The Devil's Moon by Peter Guttridge Read Free Book Online Page B

was elated that she had the promotion she always felt should have been hers, though conscious it was in some sense at the cost of her friend’s life.
    But as a woman who had decided ten years earlier that she never wanted children, as a woman who hadn’t liked teenage girls when she was a teenager herself, never mind now, the last thing she wanted to do was have any dealings with them. Especially feral ones.
    She glanced at the files with something like loathing. Not that she was allowed to call them ‘feral’ any more. According to social theorists they were simply ‘troubled’. ‘Feral’ was too judgemental. Yeah, right.
    â€˜Oh, Reg,’ she sighed. ‘I could do with you to laugh at me right now.’
    She fished out her phone and called Kate Simpson. She was put on hold, the current radio programme streaming down the phone line. Kate was mid-show, of course. Gilchrist hadn’t got the hang of Kate’s new job as producer. She wasn’t sure Kate had either.
    Kate Simpson’s mobile rang. It was Phil, the guy who ran her scuba-diving club.
    â€˜A newspaper has asked me to see if there are any fish left in the waters around Brighton. Of course there will be, but I wondered if you fancied coming down with me. I’m putting a little team together.’
    Last time she’d been involved in one of Phil’s little teams they’d found the remains of a woman killed in the sixties. She recognized that was a one-off. Or so she hoped.
    â€˜When?’ she said.
    â€˜This teatime?’
    â€˜I’ll see you at the marina.’
    The light on her desk phone was flashing. She pressed for the landline.
    Kate Simpson’s voice broke in on Gilchrist listening to the radio show. She sounded breathless. Gilchrist could hear the hubbub of the radio studio’s outer office in the background.
    â€˜Sarah – what’s up?’
    â€˜Thought you’d want to know,’ Gilchrist said. ‘You’re definitely not going to be charged with using an illegal weapon to fight off your attacker.’
    Simpson was silent for a moment. ‘What’s happened?’ she said, her voice low.
    â€˜The volt gun has gone missing from the evidence room,’ Gilchrist said, equally quietly. ‘No stun gun, no prosecution.’
    Kate cleared her throat, then said, ‘Thank God. Oh, Sarah, thank bloody God.’ Then, with excitement: ‘Does that mean you’re off suspension too?’
    Gilchrist grinned, even though she knew it was pointless down a phone line. ‘And promoted.’
    â€˜Wow. Congratulations.’
    â€˜Except for what my first job is.’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜Never mind – I’ll tell you later. Are you around tonight? Let’s go to Plenty to celebrate.’
    Oliver Daubney was on good form. He led Watts at a pretty brisk trot round the Picasso prints. ‘Fine work,’ Daubney said. ‘But, you know, what was once challenging has long been absorbed into the mainstream.’
    They moved through a couple of Egyptian galleries to the restaurant underneath the dome of the Great Courtyard. They were seated at a table with a gentle buzz of sound from the courtyard below refracting around them and a soft white light falling from above. And for the next hour, Daubney shared with Watts some of his many stories about writers great and small of the past sixty years.
    Even if he didn’t represent them, he knew them all. And Watts immediately realized that Daubney wasn’t sharing. He was giving a performance. An Audience with Oliver Daubney.
    â€˜Agatha Christie?’ Daubney said. ‘No conversation. None at all. Such a shy creature. Raymond Chandler? A drunk and an egoist – the admiration of T S Eliot went right to his head – but most charming and still talented when I met him. In the late fifties, when I was scarcely an adult, I went on a bender with your father, Ian