectionate irritation, watching his broad back as he threaded his way carefully through the restaurant. He didn’t look back.
    She unfolded the paper and looked at the name of the investigating officer and his DI and, despite herself, she smiled. You cunning old bastard, she thought.

4
    He had woken up wet again. He lay in his bed staring fearfully at the ceiling. There was a clock in his room on the bedside table. It was a little travel clock with a hinge and a case that had belonged to his grandmother. It was one of the few things he did have. The hour and minute hands glowed greenly in the dark with a faint luminosity. The clock had no LED display. It was old, mechanical rather than electronic; you had to wind it up. In order to make it glow properly you had to put it in direct sunlight all day. But he loved it.
    The clock told him it was seven in the morning. Please, God, let her not be up. Please, please, God. I’ll do anything.
    There wasn’t a great deal else in his room. His mother had confiscated most of his toys. He had hidden Vulture, a rubber bird he’d won as a prize at a fair, so she couldn’t take him away.
    He could smell urine, overlaid with the rubberized odour of the special sheet she put on his bed to protect the mattress. He hated the smell of that sheet and its cold, sticky feel. He got up and lifted the duvet. There was an oval-shaped wet patch, but it really wasn’t too bad. She probably wouldn’t notice.
    His pyjama bottoms were sodden, however. He pulled on a pair of underpants. They were too large for him and the elastic had gone in the waist. His mother didn’t believe in wasting money on new clothes for him and that included underwear. Everything he wore was second hand.
    Holding the Y-fronts up with one hand, the bundled-up pyjamas in the other, he pushed open his bedroom door.
    The flat, just off Gloucester Place in central London, was small with two bedrooms, a galley kitchen and a bathroom, all opening on to a central living area. She had been up late with his ‘Uncle’ Phil, the producer of the show she presented, the BBC’s Let’s Dance . Monica Fuller was one of the arts correspondents. She specialized in dance. ‘Big’ was Uncle Phil’s nickname for her. It stood, as he liked to put it (‘and I do like to put it, as the actress said to the bishop,’ Phil liked to say), for big hair, big tits, big glasses. His colleagues found the nickname very funny. Uncle Phil was famous for his sense of humour at the Corporation. He was very popular there. He was one of the lads.
    The boy looked nervously out at the lounge, where the table was covered with several wine glasses, some half full. She must have had more than one friend round. Hers were easy to identify; they were marked with crescent moons from the very red lipstick she favoured. They’d used a couple of the glasses as an ashtray. Now they were full of a greying mass of sludge and cigarette ends and a couple of roaches from smoked joints. She must still be asleep, he thought, good. I can bury these in the washing basket and wash them later, when she’s at work.
    He was halfway across the room when the door to her bedroom opened and she appeared.
    ‘What are you doing sneaking around?’ she demanded.
    ‘Nothing, Mummy,’ he said defensively.
    ‘What’s that you’ve got, give it me.’ He handed over the wet trousers, his stomach knotting in fear and misery. Please, God, please let her not be too angry, he prayed. He could smell the stale alcohol and cigarettes on her breath as she leaned over him.
    ‘God, you sicken me, you dirty little sod,’ she said with genuine disgust. ‘It’s no wonder your father left.’
    She had on a housecoat with nothing underneath, showing a lot of cleavage. He stared at her large, heavy breasts, blue-veined, with fascinated repulsion.
    ‘I’ll have to punish you now,’ she said. ‘I should have been firmer with you from the word go. Phil says I