Murder on the Dancefloor (The Bad Girls Detective Agency) by Katie Marsh

Author:Katie Marsh [Marsh, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2024-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

20

CLIO

Clio had one leg out of the window when Jeanie flung herself onto the door handle and started screaming ‘No!’ There Clio was, marooned on the windowsill, and now Jeanie was yelling her head off and about to blow their cover.

Then Clio looked down and saw that the door handle was moving.

‘Shit!’ She had no choice but to increase the speed of her escape. Beneath her she could hear Jeanie saying her name, but she ignored it, focusing on getting her second leg out, so that she was dangling precariously above the ground, balanced on the windowsill.

This window was high. Why was it this high? It was only the ground floor. She tried to push herself off, but lost her nerve.

‘SHIT.’

She couldn’t do it. Should she go back?

Not an option, even if she could reverse through the window. Light rain fell on her thighs, but she couldn’t let it deter her. Jeanie was still battling the door, and if whoever was outside got in, then they might both be maimed, or even dead by morning, their bodies dumped near the landfill site. Gulls would peck their eyes out before anyone found them, and people would assume they were drug addicts before their funerals had even taken place.

Clio took a deep breath and let go of the sill. She fell, limbs flailing, until she thwacked to the ground, all the breath leaving her body as she landed in an undignified star shape in a lavender bush. She lay for a moment, checking for the extreme pain of a broken leg or arm, but felt nothing. Her ankle hurt, but she was OK. She had done it. She got to her feet, and ran towards the brick wall, blending into its graffiti as well as she could in her bright pink scarf.

She looked left. She looked right. She heard the Mission Impossible theme tune in her head, as she always did when she was in danger. Tom Cruise would eat her dust right now, she thought, as she ran around to the back door of the bingo hall, where she had once spent far too much time snogging her teenage boyfriend Bez and drinking cider, rather than watching any of the many movies they pretended to their parents they were going to see. This was her in, she was sure of it. If she could just get inside without being seen, then she could run through and rescue Jeanie.

It looked like nothing had changed. In front of the back door were the same sad stunted trees, the grass beneath them covered in cigarette butts and plastic bottles and an abandoned condom or two, just for added class. Clio saw a large branch at the bottom of a tree and picked it up, with vague plans of using it as a battering ram to force the door open. She needed a good run-up – that always seemed to make a difference in movies. She headed back to the pavement, branch in hand, got her head down and aimed for the door.

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