Perfect Kill. Helen Fields
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PERFECT KILL
Helen Fields
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Helen Fields 2020
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photograph © Isabelle Lafrance / Trevillion Images
Helen Fields asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008275242
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008275266
Version: 2020-10-20
For David
Who always told me that I could and I would
Who catches me when I stumble
(literally and metaphorically)
And who never stops laughing at me
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Keep reading for a sneak peek of The Shadow Man …
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
At precisely the same time Bart was coming round from a chemically induced sleep, his mother was waking from a herbal insomnia remedy and wondering why the house was so quiet. It wasn’t a Sunday. On Sundays, Bart neither had college nor work, and occasionally he slept in. Not all that often, but sometimes. Maggie rolled onto her side and rubbed bleary eyes, trying to focus on the small travel clock perched on her bedside table – 9 a.m. She’d overslept. Not that she had anywhere to be in a hurry, but mornings – it was a Wednesday, she realised – were marked with the clanging of crockery, the pouring of cereal, and the sound of the dishwasher being loaded before Bart exited the house. He was a good boy. The sort of boy her friends were rather jealous of. She was conscious of the fact, once in a while moaning about him a little to make it clear that he wasn’t perfect, although secretly she knew he was. She might tell her neighbour that he played his music too loud, or pretend to her weekly library social group that he was forgetful about tidying his room. But Bart was neither loud nor untidy. In fact, he was independent, considerate and helpful. An exception among other twenty-year-old men. (Boys, Maggie thought. Twenty was no age at all. Certainly not mature enough to comprehend all the cruelties the world had to offer.) But then Bart had grown up quickly after his father had been killed serving in Afghanistan. Not in battle. That would have been devastating, of course. The truth had garnered more pity and less admiration from the community. Her husband had choked in the mess hall one night when a fellow officer had cracked a particularly hilarious joke. The steak he’d been chewing was sucked up into his airways where it had stubbornly lodged and refused to move in spite of no end of back-smacking, then a desperate attempt at the Heimlich manoeuvre which had broken ribs but not allowed any oxygen to his lungs. How did you explain that to a fourteen-year-old