A Time of Torment by John Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

difficulty of adjusting to the outside world: it was either too loud or too quiet, too cognizant of his presence or too unaware, too random or too regimented. There were aspects of it that he no longer understood, and others that appeared to have vanished entirely while he was incarcerated. He had eaten dinner in a bar earlier that evening, but at first he had been unable to pick up the silverware. It was the first time in five years that he had been presented with utensils that were not plastic, and he was afraid to use them. He wondered if the reason why so many former inmates reoffended was simply because they wanted to be back in a world they understood.
    He dialed the number and waited. It went straight to voice mail.
    For a moment, he struggled to find his voice. He thought about hanging up and remaining silent, but he believed that he did not have long left. If he was right, they would come for him soon, because all that was left to take was his life.
    But they had not broken him completely. Despite everything, he had endured, and now he would tell his story.
    ‘Mr Parker,’ he said. ‘My name is Jerome Burnel …’

10
    S o how did it come to pass? How did Jerome Burnel, the Disgraced Hero, lose everything? It began when Jerome Burnel was no kind of hero at all, when this tale was not even his.
    Almost six years earlier, this was the stumble that led to the fall.
    Corrie had been sizing up the guy for the last hour. She was good at what she did, or thought she was: after all, she’d had enough practice by now.
    He was neatly dressed: shirt, jacket, and trousers, not jeans. His shoes were clean and well shined. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which was a problem. She’d found that the ones who wore a ring were more likely to be amenable to the kind of pressure under which they would ultimately be placed, simply because they had more to lose. He was on his third drink, though, which was a plus, and she’d seen the way he looked at some of the girls who were passing. He was in the market, even if he didn’t know it yet.
    She didn’t care much for the bar itself. To begin with, the music was terrible – the kind of faux-country seemingly beloved of city boys slumming it in Portland – and even though the bar was new, it already smelled of stale, spilled beer that hadn’t been properly cleaned up, and of half-eaten peanuts crushed into the floor. On the other hand, because it was a recent arrival to the strip of noisy bars down at the Old Port, and the bouncers weren’t familiar to her, or she to them, it represented virgin territory. She and the others had almost worn out their welcome in Portland. To stay much longer would be to risk inviting attention.
    She drifted over, swaying in time to the music because it made her appear drunker than she was. She was drinking bourbon, but heavy on the ice and soda. Good bartenders tended to assume that girls who drank like her were trying to be careful, and responded accordingly, but the dunce in this place had already offered her one on the house, which she’d declined. He’d pretended to act all hurt in response, but then the pretense had become reality, and when she’d tried to order a second drink he’d ignored her. She didn’t make a fuss. She didn’t want to give him more cause than necessary to remember her.
    Corrie slipped onto the stool to the right of the mark.
    ‘Hi,’ she said.
    He turned to look at her. His eyes were slightly different colors: one bright blue, the other closer to green. It could have made him appear odd, but instead she found it hugely attractive, helped by the fact that he was slim but not too thin, and dark-haired without any gray that she could see. Up close, she could tell that he was older than she’d first assumed: early thirties.
    ‘I saw you looking at me,’ he replied.
    ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
    ‘Hard not to, when a pretty girl is giving you the eye.’
    ‘You didn’t let on.’
    ‘I figured