How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce Read Free Book Online Page B

had been removed from around the goat's head but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to incriminate myself. Fellowes was watching me closely.

    "You're a lad about campus," he said. "You get around. You see what comes and goes. Any ideas?"

    "What, about who might have done it?"

    He folded his arms, nodded. I looked down at the pentacle on the floor and shook my head slowly.

    "None at all? You see, when the same question was put to other students they all had one or two ideas. Your name cropped up more than once."

    "Well, we all have our enemies," I said.

    "We do, Mister Heaney, we do."

    "All right, it's a long shot, and I've got no real evidence to back it up," I said, "but if it's just ideas you're after, I can think of a couple of names."

    "Let's close this place up again," said Fellowes. "You can tell me downstairs."

     

Chapter 6
    I skimmed the book-launch invitation card across my desk and got on with my work. I had a number of papers to read from various committees and I had a report to prepare. The demon of acronyms was busy that morning: the DEFS were encouraging all INGYOS to prepare a response to the YOPA statement on EEC grants for voluntary CRY groups.

    It wasn't easy to switch off. I was seriously worried about Stinx, and whether he was going to come through on the book. It was true that he'd never let us down on a project, though it always came in his own time. And time was what Antonia and her colleagues didn't have. If they defaulted, the bailiffs would be sent in with indecent haste and the GoPoint project would be all over.

    I left off my report writing and went online to have a look at what was in my own private bank account. Not much at all, but I did at least have the money I'd saved from Robbie's Glastonhall fees. I wondered what the betting odds would be for a) Stinx coming through with the forgeries; b) my making a good sale; and c) this all happening before the GoPoint premises got turned into designer shag-pads for young stockbrokers.

    I made an online enquiry about a loan.

    All these concerns, not to mention the arrival of a book-launch invitation triggering memories of gravely misspent youth, made it difficult for me to concentrate on my work. Then, just as I was patently not about to commence the writing of my report, an email popped into my inbox. It was from an address I didn't recognize, with the header "Good To Meet You." I almost deleted it. It was the kind of header you expect from a Nigerian phisher who—quite reasonably—wants to share several million dollars with you in return for the use of your bank account for two minutes.

    But I opened it, and found it to be from Yasmin. It took me a blink or two to remember who she was—so indelibly inscribed as Anna was she in my own head. She'd enjoyed meeting me that lunchtime in the Museum Tavern. She would have liked to have chatted for longer. She was sorry not to be able to spend a few more minutes together as she made her way back to work that afternoon. If I wanted to meet up one lunchtime on another occasion, she thought that might be fun.

    My cheeks flamed.

    Perhaps it was the thought of fun that made my face burn. What was all this gibberish about fun? Fun wasn't really something I went in for. Fun and I had parted company on the high road of life at about the time my hair started to thin and my knee joints lost all compression, quick handshake, no fuss, farewell.

    Fun.

    I'm not sure if I breathed the world out loud. I'm sure I did no such thing, and neither did I make any movement, but from across the room of that high-ceilinged old office with its moulded plaster tongue-and-dart cornices, Val looked up at me from her own work. How can that be?

    "All right?" she asked, smiling pleasantly.

    "Fine, Val, fine."

    She put her nose back in her work. I pretended to re-engage with mine. Something was seriously wrong with that email. I read it again. It made no sense at all. Why would a hip, appealing and exciting young