Sleeping Dogs by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online

man’s luck a chance to kick in.
    He was beginning to wonder if Mackie and the little ferret had simply done their work behind the shops and run off. It wouldn’t do for B. Baldwin to be found standing here not fifty yards away with a razor-sharp sailor’s knife in his pocket, not with his previous life history. The police would see him as a gift from heaven, and he suspected they wouldn’t be above giving his knife a little dip in the gore to make sure the gift wasn’t taken away.
    He sauntered by the first passageway, then sidestepped into it without missing a step. He moved quietly down the space between the buildings toward the light, feeling a little disappointed in young Mack Talarese. Taking off and leaving a man on the scene was something that just wasn’t done. It was probably his own fault for involving himself with foreigners who didn’t know any better, but it was going to be the last time, he swore. Unless it was Packies, who were for all practical purposes Englishmen with black faces.
    B. Baldwin would just take a quick peek to be sure the bodies were there, then go back to work. When he reached the end of the passage he heard a sound. He knitted his brows and held his place, listening. It wasn’t loud enough for a struggle, just a single footfall somewhere in the courtyard behind the shops. Baldwin took his knife out of his pocket and opened it. Could they have walked right past the victim and his woman? Could they still be hiding in the shadows between the next two shops? Well, if, when he stepped into the light, Mackie and the little rat terrier were busy going through the dead woman’s purse and taking the diamond studs out of her ears, he would lose nothing by having the great gleaming knife in his hand. It would make them feel he had been one of them, in on it from the beginning and still ready at the end.
    Baldwin crouched low and leaped out of the passageway, his eyes taking in the scene at once. There was the man, kneeling over Mack Talarese’s bloody corpse where it lay on the ground. His hand was in the coat pocket. The man looked up at Baldwin and his face brought Baldwin very bad news; it showed no fear or anger, and, worst of all, no surprise. The eyes weren’t looking at him to size him up as an opponent in a knife fight. They were aiming. The man’s hand was on its way up from Mackie Talarese’s chest, and there was Mack’s little black pistol in it. B. Baldwin noted this with displeasure, but his mind troubled him no longer, because by then the bullet was already bursting through the back of his skull, bringing with it bone fragments, blood and even a tiny bit of the brain tissue that might have cared.
    The shot was too much for Margaret. She sprang out into the sunlight in time to see Michael pressing the gun into the hand of the dead man on the ground. The sound had been loud in the passageway, and it still rang in her ears. It seemed to propel her forward, as though it were still sounding behind her.
    Michael stood up and took her arm, not slowing her momentum at all, just guiding her in the direction she wanted to go. She was barely aware of him now. She was only thinking about putting space between herself and what lay back there. She wanted to run and he let her, the cloudy sense of the design of the city she carried in her memory taking her across the courtyard to the next passage between two houses, and along a quiet lane away from the ocean and toward the Royal Pavilion. Then he stopped her. “Do you know where the train station is?” She nodded. “Go there.”

 
    I n Alexandria, Virginia, Elizabeth Waring Hart stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes. She waited for the whisper to come out of the darkness again. She lifted her head a little from her pillow so that she could hear with both ears, and stared into the shadows near the door for a shape that she hoped wouldn’t remind her of a man. Her muscles were rigid, held in tension more to keep her from moving than