Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

sort of Robin Hood persona there for a while — thinking perhaps I could somehow help the helpless and downtrodden against the people like Clyde, the sharks who thought they had a God-given right to ruin other people’s lives, just for more money and power of their own.
    For a long time I couldn’t think how to go about it. The first thing I did, though, was to help Lorna set up her own monthly paper, the Gutter Rag . She’d been talking about it for years — something she could run herself and be totally responsible for, something that would print the hard stuff that even the National wouldn’t go with.
    At first I thought I might work on it with her, but I’d never done much investigative journalism and Lorna had often scoffed at the stuff I did do — profiles of actors, artists, writers, film and music reviews and so on. In the end I just gave her an enormous cheque and paid two years’ rent and hire on an office in Glebe Point Road and all the desktop publishing gear she needed. She’d had no qualms at all about taking Clyde’s money.
    Now, by its fourth or fifth edition, the Rag was doing well, mostly subscribed to by radical lawyers, politicians’ press secretaries and other journos, but increasingly selling in news agencies. Lorna still did regular pieces for the National and I did the odd theatre and book review for them, and for Lorna, too. I formed the habit of dropping in to her pleasant overcrowded office for a drink and a gossip most afternoons, where I used to look wistfully at Lorna tapping away at her keyboard, her spunky young layout artist muttering over his light-table, and her assistant-cum-secretary, Jill, bouncing about in the full glory of punk haute couture . It pleased me that I was responsible in part for all this activity, but I was frustrated at doing nothing useful myself. Clyde’s money seemed to increase exponentially as soon as you took your eyes off it and I had vowed not to spend it on lollies.
    Then, one afternoon as I was leaving the Rag’s office, I had bumped into Graham. I hadn’t seen him since university days when he’d been studying Law in a dilatory sort of way, and acting with the drama society more seriously. We fell on each other with enthusiasm and ended up getting a taxi to the Regent, where we ordered expensive champagne.
    Graham was, like most actors, resting, and he’d just failed to get the part of a private eye in a television series. I commiserated and bought more Heidsieck. We caught up on most of the last ten years and I told him all about Clyde’s death and Lorna and my own frustrations. In return he groaned about the erratic fortunes of being an actor in Australia — the missed parts, the long periods of no work — and told me that for most of the last few years he’d been working as a process server. His failed Law background had stood him in good stead.
    “The ironic thing is,” he said, staring owlishly into his drink, “that I’ve actually got a private investigator’s licence. But no, the casting agent said I didn’t look battered enough.” Graham’s smooth blond good looks had been the bane of his acting life. No one believed he could look that good and act, too.
    “Why have you?” I said. I wasn’t feeling very coherent by then. “Got a licence, I mean.”
    “For serving the writs,” he said. “It helped if I had to snoop around a bit. People are impressed when you flash it at them — they think it’s just like the movies.”
    “You could start a detective agency,” I said flippantly. “Then someone could write a film about you and you could star in it.”
    “I’ve thought about it,” he said with deep gloom. “But you need money. You’ve got to have an office and answering machines and petty cash and…”
    I think the idea came to us both simultaneously.
    “ I’ve got money,” I said and Graham looked up at me, bright-eyed.
    “And I’ve got a licence.”
    By the time we’d left the pub we’d talked each other