The Dying Trade by Peter Corris Read Free Book Online Page B

disturbed that woman must be to be saying those things. The person speaking to me on the telephone was emotionally disturbed. As you say, I have some experience in this area. The language was frightful.”
    I suppressed an impulse to laugh. “Do you mean it was obscene?”
    â€œYes, horribly so. I had to burn the letters.”
    â€œWere they obscene too?”
    She started to look nervous again. “No, not at all, just awful.”
    â€œWhy did you have to burn them then?”
    She plucked at the bedcover, shredding some of the raised nap and balling it in her fingers. “I meant that, well, the filthy language and the letters came from the same person. So I burned the letters.”
    â€œYou think the phone calls and letters came from the same source do you?”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œWhy, of course?”
    â€œThey must have.”
    â€œTell me one, just one, of the objectionable phrases in the phone calls.”
    â€œI can’t, I couldn’t say it.”
    â€œWhat were the letters about? The same thing?”
    â€œNo—sickness, decay, death.”
    â€œCome on Miss Gutteridge, one phrase from the calls.”
    She glared at me, bunched her fists and hammered them on the snowy bedcover. “Fucking capitalist!” she screamed in my face.
    There was a silence that seemed to let the words hang in the air forever. Then she started sobbing and Brave moved in with all systems go. He took her hands and clasped them inside his while murmuring comforting, animal-like sounds in her ear. He swayed above her like a mesmerised snake putting the music back into the pipe. She regained control very quickly. I knew that this kind of command over another person was extremely difficult to obtain and incredibly costly to bring about in time and effort. There was no short cut to it and I wondered why Brave had made an investment of this order in this pathetic woman. There was no time for on-the-spot investigation. At a nod from Brave, Bruno moved forward and took my arm just above the elbow. His grip hurt like a dentist’s drill on a nerve.
    â€œYou’ve had your time, Hardy,” Brave said. “I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve done.”
    If that was supposed to make me feel sorry for the woman it didn’t work. Her problems were mine only in a strictly professional sense, but I had to stay with them. At this point I had to assume that Bryn had hired me for reasons other than those he’d stated. That isn’t unusual, but you have to sort the real reasons out fairly quickly if you don’t want to be the meat in the sandwich all the way. I had to fire a shot in my own war.
    â€œGoodbye, Miss Gutteridge,” I said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    â€œOut,” Brave hissed the word like a jet of venom and Bruno swung me round and we trotted out of the room like big Siamese twins joined at the shoulder.
    We made the same turns in reverse and Bruno shooed me into the room I’d surfaced in before. I sat down on a chair near the desk and started scooping my things up and putting them in my pockets. Bruno stepped forward and a puzzled look spread over his face as he tried to work out whether he was supposed to stop me or not. He couldn’t tell and he couldn’t think and hit at the same time. Not many muscle men can and it gives the weaklings a fractional edge sometimes. I made a cigarette as the Italian hovered in the middle of the room looking like a discus thrower turned to stone in the middle of his wind-up.
    â€œDon’t worry, Bruno,” I said. “I’ll wait here for your master and in a little while you’ll be able to go off and do something about your face.” That gave him something to think of. He put a hand up to his face and pressed gently. “Harder,” I said, “maybe there’s something broken.” He worked his jaw and grimaced. I might have been