(1989) Dreamer by Peter James Read Free Book Online Page A

giving dinner parties.
    Normally.
    Her favourite way of entertaining. Cocktail parties were a hassle: small talk, good for prospecting business, that was all. Supper parties were as bad. You ended up perched on the end of an armchair, attempting to eat from a paper plate, with a dip on the side that didn’t fit your wine glass, a paper plate that was always too small and bent when you tried to cut your ham and dumped your food on the floor if you were lucky and in your lap if you weren’t.
    Dinner parties were the civilised way. A few friends. Good food. Good conversation.
    Normally.
    Not tonight.
    Tonight nothing fitted. Neither the food, nor the guests, nor her dress which was driving her nuts. The bouillabaisse starter had mostly disintegrated. Harriet O’Connell announced she had become allergic to fish, blaming pollution, and Guy Rowntree said he didn’t eat garlic, so they’d split the one avocado she’d found in the fruit bowl.
    The venison looked as if it had been cremated. The juniper berries in the casserole had fused into a thick, bitter sludge and the sauce had separated, drifting around on top like an oil slick.
    And how the hell was she to know that juniper berries murdered claret?
    It was Archie, on her right, who told her, informed her, lectured her. Archie Cruickshank – You’ll like Archie – he’s a good boy . . . a big player – a real wine man, know what I mean? – Archie with his wide blotchy face and his veins popping out, his fat belly and his pudgy fingers and his nose inside his wine glass like a pig sniffing for truffles. Archie had bored her and Bamford O’Connell, sitting on her left, rigid with vintages. ‘’78’s much better than the ’83.’
    ‘Oh really?’
    ‘Oh yes, absolutely. Shouldn’t be drinking these ’83s for at least another five years.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘The ’82s are very underrated. Depends on the grower, of course.’
    ‘Of course.’
    He held his goblet up to the light and peered at it, keeping it at a distance as though it contained raw sewage. ‘Pity about the claret. Assertive little wine, the ’62. Should have been drunk a year or two ago, of course – but ruined by the juniper berries anyway. Give it such a metallic taste. Surprised Richard didn’t warn you about that.’
    ‘Yes, well, he’s full of secrets.’
    ‘Thought he was a bit of a connoisseur?’
    She felt a breeze blow again, and sensed the huge medieval iron chandelier above them move a fraction. She looked up. It had light bulbs now, turned down low, in place of the thick candles it had once held. Then shelooked along the table at the guests: at Andreas, down towards the far end, near Richard. Andreas Berensen, the Swiss banker who sat, hardly talking, watching, smiling silently to himself as if he was above all this. Tall, stiff, athletic-looking, in his late forties or early fifties, a cold, rather correct face with a high forehead, his fair hair neatly groomed each side of his head but thinned to a light fuzz on top. And a black leather glove on his right hand which he had not taken off. He picked up his wine glass and drank, caught Sam’s eye, gave a smile that was almost a smirk and put his glass back down.
    She felt the cold shiver again. The same cold shiver when he had come in the door and shaken her hand, shaken it with the black leather glove. Like the glove in the dream. Daft. Don’t be daft.
    Christ.
    So much was churning through her mind. Guilt. Anger. I could have saved them she’d said to Ken, and he’d looked back at her gently and told her hundreds of people had dreams about air disasters and there was nothing she could have done; told her that if she’d rung the airline they’d have treated her the way they treated hundreds of cranks that called them every week.
    But the anger raged on inside her. Anger and bewilderment.
    Why? How? Did I really dream it?
    The back of her dress was making her angry too; she couldn’t get it comfortable, couldn’t get it to sit