(1992) Prophecy Read Online Free PDF

mouth, small and tight, formed a perfect circle like a rubber bung.
    He was a man of twenty-eight with a dry, anarchic humour and an obsession with routine, punctuality and consistency, which he maintained were essential for a harmonious life. He did everything at the same steady pace, as if aware that energy was a commodity not to be squandered, and went about his work and his life with an air of constipated inertness. Archaeology was his world; he had no outside interests and he exercised by cycling to work on an old-fashioned upright bicycle. His clips hung on a hook on the back of the door, along with his crash-helmet, smog mask and fluorescent sash.
    Frannie’s hurried late arrival from lunch seemed to throw the rhythm of his concentration and, between entering the room and settling at her desk, she noticed him type and erase the same line three times on his word processor.
    He stopped, clearly irritated. ‘I didn’t know you would be up here this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Thought you were down in the basement.’
    ‘Dentist,’ she mumbled through her frozen mouth.
    He sighed as Frannie noisily opened and shut a drawer in her desk, looking for plain paper.
    ‘Oh – there was a call I took for you,’ he said. ‘A Mr Jupp from the Bodleian. He says he’s found the reference you wanted.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she said, distractedly.
    ‘He said he thought you’d be extremely pleased.’ There was a slightly pained note in Spode’s voice as she continued to rummage, cleared a space on her desk, laid down a sheet of paper and started to write.
    ‘He asked if you could call back before three,’ Spode said, looking at his watch pointedly.
    Frannie did not notice. She was concentrating on her handwriting, trying to make it legible for once. She wondered whether it was sensible to give her home address and phone number just in case, then realized how embarrassed she might be if he rang her at the office. Penrose Spode always listened to her calls with one ear. She decided to include her home number but not her address. Even so, her surname was not common and he could get the address by matching her name and number but she felt it at least afforded her some protection if he turned out to be a nutter.
    She tore up five attempts before she was satisfied that she had got the tone right:
    ‘I am the girl who was carrying a double bass down the platform of King’s Cross Station on Friday, 10th August. Were you the very kind man with the young boy who had just been to the zoo? I would be delighted to see you again. Francesca Monsanto.’
    She called at a post office on the way home, stuck a first-class stamp carefully on the envelope, then held the letter for a long time before letting it drop, with a strange feeling of finality, through the slit of the post box into the darkness.
    As she walked on towards the tube station, there was a light spring in her step.

C HAPTER F OUR
    Frannie’s misgivings began a couple of hours after she had posted the letter. It was nothing she could put her finger on, more the feeling that what she had done was rash and she needed to be careful. There was something about the chance of having seen the advertisement that nagged her.
    She wondered where else he had advertised, and whether he had done it of his own volition, or had been goaded into it for a bet by friends. And she wondered, more darkly, whether he did this as a regular way of picking up women.
    She had posted the letter on Friday and it would have reached
Private Eye
on Monday. Depending how quickly they forwarded it, she knew that the earliest he could receive it would be Tuesday. Even so, every time the phone had rung over the weekend she had stiffened and answered it with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
    At the party on Saturday night she had confided in Carol Bolton, who was her closest friend at the Museum. Carol had surprised and worried her by being alarmist. She told Frannie that if he contacted her she should make