Pretty Little Dead Things Read Free Page B

wide concrete access road leading to several warehouse units, most of which had been gutted in a serious fire a couple of years ago, and some vacant office space which had miraculously survived the blaze. Prefab huts and squat redbrick buildings were scattered among the blackened shells of the warehouses. I knew the place was dangerous. If red-top news reports were to be believed, the area was used regularly by junkies and sex pests.
    Â Â "Welcome to the Terror Dome," I muttered, reciting the line from a film, or a book or a song – I'm still not sure which.
    Â Â The taxi stopped at the kerb and the couple climbed out. By this point Kareena looked slightly worse for the evening's drugs-and-alcohol intake: she was stumbling and her clothes were dishevelled. It looked to me as if she and Spinks had been getting more than cosy on the back seat.
    Â Â Kareena's black stockings were rolled down to her knees.
    Â Â According to Singh, his daughter had been seeing Spinks for six weeks – long enough for her to trust him but not long enough to really know him. I had the suspicion that the promise of danger associated with this thug was half the attraction, and that Kareena knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it. Pure bloody-mindedness and the desire to hurt her father were the motivating factors in this particular soap opera.
    Â Â My heart sank. Over the years, I'd seen the bloodied remains of too many women who'd made similar mistakes, the sorry victims of abuse and murder and sexual mutilation, the torn, shredded bodies of those whose only crime had been to make a bad choice on a lonely night. I'd watched them, these murdered women, as they tried and failed to speak to me from somewhere else. They often wept as they failed to communicate the depth of their pain through the barrier of death.
    Â Â I closed my eyes and held my breath, summoning the courage to go on, to follow these two people towards the edge of their personal darkness. I think even then I knew what was coming, but I kept on going anyway, stupidly hoping that this would not turn into exactly the kind of situation I'd been running from.
    Â Â When I opened my eyes the taxi had already pulled away; I could see the twin sparks of its taillights as they diminished to tiny pinpricks in the dark.
    Â Â I glanced over to where the two passengers were now stumbling over a stretch of rough ground towards the shabby heart of the small industrial estate, holding on tightly to each other in case they fell. Hesitating for only a moment, I left the car and followed them over the rubble-strewn ground. I trod softly, as if I were engaged in some kind of guerrilla warfare. I had no idea who else was around, or who they might be meeting here, and the last thing I wanted was to draw attention to my presence on the scene.
    Â Â I recalled Baz Singh's words to me earlier that day: "Just follow her, and if she gets into trouble, intervene as best you can. If she gets hurt, it's her own decision, but I don't want her dead." The man was as heartless as one of the many stone statues that littered his home – artful representations of the Hindu gods he no longer believed in yet paid lip service to in the name of commerce. It seemed to me that he probably wanted his daughter to be hurt so that she might be punished for her transgressions, but even he drew the line at allowing her to come to serious harm. My role here was as a glorified babysitter, but the money was good so it was a situation worth sticking with.
    Â Â Or so I hoped.
    Â Â Not for the first time, I questioned my own involvement in such matters, and with such unappealing people. In the past I'd always sought out the good, or at least the semi good. Now I worked for anyone who would pay me. Not for the first time, I wished that things could be different. That I hadn't once felt the pull of something dark and hungry and powerful as it moved towards me through the