Louise Voss & Mark Edwards 3-Book Thriller Collection: Catch Your Death, All Fall Down, Killing Cupid

Kate frowned. ‘You shouldn’t make promises to kids that you don’t mean to keep.’

‘Who says I don’t mean to keep it?’

He didn’t meet her eye as he said it, but flicked a look at her in the pause that followed, and Kate suddenly became very aware of the heat inside the car. She didn’t want this; didn’t need it. ‘How do you turn up the air-con in this car?’

Paul turned a dial on the dashboard. This was English summer all right: capricious, moody. Overcast and cool, then swinging into blazing cruelty. That made her think of Vernon, and so she prompted Paul to tell her about the phishing case to help take her mind off her husband.

‘It was a big deal. The trail led back to a crime syndicate in Russia. As it so often does. Russia, Nigeria, South Korea. Although it can be anywhere really. The most frustrating thing about computer crime is that it moves so easily across borders. The United States passed an Anti-Phishing Act last year but then they can’t prosecute half of the criminals because they’re in Asia or somewhere else. We work with police forces and agencies all over the world, but the only way we’re ever going to win the battle is if computer users stop being so stupid and falling for these scams.’

‘They keep you in work though,’ smiled Kate.

‘True. Although some of the cases we deal with make me wish the internet had never been invented.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can’t really talk about it with Jack in the car. It involves kids.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. The kind of stuff that stays with you, makes you look at the world differently. Makes you realise that there are sicknesses in society that we’re a long, long way from curing.’

Another kind of virus, Kate thought, passed down through the generations. She instinctively turned to check Jack was still okay. He grinned at her, and the traffic started moving.

‘So how did you get into the computer security business anyway?’ Kate asked.

Paul didn’t answer right away, and she thought it might be because he was concentrating on the road. Now the traffic was finally moving Kate could sense the irritation in all the metal boxes around them dissipate a little. A boxer dog watched them solemnly through the rear window of the car in front. They gradually increased their speed as the traffic spread out.

‘I suppose you could say I got into it because it was already my area of expertise. And it was either cross over and go legit, or, well, go to jail.’

Kate waited for him to continue. He swung the steering wheel to the left and overtook the car with the boxer dog. He chewed his lower lip. After a minute, he said over his shoulder, ‘You alright back there, Jack?’

‘I just saw a man eat a booger.’

‘Nice.’

They continued to chat aimlessly, Kate unwilling to press Paul on what he had inferred about the threat of prison. She was still waiting for him to tell her anything further about his past an hour and a half later, when they reached Salisbury. She filed it in her head under ‘cause for concern’, but didn’t push it. After all, they would have plenty of time to find out more about each other. There was no rush.

Chapter 17 (#ulink_b077c356-474f-5521-8efb-fb16d0b164b1)

Kate got out of the car and stretched her legs and back, squinting into the sun and wishing she had her sunglasses with her. She’d forgotten to pack them, along with her sun cream. If only the sun would go behind a cloud and the greyness would return – it was damaging her eyes and skin and playing havoc with her libido. The heat always did this to her. Like that summer at the CRU, when it was sticky and sultry and her hormones had been aflame. Like the tropical night on a budget holiday to Cuba when Jack was conceived, back in the days when she and Vernon were still sexually attracted to one another. There was no point being coy about it: hot weather made her horny. Perhaps she should do a rain dance.

Salisbury town centre was quiet, as drowsy as the wasps that circled the rubbish bins in the marketplace, drunk on Coca-Cola. Kate held Jack’s hand as he eyed the wasps warily. When he was three a wasp had crawled into a can of Sprite Vernon had let him have, against her wishes – all that sugar! – and stung Jack on the tongue. Then there was the dash to the emergency room as Jack’s tongue swelled up and Kate shouted at Vernon in the car as Jack screamed and Vernon shouted back and called her an ‘uptight crazy Nazi health bitch.’

Not the happiest of memories. Things had changed between them so dramatically over such a short period; at a time when they ought to have been relishing every moment of Jack’s babyhood, not yelling at each other. Instead, Vernon had tried to convince her that her depression at the decline of the relationship was a sign of burgeoning insanity, and that she needed intensive therapy and anti-depressants to ‘cure’ her.

‘Where is everyone?’ Paul wondered, getting out of the car and rubbing his upper arms, and then producing a pair of shades from his pocket. The shades were overly trendy and made Paul look older than he was: the opposite of their intended effect. She didn’t feel that she knew him well enough yet to tell him this though. Stop trying to look like a movie star, she wanted to say. You don’t need to make such an effort.

She couldn’t imagine Stephen trying to be trendy. He wouldn’t have known the difference between Gap and Gucci.

‘Mummy, I’m thirsty.’

She ruffled Jack’s hair. ‘Let’s go and get a drink, shall we?’

‘Coca-Cola?’

‘No, you can have orange juice.’

There was a newsagent across the road and as they walked towards it Jack said, ‘That wasp was looking at me. It wanted to sting me.’

A couple of teens thundered past on skateboards and Jack gawped after them, the insect forgotten. Paul pointed towards a board outside the newsagent advertising the Salisbury Journal with the headline Cathedral in Buddhist Row. Another board yelled Blues Boss Quits.

Inside the shop, Kate took a couple of cartons of orange juice from the double-fronted fridge, a bottle of water for Paul and a copy of the Journal from the top of a stack of newspapers on the bottom shelf. She carried them all to the counter, where a girl leaned against the till with her index finger in her mouth. Kate thought she was trying to make herself sick, then realised she was playing with her tongue stud. The girl wiped her saliva-soaked finger on her jeans before using it to stab the price of their purchases into the till.

Back outside, Jack held his juice carton up to Paul, who helped him by stripping the cellophane from the straw and poking it through the hole in the carton. Jack sipped, then pulled a face.

‘It’s gross,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It tastes like crap.’

‘Don’t say that.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘A little phrase he picked up from his father.’

‘I don’t like English juice. I want proper juice.’

‘This is proper.’

‘I don’t want it.’ He threw the carton onto the floor.

Kate watched the juice dribble through the straw onto the pavement. Normally she would really tell him off, but right now she felt like she needed to hold back. He’d been so good over the last few days, acting like the model child she’d often fantasised about while she was pregnant. She’d known it wouldn’t last forever, but she didn’t want to be too hard on him. He deserved a break. But that didn’t mean he could be allowed to get away with this behaviour or he’d get worse.

‘Pick it up please, Jack,’ she said in her most calm, reasonable voice.

‘No. It tastes like crap.’

‘Do not say that.’

‘Crap. Craaaaaap. Crap crap crap.’

Paul laughed.

Kate shot him a look. ‘That doesn’t help.’

‘Sorry.’

Kate crouched so she was on Jack’s level. ‘Look, I know it tastes different to what you’re used to, but if you don’t drink it a wasp will get it.’

‘The wasps can have it.’