The Last Temptation by Val McDermid Read Free Book Online Page B

get to Leiden for his appointment. He tucked his cellphone into his jacket pocket and began to attach the car to the crane.
     
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    ‘jfoTtiov <’:’ ins rts1*”
     
    The applause broke in waves over Daniel Barenboim’s head as he turned back to the orchestra, gesturing to them to rise. Nothing quite like Mozart to provoke goodwill to all men, Tadeusz mused, clapping soundlessly in his lonely box. Katerina had loved opera, almost as much as she loved dressing up for a night out in their box at the Staatsoper. Who cared where the money came from? It was how you spent it that counted. And Katerina had understood about spending with style, spending in ways that made life feel special for everyone around her. The prime seats at the opera had been her idea, though it had seemed entirely fitting to him. Coming tonight had felt like a rite of passage, but he hadn’t wanted to share his space, least of all with any of the several preening women who had made a point of offering their condolences in the foyer ahead of the performance.
    He waited till most of the audience had filed out, gazing unseeing at the fire curtain that shut off the stage. Then he stood up, shaking the creases out of his conservatively tailored dinner jacket. He slipped into his sable coat, reaching inside a pocket to turn his phone back on. Finally, he walked out of the opera house into the starry spring night. He brushed past the chattering groups and turned on to Unter den Linden, walking towards the spotlit spectacle of the Brandenburg Gate, the new Reichstag gleaming over to the
     
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    right. It was a couple of miles to his apartment in Charlottenburg, but tonight he preferred to be out on the ‘ Berlin streets rather than sealed off inside his car. Like a vampire, he needed a transfusion of life. He couldn’t stand to play the social game yet, but there was an energy abroad in the city at night that fed him.\ I
     
    He had just passed the Soviet War Memorial at the start H of the Tiergarten when his phone vibrated against his hip. Impatiently, he pulled it out. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Boss?’
     
    He recognized Krasic’s deep bass. ‘Yes?’ he replied. No names on a cellphone; there were too many nerds out there with nothing better to do than scan the airwaves for stray conversations. Not to mention the various agencies of the state, constantly monitoring their citizens as assiduously as they ever had when the Red Menace still surrounded them.
     
    ‘We have a problem,’ Krasic said. ‘We need to talk. Where will I find you?’
     
    ‘I’m walking home. I’ll be at Siegessaule in about five minutes.’
     
    Til pick you up there.’ Krasic ended the call abruptly. Tadeusz groaned. He stopped for a moment, staring up at the sky through the budding branches of the trees. ‘Katerina,’ he said softly, as if addressing a present lover. At moments like this, he wondered if the bleak emptiness that was her legacy would ever dissipate. Right now, it seemed to grow worse with every passing dayfj
    He squared his shoulders and strode out for the towering monument to Prussia’s military successes that Hitler had moved from its original site to form a traffic island, emphasizing its domineering height. The gilded winged victory that crowned the Siegessaule gleamed like a beacon in the city lights, facing France in defiant denial of the past century’s
     
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    defeats. Tadeusz paused at the corner. There was no sign of Krasic yet, and he didn’t want to loiter there looking obvious. Caution was, in his experience, its own reward. He crossed the road to the monument itself and strolled around the base, pretending to study the elaborate mosaics showing the reunification of the German people. My grandmother’s Polish heart would shrivel in her breast if she could see me here, he thought. can hear her now. 7 didn’t raise you to become the Prince of Charlottenburg,’ she’d be screaming at me. At the thought, his lips curled in a sardonic