Long Time Lost Read Free Page A

ski mask, revealing a male in his early thirties, well-groomed and clean-shaven. He had no scars or signs of a troubled life or distinguishing marks whatsoever.
    Aside from the ugly wound that had killed him.
    Miller removed a glove and fished his smartphone out of his pocket – his own phone, not the disposable device Kate had contacted him on – and held it low to the man’s face. He took a photograph and attached the image in an email to Hanson.
    He didn’t pat the man down. No killer hired by Connor Lane for this particular assignment would be amateurish enough to carry ID. Besides which, Hanson was capable of finding out more about the dead man from the hasty mug shot Miller had sent him than any trawl through his wallet might reveal.
    Straightening now, Miller stalked around the bed, probing left and right with his torch until he found the pistol he’d armed Kate with poking out from just beneath the cotton valance. He stowed it in his backpack and cast his torch around the rest of the room, flinching when the beam was jabbed back at him by a mirrored wardrobe.
    He leaned his head to one side, pausing for a moment to consider his reflection – this dishevelled, oversized wanderer, almost a stranger to him now, who was capable of walking into a house where someone had been shot with the intention of concealing evidence and spiriting the killer away. The man Miller had used to be wouldn’t have been able to hold his gaze. But the man Miller had used to be hadn’t understood how rules and laws could mean nothing to some men. He hadn’t known that to beat them you had to become them. Or sometimes, something even worse.
    He slid aside the wardrobe doors and scanned the garments in front of him. There were items here that reminded him of the type of clothes Sarah might once have worn. His wife had liked to dress simply. Most days it was jeans and a blouse or a T-shirt, but every now and again, for a special occasion, she would dazzle him with a black cocktail dress like the one his gloved fingers had settled on. He clenched the silky material and could almost conjure up the feel of Sarah’s body beneath it. The swell of her hip. The warmth of her skin. He could almost imagine her batting his hand away, smiling over her shoulder, telling him that now really wasn’t the time.
    Which it expressly wasn’t.
    Miller released the dress and took out his phone, firing off several flash photographs. When he was done, his eyes settled on a navy fleece jacket on a shelf to the right. He slipped his phone away and tucked the fleece under his arm, thinking how it wouldn’t be wise for Kate to be seen with blood on her clothes on the walk down to the beach.
    He was just turning to go – the beam from his torch settling over the doorway that connected with the hall, his mind still snagged by those treacherous thoughts of Sarah and the pain and regret that had led him here – when he heard a low insect hum coming from the dead man. A soft blue light pulsed from behind a chest pocket on his gilet: the light fading, then blooming again, like an alien heart.
    Miller knelt and dipped his hand inside the man’s pocket, removing a mobile phone between his finger and thumb.
    CALLER UNKNOWN .
    He held the phone in his gloved palm, the buzz passing up his arm, jangling his nerves. He had a sudden urge to answer the call. He could picture himself raising the phone to his ear, listening to the expectant breathing on the other end of the line.
    There were so many things he wanted to say.
    *
    Mike Renner, the balding man in the suit and tie, leaned back from the open window of the crane operator’s cab and stared out at the glinting cityscape with his phone pressed to his ear.
    Renner hadn’t wanted to place this call. He never wanted to place these calls. But he’d anticipated receiving an important text message more than twenty minutes ago. The message should have been something short and vaguely cryptic. Job done. Contract