(1998) Denial by Peter James Read Free Book Online Page B

put down the
Evening Standard
on the metal table where he laid his instruments, then opened the
Daily Mail
, and held that up above her face. ‘You’re in the
Mail
too. Page five. It’s a nice-sized piece, a good photograph.’ He looked at it. Her brown hair was cut short, the way it was now; she was neatly dressed, smiling pleasantly, she looked a responsible person, in a school prefect way. She could never, ever, have been beautiful in the way that his mother had been, and this made him sorry for her.
    Trying to cheer her up, he said, ‘They say nice things about you, Tina. That you rose from being a secretary to a senior fiction editor, and now you’re in charge of the entire non-fiction list.’
    He put down the
Mail
, opened the
Mirror
and held that up for her to see. ‘Tina, take a look at this. Here’s a photograph of your boyfriend. The Honourable Anthony Rennison. He’s saying he can’t understand what has happened to you, he’s at his wit’s end.’
    Thomas studied the man’s face more closely, then looked down at Tina. Here were two people and they had a relationship. How had they met each other? How had they become boyfriend and girlfriend?
    ‘Tell me, Tina, why do you like this man? He’s really not very good-looking – he’s a chinless wonder. Why would someone want to go out with a man like this, but not with me?’
    Still no response.
    He turned away and put down the newspaper.
    What have I done to this woman
?
    A tear rolled down his cheek.
    What have I done
?
    Have to snap out of this
.
    ‘Tina, you kept on saying to me how sorry you were about not publishing my mother’s book. You have to understand that I’m sorry too. I’m sorry my mother had to go to her grave without her biography being published.’
    Then he turned away and paced up and down the concrete chamber, churning a question over and over in his mind.
Do I keep her or let her go
?
    Finally he pulled his coin out of his pocket, tossed it in the air and palmed it.
    Tails.
    ‘Tina, I’m letting you go.’

Chapter Thirteen
    tuesday, 15 july 1997. 4 a.m .
    The caterers are coming to day, to get everything organised for tomorrow, and I need to keep my mind clear. Lots to think about
.
    I go to see Tina and find she’s already gone. No pulse at all. It only took a small dose of curare, which paralysed her lungs. The end would have been quick for her, in her state
.
    On the whole I think she made some good progress here, she got well beyond the apex of the learning curve I set for her. I told her what Socrates said, that the greatest pain is that which is self-inflicted, and she was intelligent enough to understand this. I’m glad for her that she did
.
    I feel that with the benefit of what she’s learned, next time she wouldn’t make the same mistake. But that’s for the Higher Authority to decide
.
    God can flip his own coin
.

Chapter Fourteen
    Nobody came.
    Thomas sat in the back of the black Daimler limousine, trying to work this one out. Some part of London he did not know was sliding past outside, distorted by the refractions of a million prisms. Maybe it was raining outside, maybe he was crying, maybe both, who cares?
    He lashed out with his foot and kicked the upright seat in front of him, the one beneath the glass that partitioned off the driver. He saw the driver turn his head slightly to observe him in the mirror. So what?
    His mother was dead, nothing mattered any more.
    Except this.
    Nobody had come! Just the people from the funeral directors’ – the drivers, the pall-bearers, Mr Smyte, the dapper man who had made all the arrangements. A locum clergyman, who ignored eighty per cent of the information Thomas had briefed him with on his mother. And some brain-dead kid reporter from a local rag, carrying a cheap camera, who had had the gall to ask him who Gloria Lamark was.
    Jesus!
    Maybe they had misunderstood the directions and were waiting at home now. There had been an obituary in
The Times
– OK, he’d