Start reading Bad Neighbours by Joanna Jenkins
Check out an extract of the latest page-turning thriller from Joanna Jenkins, Bad Neighbours.
1
RUTH
Now
Ruth Dawson was ripped out of a deep sleep by a siren.
It was close. Getting closer.
She opened an eye. The late July sky had the faint blue sheen of pre-dawn.
The siren stopped, right below, on the street outside The Lumen.
Ruth abandoned the doona to stand by the window, shivering. An ambulance, blue and red lights flashing, double-parked. Two ambos were already emerging.
Was that Sybil on the footpath greeting them? The beanie covered her wild curly black hair, but even in a long fleece-lined coat her lanky frame was unmistakable.
Sybil led the ambos through The Lumen’s garden gate.
Jesus.
Ruth thrust her feet into her ugg boots and her arms into the puffer jacket thrown on the bedroom chair.
The most direct route to the garden was the fire stairs.
The door from the laundry thwacked behind her and she was enveloped in thick musty black. Lucky she’d remembered her phone and thus had a torch.
There was already a huddle of residents in the dank space at the bottom of the lightwell, all watching the ambos, who were under the corrugated-iron lean-to that passed for the garden shed.
The ambos were looking, not doing, which indicated that the time for their help had passed. Sybil was with them, in discussion.
Mavis, small and sturdy and grey, barked. Lucas picked her up. ‘We know, Mavis,’ he whispered into the dog’s pert triangular ear. ‘You don’t need to bark.’
In this south-western corner of the garden, the chocolate-brown brick of The Lumen stretched six floors above. No ray of sun ever ventured down here. No warmth.
‘Is it Ben?’ Ruth asked Laurence. He shrugged. ‘I assume so.’
The only person the ambos could be huddled around was Ben, the young man who had made the lean-to at the bottom of the lightwell his home.
More sirens, and a posse of four police officers inspected the pile of khaki canvas that was Ben’s swag. They had a brief conversation with the ambos, then set up crime-scene tape.
Stella arrived in a vast blue dressing-gown. With the authority and chutzpah vested in her as president of the owners’ corporation, she crossed the police line to cross-examine a young constable.
She returned with confirmation. ‘Ben.’
‘Very sad,’ said Ruth. And a bit of an indictment, she thought but did not say. On us. On his situation.
Stella was not given to reflection or regret. ‘Not a surprise though,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens if you spend your life trying to support your alcoholism with money you get from the government.’
She couldn’t even be gracious when the poor fellow died. Police vehicles disgorged forensics in their white plastic suits.
A photographer arrived and, finally, a vehicle from the morgue to take away the corpse.
‘What happened?’ Ruth asked Sybil.
‘I don’t know. I found him like that. In his swag.’ Her eyes were huge with distress. ‘He didn’t seem sick or anything. How could he just die?’
It was a good question. Ben, so vulnerable, had been viewed with disdain by those who lived in the beautiful building above him. They’d thought him an eyesore and an irritant.
But disdain wasn’t fatal. And Ben was only in his thirties—he didn’t die of old age. What caused his death? And, for that matter, who? Surely it wasn’t someone in the building, one of the people huddling in the cold morning air, shaking their heads in apparent dismay?
Ruth squared her shoulders. That’s why the police were there: to investigate and make accusations. They would find out how he died, and why. It wasn’t her job to point the finger at others.
And it was easy to be sanctimonious about it. Ruth had only lived in the building for a month and her behaviour to Ben had been neglectful too. She had actively avoided both Ben and any responsibility to make his life better.
It was time to go. The police officers were inspecting the entry to the fire stairs. Ruth would have to walk round the building, out the garden gate, into the foyer and take the lift.
Over by the fence, Zara, in a purple felt skirt and the multicoloured hat that looked like a tea cosy, was wiping her eyes.
At least her sorrow seemed genuine.
‘Somebody should have done something,’ said Humphrey, his breath turning white as it touched the frosty air.
Bad Neighbours by Joanna Jenkins releases August 4.
Bad Neighbours
by Joanna Jenkins
From the bestselling author of How to Kill a Client and The Bluff comes a page-turning thriller of fraud and lies, murder and greed.
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