Taboo by Casey Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

his desk. ‘I’ve got the report here somewhere.’
    Reilly watched as Jones rummaged through the files on his desk, wondering how people could ever expect to operate efficiently in such a mess. She wasn’t even terribly interested in the note’s contents, more concerned about the fact that one did, in fact, exist.
    ‘OK, here it is.’ He held up the paper, and cleared his throat before reading, like a schoolboy reciting for his teacher. ‘“We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.” That’s all it said. Weird, isn’t it?’
    ‘It’s actually rather sad,’ Reilly mused. ‘It sounds like a quote of some sort.’
    Jones shrugged. ‘No idea. The wife says she doesn’t know what it is, or what he’s trying to say. Obviously, he was saying goodbye.’
    ‘Maybe.’ A sudden thought crossed her mind. ‘Hey, you couldn’t make me a copy of that, could you?’
    ‘Of the note? Why?’ Again, Jones sounded defensive. ‘Why are you so interested in all this anyway?’
    Thinking quickly, Reilly sighed dramatically, as if she too felt that this could all be a complete waste of time. ‘Well, the GFU is undergoing a radical transformation at the moment, and they want us double-checking every last thing.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You know how it is.’
    She didn’t want to tell Jones about the trace evidence, not until she’d at least examined things further. Luckily her conspiratorial manner seemed to placate him.
    ‘I get you. All right then, let’s do it now while I have it in my hand.’
    He stood up and walked over to the copier. Reilly followed.
    ‘By the way, do you know if the Redmonds had any pets?’ she queried.
    ‘Couldn’t be sure, but I doubt it,’ he said. He slipped the note into the machine and pressed the start button. ‘They’ve no kids; apparently he traveled all over the world in his line of work – he was a property developer. Those guys aren’t in the country often enough to keep pets. I’ll find out though.’ He handed her the copy of the note. ‘There you go, love,’ he added patronizingly and this time it wasn’t just the garlic that got right up Reilly’s nose. ‘Knock yourself out.’
     
    Back at the lab, Reilly leaned back in her chair, and studied the words again.
    We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.
    It was sad, strangely haunting. Suffering, lost love …
    Yet, according to his wife, Jim Redmond was happily married, so who was this lost love? And for a supposedly hard-nosed businessman, Redmond certainly seemed to have the soul of a poet.
    She read the note again – both the words, as well as the sentiment behind them; they sounded almost Shakespearean in their simplicity. Could it be a quote from Shakespeare? Not that it mattered all that much in the scheme of things, but curiosity had got the better of her.
    Reilly brought up Google on her computer and typed the entire sentence into the search box. Seconds later, a list of results appeared onscreen. Aha! she thought, satisfied. So it was a quote – although not one from Shakespeare; nope, this particular quote had been attributed to Sigmund Freud.
    Curiouser and curiouser …
    Like most trainees, she’d come across the work of the famous psychoanalyst as part of her studies at the Academy and had a brief knowledge of his works relevant to behaviourism. But this particular phrase wasn’t familiar to her.
    We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.
    Then again, she thought, perhaps the expression ‘love object’ should have been a giveaway – wasn’t Freud renowned for his insistence that man objectifies everything? Interesting though, that a property developer would have such an interest in Freud, and that he