Looking Good Dead Read Free

get ready. Her date was a control freak, who insisted on dictating exactly how she looked each time they met. Her arms and legs had to be freshly shaven; she had to put on exactly the same measure of Issey Miyake and in the same places; she had to wash her hair with the same shampoo and conditioner, and apply exactly the same make-up. And her Brazilian had to be trimmed to within microscopic tolerances.
    He would tell her in advance what dress to wear, what jewellery, and even where in the flat he wanted her to be waiting. It all went totally against the grain; she had always been an independent girl, and had never allowed any man to boss her around. And yet something about this guy had got to her. He was coarse, eastern European, powerfully built and flashily dressed, whereas all the men she had dated previously in her life had been cultured, urbane smoothies. And after just three dates she felt in his thrall. Just even thinking about him now made her moist.
    As she locked the car and turned to walk towards her flat she did not even notice the only car in the street not caked in pigeon and seagull guano, a shiny black Volkswagen GTI with blacked-out windows, parked a short way ahead of her. A man, invisible to the outside world, sat in the driver’s seat, watching her through a tiny pair of binoculars and dialling on his pay-as-you-go mobile phone.
    4
    Shortly after half past seven Tom Bryce drove his sporty silver Audi estate past the tennis courts, then the open, tree-lined recreation area of Hove Park, which was teeming with people walking dogs, playing sports, lazing around on the grass, enjoying the remnants of this long, early summer day.
    He had the windows down, and the interior of the car was filled with gently billowing air carrying the scent of freshly mown grass and the soothing voice of Harry Connick Junior – who he loved, but Kellie thought was naff. She didn’t care for Sinatra either. Quality singing just didn’t do it for her; she was into stuff like house, garage, all those weird beaty sounds he did not connect to.
    The longer they were married, the less it seemed they had in common. He couldn’t remember the last movie they’d agreed on, and Jonathan Ross on a Friday night was about the only TV show they regularly sat down to watch together. But they loved each other, that he was sure of, and the kids came above everything. They were everything.
    This was the time of each day he enjoyed the most, the anticipation of getting home to the family he adored. And tonight the contrast between the vile, sticky heat of London and the train, and this pleasant moment now seemed even more pronounced.
    His mood improving by the second, he crossed the junction with swanky Woodland Drive, nicknamed Millionaires’ Row, with its long stretch of handsome detached houses, many backing onto a copse. Kellie hankered to live there one day, but it was way out of their price league for the moment – and probably always would be, the way things were headed, he thought ruefully. He continued west, along the altogether more modest Goldstone Crescent, lined on either side with neat semi-detached houses, and turned right into Upper Victoria Avenue.
    No one was quite sure why it had been named Upper since there was no Lower Victoria Avenue. His elderly neighbour, Len Wainwright – secretly nicknamed the Giraffe by Kellie and himself, as he was nearly seven foot tall – had once announced in one of his many moments of not exactly blinding erudition across the garden fence that it must be because the street went up a fairly steep hill. It wasn’t a great explanation, but no one had yet come up with a better one.
    Upper Victoria Avenue was part of a development which was thirty years old but still did not yet look as if it had reached maturity. The planes in the street were still tall saplings rather than full trees, the red brick of the two-storey semi-detached houses still looked fresh, the mock-Tudor wood beams on the roof