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Chapter 2
Sunday 31st January
‘I’m sorting out a bag for the charity shop – anything you want to chuck in?’
I turn to look at Pete, who’s just come in from a run, and he takes a swig from his bottle of water and shakes his head.
‘Don’t think so. You getting rid of unwanted Christmas gifts? Hope mine isn’t in there, Mary Ellis. I’m off for a shower.’
He grins at me and heads for the door, and I watch him go, his thighs taut and muscular in his short shorts. He always runs in shorts, tight and black, even on a cold, frosty morning like this one, and I can’t say I object. I don’tfancyPete, not really, but you can enjoy looking at someone without fancying them as such, can’t you? We’re housemates, that’s all. Friends for years. And anyway, he has a girlfriend, Megan.
‘Megan Walker, although I’m not much of a walker. Prefer to run everywhere, a bit like Pete,’ she giggled, on our first meeting.
Despite this somewhat irritating way of introducing herself, she seems nice enough, and she’s very beautiful. Blonde, blue-eyed, creamy alabaster skin. I envy her skin – I envyanyonewith smooth, perfect skin – but she’s all right, although I don’t know her very well yet; they’ve only been dating a few months, and she lives alone so when they spend the night together it’s usually at her place over in Prestbury.
‘Don’t want to disturb you. Things might get a bit …noisy,’ Pete said with a wink, the first time he told me he’d be staying over.
‘Ugh.Waytoo much information, Chong,’ I groaned, and threw a tea towel at him, and he laughed, his greeny-brown eyes crinkling at the corners. His face is as nice as his legs – his late dad was Korean and his mum is Irish, and it’s an excellent combination. He’s six foot two, has thick, dark hair, a sharp jawline, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. He’s a good guy, Pete Chong, and I am definitelynotputting my Christmas gift fromhiminto my charity bag – it was the loveliest, softest wool jumper, black with gold and silver stars down the sleeves. I am, however, putting in a cinnamon-scented candle I got from Dinah, our next-door neighbour – Dinah is lovely, but I really hate candles – a second, smaller candle that was included in a very nice hamper of chocolates and hand creams (given to me, to my surprise, by Megan), and a jarful of star-shaped cookie cutters that Virginia who runs the corner shop pushed into my hands when I popped in for a newspaper just before Christmas.
‘I got them in in case anyone needed last-minute presents,’ she told me. She had a flashing snowman brooch pinned to her navy tabard. ‘But I can’t shift ’em. Merry Christmas.’
I’d smiled and accepted the squat glass jar, but I’m not much of a baker.
Let someone else enjoy them, I think now, as I put them into the bag.What else? Ah yes, the desk diary.
I’m sitting on the little sofa in front of the TV in our big open-plan kitchen/diner/downstairs living space, having gone round the house earlier collecting all the things I want to ditch and piling them on the coffee table. I reach for the diary, the one someone sent to the office for me as a Christmas gift. Along with not being a candle or baking person, I am also not a diary person – well, I am, but I use the diary on my phone these days, not a real paper one – and I haven’t even really looked at it properly yet, I realise, feeling guilty. I should have thanked whoever sent it by now, but I don’t remember seeing a card or note when I slipped it out of its cardboard wrapping and dumped it on my desk upstairs on Christmas Eve.
‘Where did you come from, then?’ I ask it, out loud. It’s actually a nice-looking diary, a page a day, boxed and bound in black leather. I remove the plastic lid of the box and slip the diary out, opening the front cover, wondering if there might be any clue to the sender’s identity inside. Instead, I’m surprised to see a bright-yellow sticky note on the first page.
It says, in block capitals:
READ ME
What?
Weird, I think.
Frowning, I flick through the first few pages containing the usual calendars and lists of notable dates and religious festivals for the coming year, until I reach the 1st of January. And then I freeze.
What the hell is this?
There’s an entry on the page, just three words, in black ink and block capitals just like the sticky note.
MURDER LISA, OXFORD
I stare at the words, and then at the date. The 1st of January. New Year’s Day. A little shiver runs up my back, and I slowly lift my gaze to the television screen in front of me. The BBC lunchtime news is on, and I’ve only been half listening, but I know which story they’ve just been running. It’s the story of Lisa Turner. A story which shocked and saddened a hungover nation when it first broke a few weeks back. Lisa Turner, a twenty-eight-year-old woman who was found dead in Oxford early on the morning of New Year’s Day, murdered as she made her way home from a New Year’s Eve party. Lisa Turner, whose killer still hasn’t been found.
My chest tightens. I look down at the diary, at the words, again, and then turn a few more pages. My hand is shaking, my mind racing.
Who sent this?
It came in the post – landed on my desk the day before Christmas Eve, the 23rd of December, if I remember correctly. Around then, anyway. That was more than a weekbeforeLisa Turner was murdered.
So how …?
I freeze again. I’ve reached February now, Monday the 1st.Tomorrow.And there’s another entry.
MURDER JANE, BIRMINGHAM
