Cloud Castles by Michael Scott Rohan Read Free Book Online Page A

she moved out of view. Slowly, carefully, I hauled myself up behind the folded curtains, and very slowly peered around.
    The first thing I saw was a pair of knickers beside the discarded shell-suit. Oh, God. There she was, still with her back to me – a really nice back, right enough – pouring a long drink from the single bottle on the minibar, gulping at it, topping it up, brushing her hand across her eyes impatiently, and gulping again with the glass clutched in both hands. She turned, I shrank back into the shadow of the curtains and saw her limpover to the chair by the telephone. She bent over it – she really did have a nice back – touched it tentatively, as if it frightened her, then swore violently, sat down and began to tap a number.
    ‘Hallo? Centre d’Ordinateur, please – Computer Room? Georges, yes – well, Georges? You did get those files through … you did, good … good!’ A great spring of tension seemed to give out in her; she sagged and gulped at the drink. ‘Well? Was there enough?’ A long silence. ‘What d’you mean? Georges, you don’t know what I went through to get those files out. If you’ve screwed them up somehow—’
    An even longer silence; and then an anguished cry. ‘I don’t believe it! Georges, there has to be
something!
I mean, we agreed, didn’t we? We did, we did, you said it yourself! Mr fucking Clean, in the middle of that ratpack! With all those little disappearances he can’t quite explain! You checked his address files, right?’ Silence. ‘You’re sure they’re all just bimbos? How about the Chinese bitch – all right, all
right!
So he’s a cold-blooded bastard, he treats them like muck, what’d you expect? All right.’ She brooded a moment, evidently simmering. She wasn’t the only one.
    ‘All right,’ she said again, in a voice that meant the exact opposite. ‘But you should have seen him, the bastard! Today, these riots, Pretty Boy just driving through them with von Amerningen, looking around cool as cucumbers the pair of them! It’s like Weimar in the nineteen thirties, they’re testing the system for something really big – maximum disruption. They could even be planning to use this new shipping network of his, maybe, getting everyone to rely on it, then screwing up, shafting the economy at just the right time! How about moving supplies, armaments, even – with no checks till they get to destination? And fast – we’re talking
blitzkrieg
here! Listen, Georges, this is too big for just one little departmental team, it’s got to go to the Commissioner – I mean, not just what he has already, the whole thing on this man Fisher! Take him out, and maybe the Baron, and we can kick the rest apart.’ Silence. ‘Well, no, as it happens I did get some new evidence – chummy’s been trained, one hundred per. How would
I
know? With the IRA in Libya, could be. Wherever it was, he’s good – too good. Yes. Well, I held him off, he had to let me go, you know thereisn’t a man in the department who – oh, come
on
, Georges, you’re as bad as the rest of them! That’s enough! It’s
got
to be him! Now we just go in and rip him apart and throw him to rot … Georges! Whose side are you on, anyhow? Don’t give me that! So this one didn’t pay off, so what? Yes. Yes, I got burned. How do I know if he got the number? He may have, I don’t think so. Forget that, he probably knew it already – he’s the mastermind, isn’t he? Oh, come on! If you go telling tales to Bernheimer I am going to get whipped right off this case, you know that? I mean maybe …
No, Georges!
No!’
    Her hand faltered, and the handset sank; she almost dropped it, then I thought she was going to throw it down. She looked at it, and her face twisted. ‘Fuck you, then,’ she said, and put it down softly. She stood up, and I saw, almost more clearly than her nakedness, the reddened and blackening blotches of her bruises. She looked as if she’d been through a mincer. But I