Turquoiselle by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

cases
it went the other way – a sixty-year-old boy who had died of rat poison at the
age of twelve; a hag of seven left pristine but empty by the side-blast of a
bomb. They always shocked you. But the shock altered. After the very first, for
Carver, the impact was lessened. Not in any trite or pragmatic way. More as if
some shield was now flung up before and about him in the very second his brain
accepted what his eyes revealed.
    She
had been beautiful, it was undeniable, Silvia Dusa. Decently covered by a
sheet, needing only her face and her left arm and wrist to be displayed, yet
the contours, valleys and soft full mounds of her body were explicit. Her black
hair, thick and vibrant enough still to have retained, in those moments of
visual capture, its luxuriance and scope, lay under her face, throat and
shoulders, the perfect backdrop: ebony under honey.
    “A
waste,” said Latham. “A true waste. Still a virgin.” He spoke the leery words respectfully and with regret. “A
damned bloody shame.”
    Acting
all this, one assumed. He would be studying Carver’s reactions.
    Carver
said, emotionless yet grave, “What about her mother?”
    “Oh
that. She didn’t have one. That is, the woman died years ago – ‘90’s, 80’s. In
Venice, I believe. Death
In Venice .
Just goes to show.”
    They
stayed motionless and dumb before the icon of dead Silvia for another few
minutes. And reluctantly, but clinically, Carver took in the drained wrist,
with its rucked, red-black lesion. The skin, the opened vein, seemed strangely
frozen, a sort of meaty-ice had formed on and out of them.
    “Let’s
see about cars,” said Latham.
    The
screen sank through violet, the overhead lights through scarlet, to oblivion.
    Outside
the wind kicked at the scaffolding. Like some giant hell-harp its poles and
joints twanged and plinged in impotent answering rage.
     
     
    Carver made
coffee in the kitchen of his house. The fake cab was still parked, ticking and
unlit, outside in the lane, and exacerbating the security light. When Carver
turned off the downstairs house lights, the cab eventually roused itself and
drove smoothly off. He suspected it might nose back again later, as if
cruising, but did not bother with checking whether it checked on him.
    When
next Carver drove himself, it went without saying, he could expect to be tailed.
But that could happen anyway, at any time. Mantik took care.
    Why
had he been let go?
    Why
not, if they thought he really was innocent, had just been rather naive in
attempting to lure the facts of Dusa’s misdemeanour out of her – only wanting
thereby to get her into bed.
    (A
virgin. That had thrown him. More than his mistake on her age.)
    They
would certainly have him back for an in-depth meeting, however. He could not
evade that. He had never had to undergo anything really serious in that line.
But now he would.
    He
could not fathom what had happened with the Third Person, or the voice that was
his own yet was not his at all.
    It
was all a game though, in its way. Everything. What was the Whitehall Mantik
office’s nickname for its staff? The Enemies . Which could indicate, demonstrably, they
were the enemies of designated adversaries, or of increepers and traitors, but
too of each other, friendly enemies in that
scenario – but all en garde, one against another. Ready at any time to duel, to
stitch up, to outwit and condemn. To punish.
    Carver
went upstairs. It was late. Despite Donna’s absence he would not sleep in the
main bedroom. From the spare room he could, at an angle, glimpse the faint blue-green
sheen reflecting on the birch trees. The leaves were falling, thinner, routed
by the wind, which now had sunk. The window-glass felt cold to the touch,
despite the radiator below.
    Was
that the cab-car cruising back outside? Probably.
    He
went to bed in the dark, and dropped down into the fog of sleep, seeing, as he
did so, where a dead woman lay on a grey bare slab, but he only floated past
her, a