The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes Read Free Book Online Page A

of herself, and was dismayed by what she had found. Her smile dissolved, and her face reddened, and she turned away and began to cry, great wrenching sobs this time. I didn’t know whether she remembered how much she had loved him, and missed the feeling, or whether she was ashamed that she didn’t feel more, and I didn’t know how much the booze had ramped up all those feelings, but it was a long time since I had seen anyone look so frightened, and lonely, and lost.
     
Four
     
    THE ROYAL SEAFIELD YACHT CLUB IS ONE STORY ABOVE A basement. Since the basement is right on the water, and the club is situated hard at the base of Seafield Harbour, and it was built in the high style of the 1840s so that the fashionable rich might have a fitting location to amuse themselves, it’s as impressive a one-story exterior as you might see.
    It’s impressive inside too, with high ceilings and fancy coving and ceiling roses and chandeliers and classical columns and what have you.
    The staff are not unaware of this, which is presumably why I had been waiting in the foyer for twenty-five minutes studying a brochure extolling the club’s virtues and watching a procession of men in navy blazers with gold buttons and women in navy sweaters with gold stitching pad about in deck shoes from, as far as I could surmise, the Dining Room to the Formal Bar to the Club Room to the Informal Bar to the Commodore’s Room to the Billiard Room to the Forecourt. The club secretary, whose name, the brochure told me, was Cyril Lampkin, had been considering my request to see Peter Dawson’s boat for all this time. Linda had phoned ahead to arrange things, and I had Peter’s club identity card and the spare keys to the storage booths on the boat, but it seemed Cyril Lampkin was still weighing the evidence.
    Cyril Lampkin was a strange-looking fellow. About thirty-five, he was wearing a burgundy velvet dinner jacket with a matching burgundy and turquoise paisley bow tie. He had a lightly freckled pink pate, across which an inverted question mark of carrot-colored hair had been plastered. He had soft pink skin which dimpled at his cheeks and in clefts behind his double chin, and a pale gold mustache shaved equidistant from nose and upper lip. He was filling in at the desk, he told me, because the girl who should have been there had gone into hospital to have a baby, his tone making it clear that he did not think much of babies or the people who had them. He greeted every personal inquiry and phone call, many evidently from club members, with a symphony of eye-rolling, sighing and tongue-clicking. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was getting in my way, I would’ve enjoyed watching Cyril Lampkin in action, if only to try and figure out just what it was he thought he was doing.
    “Of course, it would be so much simpler if you were a club member, Mr. Loy,” he said, a smile of pity on his shining face.
    As he had just informed two club members who had tried to book dinner for that evening that bookings could only be taken over the phone from five-fifteen precisely in the Dining Room, no he could not pass on booking requests, that was all there was to it good afternoon, I doubted that my being a member would have helped all that much.
    “Well, seeing as I’m waiting, perhaps I could get a roast beef sandwich and a cup of coffee at the, um, the Informal Bar,” I said, trying to pitch it as humble as possible.
    “I’m afraid not, Mr. Loy. For one, you are not a club member. And for two, you are not wearing a tie.”
    “There are plenty of people inside not wearing ties,” I said.
    “Club members, Mr. Loy. If you were familiar with the regulations, you’d know that dress code on Wednesdays until four-thirty is: informal for club members, semiformal for club members’ guests—”
    “And strictly formal for Cyril Lampkin,” I said, gesturing at his burgundy evening clothes.
    “I am hosting an antiques event at two forty-five in the Commodore’s