The Lucifer Network by Geoffrey Archer Page B

that. And then there was drugs. That’s when she started going with Brendan. He was a disc jockey. Good-looking feller, but he had no thought for anybody but himself. By the time the baby came and she dropped out of college she was pretty near bottom. She’d not been in touch with home for months. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. She just turned up one day, grey as a ghost, with this three-week-old scrap in her arms, and the two of them suffering withdrawal symptoms.’
    â€˜Withdrawal symptoms?’ Sam raised his eyebrows.
    â€˜Julie was addicted to heroin.’
    â€˜Really? I’d never have guessed.’
    â€˜She’s clean now, thank God. It took her a while. And Harry played his part, I’ll give him that. When he heard the state she was in with a newborn baby, he was back here on the first plane. Blamed himself for never being there when she needed him.’
    â€˜So he stayed for a while?’
    â€˜Oh no. Said his business didn’t allow it. But he phoned a lot. And he fixed a clinic for her – to get her off the drugs. Eventually he persuaded her back to college to complete her degree.’
    â€˜While you looked after Liam.’
    â€˜While I looked after Liam,’ she confirmed. ‘Had to give up my own job to do it.’ She looked embarrassed suddenly. ‘Och, you poor man. You came here to read some crazy letter and you get a life history rammed down your throat.’
    He was about to tell her it didn’t matter when he heard tyres on the gravel at the front.
    â€˜That’ll be them now. They went in my Clio,’ she explained. ‘Julie doesn’t have a car of her own.’
    A few moments later Sam heard a key in the lock. He stood up. The boy stumbled in, rubbing his eyes.
    â€˜Fell asleep,’ Julie mouthed to her mother as she gathered her grandson into her arms.
    â€˜What’ll it be, Liam?’ the older woman asked. ‘Fish fingers, I suppose.’
    The sleepy boy dumped his head on her shoulder, then stuck a thumb in his mouth.
    Julie turned to Sam. She still had her glasses on from the driving, but took them off and held them in her hand. There were tight lines of tension round her eyes. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting,’ she told him.
    â€˜That’s all right.’ She looked sun-baked and wholesome and he could forgive her anything.
    â€˜I’ll get you the letter.’
    Sam stared longingly at her lean limbs as she climbed the open staircase to the floor above. She wore blue shorts and a white sleeveless vest that clung to her breasts. Her shoulders were red from the sun. She reappeared a few seconds later with an envelope.
    â€˜If you want to read it in peace, there’s a bench in the garden,’ she told him, sliding the patio door fully open. She was eyeing him with reserve, as if trying to form a judgement of him.
    â€˜You said it arrived this morning?’ Sam asked as they crossed the lawn to where it sloped to the water.
    â€˜That’s right. It shook me when I picked it off the mat and saw the writing.’
    â€˜Why would it have come here instead of to Acton?’
    â€˜He chopped and changed. Anything he wanted to be sure I got he sent to Woodbridge, for some reason. He knew I was here at the weekends.’
    The seat was under a willow tree. She sat close beside him, as if not trusting him to be alone with theletter. Solemnly she handed the envelope to him and he extracted the contents.
    Harry Jackman’s handwriting had a slight backward slope. ‘There’s no date,’ Sam commented, inhaling the orange-blossom smell of her sun cream with the intensity of a solvent sniffer. She sat close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body.
    â€˜No. There’s nothing to say when it was written.’ She hugged her arms to her chest and clamped a hand over her mouth, staring downriver to where the racing dinghies were being hauled from the