Eightball Boogie by Declan Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

told Conway I’d be calling on his beautiful wife.
    His beautiful daughter opened the door. She was wearing a white-and-blue striped sweater and the baffling expression all seventeen-year-old girls wear, the one that suggests they’re simultaneously highly strung and bored to constipation. Her blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had her mother’s nose, down which she looked at me, and her father’s manners.
    “ Yes?”
    “ Mrs Conway?”
    She had her father’s laugh, too.
    “ Mrs Conway is my mother. What do you want?”
    “ I’ve an appointment to see Mr Conway.”
    “ And who might you be?”
    “ I might be Calvin Klein but then I might just be wearing his Y-fronts. Get your mother.”
    She chewed the inside of her lip, taken aback. I had to admit, she didn’t look the kind of girl who had to ask a question twice, if she ever had to ask a question at all. Seventeen-year-old blondes with wide blue eyes and hips unworthy of the name have all the answers already, cursed with intuition. She called back down the hallway, over her shoulder.
    “ Mother, there’s a gentleman at the door.”
    Her timing was off but the punch line was good. Then Helen Conway pulled the door open wide and her daughter ceased to exist. Devoid of makeup, the soft lines either side of her eyes put me in mind of quotation marks. The simple black dress would have been appropriate at a millionaire’s wake. The thin string of pearls designed to enhance the gentle curves of her throat should have retired gracefully and long ago. Her hair was jet black, and if it was a dye-job her stylist was wasted, he should have been in Rome retouching the Sistine Chapel.
    “ Yes?”
    Polite, frosty.
    “ How do you do?” I slipped her an ingratiating smile. “I have an appointment to see Mr Conway?”
    “ Mr Conway isn’t at home right now. Can I help you?”
    “ I do hope you can. My name is Bob Delaney.” I flourished a card that read Robert L. Delaney, Sales Representative, First Option Life Assurance.
    “ There must be some kind of mistake.”
    She handed the card back. I waved it away, still smiling.
    “ Not at all. I spoke with Mr Conway yesterday, on the phone. He was very interested in discussing the possibility of realigning your current life assurance commitments owing to the significant cost reduction strategy we employ at First Option.”
    “ Is that a fact?” She sounded faintly bemused. The delightful Miss Conway snorted, turned on her heel, pounded up the stairs. I heard the muffled sound of a slammed door.
    “ Indeed it is.”
    I was getting a pain my face from all the smiling, and if you’re not inside the door within sixty seconds of hitting the step, chances are you’re not going to make it at all.
    “ Well, as I say, Mr Conway isn’t at home at the –”
    “ I don’t mind waiting.” I dropped her the shoulder, swerved into the hallway, smiled again. “I make it a habit to be early for my appointments.”
    “ Well, if you’re sure…”
    She recovered quickly, ushered me down the hallway. I wanted to call a cab halfway along but we got there in the end. The kitchen was all shining chrome, polished pine and terracotta tiles, and the Rovers could have kicked around a five-a-side without unduly disturbing the chef, who had probably got lost on his way back from the mezzanine level.
    “ Nice,” I said, nodding approval. “Airy.”
    “ Can I get you something to drink, Mr –?”
    “ Delaney. But call me Bob, please. And I’d love a cup of coffee, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
    “ No trouble at all, Mr Delaney. Cappuccino? Espresso?”
    “ Just black, please.”
    The kitchen was bright. Patio doors reached from ceiling to floor, revealing no swimming pool in the back yard, which surprised me, but the sea was only a back-flip dismount away, grey and sullen and a wave-break from anger. Beyond, the Donegal mountains were snow-capped, the kind of view you can’t buy for love or money, although the