Helen Fields - Perfect Kill

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Helen Fields 2020

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 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

Cover

Title Page PERFECT KILL Helen Fields

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 boy? That his father, who’d been a military man since before Bart was born, had been dispatched not by bomb or bullet, but by a mouthful of protein.