The Last Temptation by Val McDermid Read Free Book Online

be done, maintaining the old Rhineship in peak I condition. He had to keep the brasswork gleaming, the paint smart and unblistered. The old mahogany of the wheelhouse and his cabin shone with the lustre of years of polishing, his hands following a tradition passed down the generations. I He’d inherited the boat from his grandfather, the one good thing the bastard had done for him.I
    He’d never forget the liberation of the old man’s accident. None of them had even known about it till morning. His grandfather had gone ashore to spend the evening in a bar, as he did from time to time. He never drank with the crew, always preferring to take himself off to a quiet corner in some bier keller for away from the other bargees. He acted as if he 1 was too good for the rest of them, though his grandson i thought it was probably more likely that he’d pissed off every
     
    other skipper on the river with his bloodyminded self righteousness.
    In the morning, there had been no sign of the old man on board. That in itself was remarkable, for his regularity of habit was unshakeable. No illness had ever been permitted to fell him, no self-indulgence to keep him in his berth a minute after six. Winter and summer, the old man was washed, shaved and dressed by six twenty, the cover of the engines open as he inspected them suspiciously to make sure nothing evil had befallen them in the night. But that morning, silence hung ominous over the barge.
    He’d kept his head down, busying himself in the bilges, stripping down a pump. It occupied his hands, avoiding any possibility of showing nervousness that might be remarked on later if anyone had become suspicious. But all the while, he’d been lit up by the inner glow that came from having taken his future into his own hands. At last, he was going to be the master of his own destiny. Millions of people wanted to liberate themselves as he had done, but only a handful ever had the courage to do anything about it. He was, he realized with a rare burst of pride, more special than anyone had ever given him credit for, especially the old man.
    Gunther, busy cooking breakfast in the galley, had noticed nothing amiss. His routine was, perforce, as regular as his skipper’s. It had been Manfred, the engineer, who had raised the alarm. Concerned at the old man’s silence, he’d dared to crack open the door to his cabin. The bed was empty, the covers so tightly tucked in that a five-mark piece would have tram polined to the ceiling off them. Anxiously, he’d made his way out on deck and begun to search. The hold was empty, awaiting that morning’s load of roadstone. Manfred rolled back a corner of the tarpaulin and climbed down the ladder to check it from stem to stern, worried that the old man might have decided
     
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    to make one of his periodic late-night tours of the barge and either fallen or been taken ill. But the hold was empty.
    Manfred had started to have a very bad feeling. Back up on deck, he edged his way round the perimeter, staring down into the water. Up near the bows, he saw what he was afraid of. Jammed between the hull and the pilings of the wharf, the old man floated face down.
    ” The inference was obvious. The old man had had too much to drink and tripped over one of the hawsers that held the barge fast against the wharf. According to the postmortem, he’d banged his head on the way down, probably knocking himself unconscious in the process. Even if he’d only been stunned, the combination of alcohol and concussion had combined to make drowning a foregone conclusion. The official finding had been accidental death. Nobody doubted it for a minute.a
    m
    Just as he’d planned it. He’d sweated it till the verdict was in, but it had all turned out the way he’d dreamed it. He’d been bewildered to discover what joy felt like.
    It was his first taste of power, and it felt as luxurious as silk against his skin, as warming as brandy in the throat. He’d finally found a