PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES: a gripping crime thriller (Camden Noir Crime Thrillers Trilogy Book 1) Read Free

They talked about a flu epidemic and a spate of London murders. One of them said the police offered their daughters no protection and it was time to take the law into their own hands. His workmates fantasised about what they’d do to the killer if they caught him. Each one, outdoing the last. It was horrific.
    I finished up and took a walk along the high street. The sun broke through the clouds and set the wet pavements a-dazzle. Eurogoths studded, quiffed and decked out in leather, tartan and orthopaedic footwear paraded up and down carrying record bags. Young men solicited me with offers of “Hash” and “Skunk”, and the professional punks on the lock-side begged under a banner of “Let’s be honest. We’re going to spend it on beer.” Pure Camden.
    I walked up to the bridge where I’d arranged to meet Dani. It was getting warmer so I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves and tried to catch some sun. I was lighting a cigarette for one of the punks just as Dani came round the corner wearing a summer dress and cut-off jeans. Her long-lens Nikon was hanging around her neck. She ran up to me and gave me a hug. She held onto me for some time, her body pressed up against mine, the camera jutting into my ribs.
    It’d never been clear to me where I stood with Dani. Two years ago when she first turned up at Free Press (or FP to those in the know) as a rookie journalist of 22 years old, she was a pale-faced Welsh girl with a shaved head and hardly a word to say. Brent, the Editor, had hired her on the strength of her photographic portfolio, which contained, among other things, 30 or so black and white portraits of grim young men in tracksuits sitting on the bonnets of stolen cars. During her interview, sitting in her oversized parker and baggy jeans, she’d deflected Brent’s praise for the photos with shy smiles and obvious discomfort. In her first year at FP, she remained tight-lipped and was often met from work by similarly shaven-headed women with similarly oversized clothes, who never acknowledged our greetings, but instead, stared warily at us like mistreated pets.
    Brent and I gave Dani lots of space, admiring her photos and thoroughness as a researcher from a distance. The transition had been gradual. The clothes got smaller. The hair got longer. A year down the road, she started coming along to drinks after work. She opened up and we became good friends. We never reminded her of what she used to be like in case she reverted back in the style of Wile E. Coyote suddenly realising he was running on thin air.
    Dani was on a different sensory level to most people. She experienced the world at a level of emotional intensity far beyond the norm. One day after a lot of alcohol, I asked her what it was like being her, so very self-aware; how did she live with it? She laughed and told me how once she’d set about de-sensitising herself by watching violent films, which at first made her sick with nerves. Having conquered celluloid, she’d then sought out similar over stimulation in dodgy pubs, watching underground cage fights and even joined a martial arts group. She also scoured the newspapers for the most shocking and depressing stories in the belief that through compassion fatigue she could function as a normal member of society. She’d come out of her shell and wrapped herself in an enabling shroud of twenty-first century functional narcolepsy. I’d loved her explanation, but wasn’t sure if it was meant to be taken as a true story, or an oblique critique on the way, post-9/11, we’d all begun to live.
    Back in the sunshine, Dani finally loosened her embrace and, brushing back her long raven hair with her hand, stood back to take a look at me. She obviously didn’t like what she saw, slanting her head with concern, fixing her green eyes on my face.
    “Lishman, you look awful. Like you’ve already had a weekend. It’s Saturday morning. What is it? Drinking?”
    I tried to remember the last night I hadn’t