The Dying Light by Henry Porter Read Free Book Online Page A

the hotel: will an American driver’s licence do?’ She did not move to open her bag.

    ‘Are you a UK resident?’

    ‘I am a British citizen. I have just come back from a long period in America.’

    ‘You will have to sort out an ID card to live here. Immigration should have notified you when you landed.’

    ‘I read the note,’ she said in a manner that gave no ground.

    He studied her hard and then waved a hand in front of him as though fanning smoke from his face.

    ‘Now, please move on, madam; we’ve got a job to do here.’

    ‘There was something else, which is why I came over.’ She turned and scanned the stalls. ‘You see that woman over there - the one in the trousers - I believe she was trying to steal from one of the market stalls.’

    He nodded and said to a uniformed officer, ‘Have a look into it, Mike.’

    Kate thanked him again, swept the circle of officers with one of her client smiles, turned and took a few paces. Then the wind came and tore the blossom from a line of almond trees along the top of the square and tossed it in the air like confetti, adding to the indecent surge of spirit in old provincial England.

     
    Later she perched on the arm of a bench on some open ground beside a churchyard smoking a cigarette and watching Eyam’s remains being transferred from a hearse through the side entrance into St Luke’s Parish Church. At first she turned away from the open door, as though there was something private about the operation, but then she forced herself to look on. Four pallbearers lowered the coffin, placed wreaths on top and at each end, straightened the velvet drape covering the trestle, bowed and retreated. The earthly remains of David Eyam - the mere fragments of a man - had come home and were at last being accorded respect. Shipped from Colombia in a battered aluminium box to Heathrow, there to be tested for cocaine, they had mistakenly been forwarded to the coroner’s office where the casket - if that was the word - remained like a container left behind by a catering company.

    She had learned all this from the coroner’s clerk the night before when she’d taken refuge from the hotel in a pub called The Mercer’s Arms. Rather to her surprise he lumbered over from a table, saying he’d recognised her from the inquest, then introduced himself as Tony Swift. He seemed intelligent and pleasant enough and although she wondered whether he fancied his chances with her she let him buy her a drink.

    Between deliberated sips from a pint of Old Speckled Hen, he told her that it had taken over two weeks for anyone to realise that Eyam had been killed in the explosion. They might never have known for certain if the hotel room key hadn’t been found by construction workers near the spot where Eyam had fallen and matched with the room he’d occupied at the Hotel Atlantic until the day of the blast.

    ‘What about the hotel bill?’ said Kate. ‘Surely the hotel reported him missing?’

    ‘Why? To whom? There was no need. They had his credit card details and authorisation for payment. I checked with one of the managers. There was a small amount of luggage in his room and after a few days they just put it in store, thinking he would collect it: they assumed he’d gone on a boat trip up the coast.’

    A big man with a slow, amiable manner, Swift consumed a pie and chips while they talked, looking over his glasses to consider her questions. Why had he come to High Castle? What was he doing in Colombia? And how the hell had someone as smart and dedicated and charming as Eyam lost his job in government? The inquest had established the facts of Eyam’s death but the fall, the calamity that pitched him into Mrs Kidd’s exciting local arts scene was a mystery. Swift smiled at this but said he couldn’t help her on any of these things.

    The peal of bells was now abruptly replaced by the toll of a single bell. She stubbed the cigarette out, carried the butt to one of the