Spin by Nina Allan Read Free Book Online

double-headed
hydra of Atoll City on the other. Seneca had been one of the top
law-givers of his time; his wife Idris had been the daughter of one
of his consuls. The gold amulettos had been minted to commemorate their marriage; four years
later Idris was tried and executed for espionage. But that was all
ancient history. Layla hoped touching the coins might help her gain
insight into Nashe Crawe and her motives, but the bag and its
contents seemed as bare of her mysterious benefactor as if she had
never handled them.
    They were not bare of
everything, though. As she slid the piece of gold from hand to hand
she had the uncanny sensation that someone was watching her. She
concentrated hard, and after some minutes she understood the coins
had been the property of the marksman Demitris Xenakis.
    The house was more or less as she had imagined: a facade of rust-coloured stone behind an invisible
security barrier that emitted a warning hum as you approached it.
She spoke her name into the intercom and after a second or so the
air seemed to shimmer in front of her, indicating that the barrier
had been disengaged. She had expected Nashe Crawe to be there to
meet her, but there was no sign of her or of anyone, although Layla
knew from the spydrone that buzzed almost inaudibly overhead that
someone was watching everything she did.
    The front door
of the house was unlocked. Layla stood in the hall, uncertain of
where she should go or what she should do. At first she could see
nothing at all. She suspected the darkness had been artificially
intensified as a security measure, but as her eyes gradually
adjusted she realised it was simply the effect of the contrast
between the gloomy interior decor and the bright sunlight outside.
The floor was of polished red granite, the walls had been done out
in old-fashioned teak panelling. The effect was opulent but
depressing. She pushed open one door and then another, revealing
the interior of a cupboard stuffed with coats and a side room that
apart from an upright clavichord appeared to be empty. At the end
of the hallway a broad staircase led upwards through a black glass
ceiling that Layla realised was probably a two-way mirror. The
thought of ascending the staircase filled her with an anxiety she
could only put down to the intense and unexpected silence of the
place.
    “ Mrs Crawe?” she said, hoping the sound of her own voice might
make her less jumpy. “Nashe?” She tiptoed to the end of the hall
then passed through a doorway into a long corridor with half a
dozen more doors opening off it. She thought it might be entirely
possible to get lost in the house. An image came to her of herself
coming out of the house a full ten years older than when she went
in. The thought was horrifying but also funny. She giggled
nervously to herself. The door closest to her seemed to be locked.
She tried each of the others in turn until she found one that
opened.
    She came upon
Alcander Xenakis in a sun-filled room overlooking the garden. From
the way Nashe Crawe had spoken about him, Layla had expected him to
be younger, an eight-year-old child perhaps. In fact he was a
fully-grown man, a year or so younger than herself perhaps but no
more than that. He had the same skinny build as his mother though
he was taller by a good six inches.
    He was lying
on a linen-covered daybed, naked except for a pair of white cotton
boxer shorts. He would have been good-looking, had it not been for
the scaly putrescent rash that covered his body. The rash had been
treated with some kind of restorative unguent, an oily preparation
that made the scabs and blotches gleam as if oozing with slime. The
room was filled with the awful sour-sweet stench of rotting meat,
though whether it came from the youth’s diseased skin or from the
ointment it was hard to tell. Layla noticed all the windows of the
room were closed; the sky pressed itself against the cedarwood
frames, hard and glistening as cellophane.
    The youth sat
bolt upright.