Walking in Darkness by Charlotte Lamb Read Free Book Online Page A

never thought I’d ever see. After years of dreaming about Paris I finally got to sit at a table in a terrace café and drink wine while I watched the world go by, and I’ve floated down the Grand Canal in Venice in a gondola, although I could only afford that once, they charged me an arm and a leg. But it was worth it, to feel, just for one hour, that I was really there, looking up at those marvellous palaces and churches.’
    Her breathless excitement had brought a smile into his grey eyes. ‘You’re making me envious! I haven’t been to Europe for a long time. Although I’m going now, of course, to cover Gowrie’s trip.’
    She came down with a bump, her whole body jerking into attention as she remembered Gowrie. ‘You’re going with him?’
    He was aware of her sharp interest. ‘A lot of us are. If Gowrie becomes the next president, anything he thinks and says is vitally important to our country.’
    Her voice was tense. ‘Do you think he will become president?’
    ‘Could be, I’m afraid.’
    She watched him curiously. ‘You don’t think he’ll be a good president?’
    ‘We haven’t had a good president for so long some of us have ceased to expect we ever will.’
    ‘You’re cynical about politicians,’ she murmured. ‘Me too.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I can see how you would be,’ he smiled. ‘I guess Gowrie’s no worse than any of the others. He’s certainly in front of the pack at the moment. A couple of years ago if he had made a trip to Europe nobody would have taken a blind bit of notice! He’d have gone alone. But he’s in a new league now.’
    ‘I didn’t realise any of the press would be going with him,’ she thought aloud. She must go. She had to talk to him and if she went to Europe she might get a chance. It would be an expensive trip, though, and she had to watch every cent she spent. As Vlad kept saying, the agency had to operate on a shoestring. He watched her expenses like a hawk. How could she persuade him to let her go?
    What would it cost? A cut-price plane ticket from a bucket shop, a cheap hotel. She could save a lot by walking instead of taking public transport, buying cheap food to eat in her room instead of eating out. Oh, she could cut expenses to the bone. She was an expert at living on almost nothing.
    ‘I’m a mind-reader,’ Steve said and she started.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You mean to go on this trip, too, right?’
    ‘If I can talk Vlad into paying for it,’ she confessed. ‘Which will be like talking Dracula into giving me a blood transfusion from his own veins.’
    Steve roared with laughter.
    In the penthouse suite of the hotel Don Gowrie was talking on the phone. ‘Her passport details all check out, then? Born Prague, 1968. Parents, Johanna and Pavel Narodni. Father dead, mother remarried, now has two younger sons. Mother still alive, then?’ He bit down on his lower lip. ‘I see. No, don’t bother with the Czech end. Leave it now; close the file.’ There was a murmur on the other end of the line. ‘No, I said close the file!’ Don Gowrie put down the phone with a faint crash, the hand that held it slippery with sweat, picked up a decanter from the antique black-lacquered Chinese-style table and poured himself a glass of whisky, then walked over to the window of the suite to stare down, down, down at the pale grey ants flickering along the street below. From up here on the sixtieth floor you couldn’t make out their sex, or what they wore, let alone their faces. It was hard to be sure they were human beings. Their life or death meant nothing at this height. If one of them suddenly fell down dead you wouldn’t even notice. Would any of the others hurrying past them stop to look, or would they just step over the body and rush on?
    Behind him someone asked quietly, ‘Do you think she knows something that could be a problem?’
    He shrugged without turning round or answering.
    ‘How serious a problem?’
    ‘I don’t even dare ask her. That serious.’ He