No Cure For Love by Peter Robinson Read Free Book Online

Someone like me, for instance.’
    Arvo scanned the sea of faces for his questioner and noticed that she was a good-looking redhead in a green silk blouse. She had a southern accent. Arvo straightened his tie, the one with the Salvador Dali melting watch design.
    Tall and tanned, with the physique of a long-distance runner rather than a sprinter, and smartly dressed in a lightweight wool suit, Arvo was generally thought attractive by women.
    He was thirty-five years old, had thick brown hair, perhaps a shade too long over the collar, and a boyish smile enhanced rather than hindered by slightly crooked teeth. He also had good bone structure, including high cheekbones and a strong jaw, which he had inherited, along with his unusual first name, from his Estonian mother.
    His brown, expressive eyes always gave the impression of being interested in whatever people were saying to him, but if you looked closely you could see a diamond glint of toughness at their centre. They were eyes that had seen violent death and faced danger; they were cop’s eyes.
    Arvo didn’t know what he had acquired from his Welsh father, except perhaps his crooked teeth and his public-speaking abilities. The Welsh, his father had told him, had a tradition of great oratory.
    That was no doubt why the lieutenant had chosen him to speak on ‘Assessing Erotomaniacs and Love Obsessionals’ to a National Law Enforcement Convention in the Pasadena Hilton that morning.
    The LAPD Threat Management Unit was the only such department in the country. As the unit could only operate within the Los Angeles city limits, its members always seemed to be advising out-of-town police departments, acting as consultants to the FBI, the Secret Service or the CIA, and giving talks like this. Arvo had even appeared on a PBS TV special, where he had been so nervous all he remembered now was how hot the studio lights had been.
    ‘It’s a subtle difference,’ Arvo answered carefully. ‘In most cases, both erotomaniacs and love obsessionals target unattainable objects, almost always people they have never met. Senators, congressmen, movie stars and suchlike. Erotomaniacs generally believe that the person they have chosen is in love with them. For the love obsessionals, though, that doesn’t matter. They’re in love with whoever they’ve chosen and they believe that that person will probably come to love them in time, if they do the right things. The danger to ordinary individuals is far more likely to come from what we call “simple obsessionals”: that is, someone they know, someone they have been intimately involved with and spurned. A past lover, for example.’
    The redhead thanked him. He could tell by the way her eyes smiled along with her mouth when she looked at him that if he stayed around after the talk she would approach him with another question, that he would ask her out to dinner and she would only hesitate as much as good taste demanded before saying yes, and that at the end of the evening they might end up in bed together, probably in her hotel room.
    Knew it, but didn’t want it. If he wanted to go to bed with anyone, it was with Maria. But that situation was fraught with complications: they worked for the same department; they were friends; they were both on the rebound. Plenty of reasons not to.
    Instead of hanging around, he ducked out fast onto Los Robles. It was clear and seventy-five degrees in Pasadena, and the San Gabriel Mountains rimmed the northern horizon like a jagged dark-green chalkboard streaked with white doodles. He put on his shades. The traffic on the Pasadena Freeway was as light as it ever got at eleven o’clock in the morning.
    Arvo tuned in to FM 93.1, an oldies station, and listened to The Association, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Strawberry Alarm Clock. Downtown, he exited the freeway at Hill, drove through the colourful Chinatown strip, then turned east on Temple. A group of press people with microphones and cameras stood