Lethal Profit Read Free

Jackson had lived here and he had attacked her so savagely the night before for no apparent reason. But realistically, what motive did he have for murder? It was more likely that he was just a serial opportunist.
    Still sitting on the bed with the phone beside her, wet hair dripping onto her shoulders, Eva realised she had a clear choice.
    Either she took the advice of the friends who kept worriedly messaging her from home, headed back to London and tried to carry on with her life; or she followed her hunch that Jackson had not taken his own life and struck out on her own: Eva Scott, vigilante. She smiled resignedly to herself. In reality she knew that there was no choice for her. She was just a regular person who had taken a few self-defence classes – she was hardly prepared for even mild peril – but she couldn’t live with the knowledge that she had done nothing to find out what happened to Jackson. That wouldn’t be right. Especially after that, she thought, looking at her phone.
    She pulled on a pair of tight, black jeans, a wide-necked, cable-knit jumper and some leather ankle boots and combed out her long dark hair. Then she walked over to the curtains, drawing them back and letting the weak, milky light filter into the room. She threw open the window and was met with a bracing gust of Parisian air – coffee-edged with a slight hint of drains.
    Coffee . She needed coffee.

    Eva was eternally grateful for the fact that Paris was a city of pavement cafés and bars serving a universally high standard of coffee. She sat in the corner of a small establishment near her hotel, hunched over an English newspaper she’d bought on the way. In front of her, a black coffee, a glass of water, an untouched croissant and a small red plastic bowl containing a printed receipt. She added another sachet of sugar to the thick, dark liquid, stirred it slowly with a spoon and then placed the spoon carefully on the side of the saucer. She turned the page of the paper and took a slow sip of the strong coffee.
    In front of her, the world’s current affairs were laid out like a depressing comic. Pictures of politicians showing off their veneers, footballers in thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes cheating on their wives, and financiers striking deals that would benefit only the 1 per cent. This was the first recession she had really experienced and she had never imagined how much it would change the country she had lived in all her life. In the past few months the news had seemed even more unbelievable – banks manipulating exchange rates for their own profits, political figures making decisions against public interests motivated by big business and the destruction of seemingly permanent institutions like the National Health Service. It shocked and surprised her that – on the whole – whilst all this damage was being done to their society most Britons did nothing. But then neither did she. At the tender age of twenty-eight she had become utterly apathetic; too concerned with her own survival to put time and effort into holding anyone else to account. Jackson had left her money – an unexpectedly large amount of money – and that gave her the luxury of inaction. Without that her life right now would be very difficult.

    Eva finished her coffee and signalled to the waiter for another. She took an unenthusiastic bite of her croissant. Jackson. All her thoughts came back to Jackson. Even now there was another memory, waiting at the edge of her consciousness to be let in. This was one of the fights they’d had as teenagers, often about politics – she blinkeredly left-wing and he already a staunch capitalist. Their father, a journalist for a big daily, had encouraged them to debate and question from an early age, to speak out when they felt they saw injustice. Of course, that had massively backfired on him when his affair had been uncovered. She had no doubt he had wished then that