Ripped by Frederic Lindsay Read Free Book Online Page B

looked at him thoughtfully. 'Malcolm felt I should.'
    Malcolm would. 'A pretty wife like you – he'd want to show you off,' he said, feeling better. Probing if she could be hurt, he went on, 'I was glad Malcolm stayed on. No sense in the night being spoiled for both of you. When he'd said to me you weren't coming, I told him, ‘ Don't worry – you won't lack for company at my house’.'
    'Do you make sure people have . .. company?'
    'I'm a good host. I like to be sure everybody enjoys himself.' Faintly, he caught her perfume; she was close to him with her long neck and little breasts . He had a partiality for the kind of women he described to himself as lady-like, and a particular way of dealing with them in bed. 'God, I'd forgotten what it was like,' that corrupt bastard of a policeman Eddy Stewart had said to him the other day, 'to get a young one under you. It's a different thing altogether.' It had been good to hear that from a man half his age; he had never had to do without young flesh.
    'I didn't know you'd left on Saturday,' he said. 'I was looking for you and they told me you'd gone. I'd have seen you home.'
    'Why would you do that?'
    'The good host ... '
     
    What had he expected on Saturday night? Malcolm Wilson was a familiar type; at first sight, the wife had been too. With that mass of black hair, better looking maybe than he'd expected – would have expected if he'd given it more than a casual thought – but not beautiful, not even really his type. He'd seen better; had better; no lack of them. She had argued with him, saying it was wrong for any man to be too rich. Even that, though, he had encountered before; some women took that line to catch your interest; it was, after all, only another kind of flattery. He had told John Merchant, 'this lady here's been talking politics at me . Trying to convert me.' Merchant, smooth as ever (and slippery , a shadow of worry), had said, 'That is a process of two steps, first you become as a little child and then Mrs Wilson has to find a way for you to pass through the eye of a needle.' And he had said ‘yes, I'm a kid at heart. And Irene and me are going to be such friends, I think she might provide the eye of a needle for me yet.' Not subtle, but with the wives of ambitious young men you didn't have to be. Only, she had gone early, disappeared, and he hadn't been able to get her out of his head since. She had a trick of looking at a man that excluded everyone else in the world.
     
    'Oh, I'd have seen you home . Since your husband was busy. What was it you said a minute ago? ‘Rich one day, poor the next?’, your husband wants to get on in the world. He's ambitious. Wouldn't you like to see your husband making a bit of money?'
    'Malcolm.'
    'You don't have to remind me – I know his name.' He thought, She imagines I'm an old man who forgets names. 'Believe me, when I do business with a man, there isn't much I don't know about him. That's twenty-four hours a day I mean. Like you not wanting him to come today and see what we were doing at the Underpass.'
    'Was that where he was today?'
    She seemed so genuinely puzzled that, believing her, he felt offended. 'I'm surprised he didn't tell you. It's his future we're talking about here.'
    But when she laughed again, even before she spoke, he understood that it was some kind of game she was playing with him. His anger, unexpectedly even his sense of foolishness, sharpened his lust.
    'Of course, he told me,' she said. 'He was terribly pleased with himself. You know what he's like.'
    'His brother phoned to say he wouldn't come. Malcolm tells me he didn't know anything about it. I wondered if he'd told his brother to do that, and then lost his nerve. Why would his brother phone off his own bat?'
    'You can ask him yourself. He's coming here this afternoon.'
    'Why?'
    She shrugged. 'To see Malcolm, I was surprised. They don't go out of their way to see one another. They don't get on well. Maybe he wants to talk to Malcolm about