Read Online Backlash by Sally Spencer - Free Book Online Page A

ground. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t realize that . . .’ he mumbled.
    â€˜Name!’ Paniatowski barked.
    â€˜Perkins, ma’am. Roger Perkins.’
    â€˜Right, Perkins, I’ll be watching you,’ Paniatowski promised. ‘And maybe you could return the favour by watching my car while I go and look at the scene of the accident.’
    â€˜Yes, ma’am,’ the downcast Perkins replied. ‘Certainly, ma’am.’
    The main wreckage of Kershaw’s car had already been towed away, but there was still ample evidence of the crash and explosion – broken glass, pieces of metal, chunks of rubber – on the closed-off lanes which had not yet been fully cleared.
    Paniatowski mounted the roundabout.
    Kershaw’s tyres had gouged a deep track through the grass as he had struggled to keep control of his vehicle, but, despite what must have been a desperate effort on his part, he had still hit the oak tree with some force, as was evidenced by the scarring on its mighty trunk.
    Paniatowski wondered briefly if anything would ever make her desperate enough to drive so recklessly – to risk not only her life, but the lives of others. Then she realized that she already had the answer – understood that if Louisa’s safety was at stake, she would take any risk at all, without even thinking about it.
    â€˜Mr Kershaw was lucky to come out of that alive,’ said a voice to her left, and turning, she saw a sergeant she knew.
    â€˜Yes, he was,’ she agreed.
    But would Kershaw think the same, if things turned out as badly as they very well might?
    Marie was used to going to bed late. It was, as Lucy said, ‘an occupational requirement’. And what Lucy really meant was that it was much easier to get a punter to part with his money if he was drunk, and the later it got, the more likely that possibility became. Which was why, while a lot of the trade came when the pubs closed their doors, the more ‘lucrative contracts’ – Lucy’s words again – were negotiated at around two o’clock in the morning, as the private drinking clubs finally shut up shop for the night.
    Going to bed late usually meant getting up late, too, and normally Marie slept straight through until noon.
    But not on that particular morning.
    That morning, after a restless night in which she’d tossed and turned and tried to persuade herself she was asleep, she finally admitted, at a quarter past seven, that she was in fact wide awake.
    She felt lost with this totally unexpected free time suddenly on her hands. She simply didn’t know what to do with it.
    She knew what she wanted to do, of course. She wanted to go down the hallway, open Grace’s bedroom door, and see if her friend was safely tucked up in her bed, just as she was supposed to be.
    But that would be tempting fate, she told herself.
    She couldn’t exactly explain what she meant by that, but it ran along the lines of, ‘If I think things have gone wrong, then they probably will have. If I go and look in Grace’s room now, she won’t be there, because something terrible will have happened to her. But if I leave it till later – if I go into her room at the same time as I normally do – she will be there. She will have been there all night .’
    None of it made sense – she accepted that – but it brought her a little comfort – and comfort could be very thin on the ground.
    She lay perfectly still, convinced she wouldn’t fall asleep, but trying to empty her mind, so time would have passed before she knew it. Then, at a quarter past eight, when her landlady, Mrs Dawkins, began vacuuming noisily downstairs, even keeping her mind empty became an impossibility.
    Marie didn’t like the landlady, and tried to avoid her whenever possible, even going so far as to get one of the other girls to hand over her rent for her.
    It wasn’t that Mrs