Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

entertaining anybody for drinks, but she could hardly tell David to take his bottle of Prosecco and his orange roses and go back home.
    David popped the cork and filled their glasses and then they went through to the living room and sat down.
    ‘You’ll have to excuse the decor,’ said Katie. ‘I haven’t quite finished redecorating yet. It’s almost impossible to find the time.’
    David looked around at the plain, cream-painted walls and the three bold abstract prints that hung on the opposite side of the room. Katie had replaced almost all of the rococo-style furniture with a mint-green leather couch and two matching leather armchairs with chrome-plated legs. Now the only reminder of Paul was his silver-framed photograph on one of the glass-topped side tables, wearing the same unfocused smile that he always wore, as if his face was present but his mind was somewhere else. In Killarney, probably, in bed with somebody else’s wife. It had occurred to Katie last week that she could no longer remember what his voice had sounded like.
    ‘So, what heinous crime are you trying to solve at the moment?’ asked David. He looked very relaxed, in a black roll-neck sweater and grey wool trousers, sitting in one of the armchairs with his legs crossed. But Katie was looking at the heavy gold signet ring on the third finger of his right hand and wondering if it had left an impression when he hit Sorcha last night – always supposing that he had hit her, of course.
    ‘I can’t possibly tell you that, I’m afraid,’ said Katie. ‘You’ll have to wait until you see it on the news.’
    ‘Oh, you can give me a hint, can’t you? Is it a murder? Or is it a robbery? Fraud, is it? Or drug-dealing, or sex-trafficking?’
    Katie smiled and shook her head. ‘I have all of those to deal with, believe me, and more’
    ‘More? What else is there?’
    ‘You’d be amazed what people get up to.’
    ‘Come on, don’t keep me in suspense. I’m fascinated to know what you do all day. You can change the names to protect the innocent, if you like. That’s what they used to say on TV, isn’t it, at the beginning of those true-crime programmes?’
    ‘ Slainte ,’ said Katie, raising her glass. David raised his glass too, and looked her steadily in the eyes, saying nothing.
    ‘Is that one of your treatments?’ Katie asked him.
    ‘What? Sorry?’
    ‘Hypnosis. Is that one of the ways you cure your animals?
    ‘Oh, was I staring? I apologize. I was just thinking to myself that you don’t look very much like a detective superintendent. In fact, to be fair to you I wouldn’t have had you down for a Garda officer at all.’
    ‘No? What is a detective superintendent supposed to look like?’
    ‘A female detective superintendent, like you? Much more butch, I’d say. Maybe just the faintest hint of a moustache on the upper lip. And gruffer . And certainly not wearing high-heeled boots. You’re not like that at all. In fact, if I’d been introduced to you for the first time and I didn’t know what you did for a living, I’d have said – ’
    ‘What?’ said Katie.
    ‘I’d have said TV news presenter. Or maybe the editor of a fashion magazine. Something professional, but very feminine. Something that takes brains but needs some glamour as well.’
    Katie was thinking, what a load of cat’s malogian . But at the same time, she couldn’t deny that David was charming and persuasive, and it felt good to be flattered so profusely after such an abrasive day, even if she didn’t believe a word of it. It had been emotionally draining, breaking the news to Mary Crounan that her husband had been killed, and her constant confrontations with Bryan Molloy had badly jolted her confidence in her own authority.
    David had also been shrewd enough to say that he would have mistaken her for a woman who was not only attractive but clever, too. She appreciated that.
    ‘Here,’ he said, and got up from his chair to refill her glass.
    ‘There’s