A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

partner. A man with a broken heart can be manipulated into acts of vengeance.
    ‘You said Riedle was feeling sorry for himself? That’s what you meant? Minasian dumped him?’
    Mowbray squeezed his chafed nose and looked to one side, timing the delivery of a chunk of bad news. The waitress, who had passed their table several times in the preceding minutes, trying to ascertain if the two middle-aged gentlemen intended to finish their meals, finally made her decision and began collecting their plates of half-eaten food.
    ‘He dumped him,’ said Mowbray. ‘Gigantic lover’s tiff.’
    ‘After the argument you witnessed? That was it? They separated?’
    Mowbray nodded, staring at the table.
    ‘The photos you saw, then Riedle crying on his own in the garden. That was the last time we saw Minasian. I assume he left that night. There was a twenty-two hundred Air Egypt flight from Hurghada to Cairo. He could have gone anywhere after that.’
    ‘And Riedle?’
    ‘Stayed another two days. Had breakfast in his room, ate dinner alone with a look on his face like his life was over.’
    ‘How do you figure that?’ Kell asked. ‘Just from a look on his face? Maybe he’s that kind of person.’
    Mowbray pitched backwards in his seat, as if Kell had been unnecessarily confrontational. Kell apologized with a raised hand and took the opportunity to order two glasses of mint tea. He was aware that his adrenaline was running high, an eagerness to ensnare Minasian clashing against long-practised instincts for caution and context.
    ‘What I meant was …’
    ‘Don’t worry, guv.’ Mowbray offered a conciliatory hand of his own. ‘I know what you meant. How did we know he was suffering? Why was he wandering around like a lovestruck adolescent?’
    ‘Precisely. How did you know?’
    Mowbray pulled out a packet of cigarettes and set them on the table. Kell looked at them and resented his own self-discipline.
    ‘Riedle spent a lot of time at the pool, reading off an iPad. Struck up a friendship with one of the boys down there. Egyptian kid, good-looking.’
    ‘Gay?’
    Mowbray realized what he had said and shook his head vigorously, chasing off the inference.
    ‘No. Nothing like that. Married, wife and kid in Luxor. Early thirties. Laid out our sunbeds in the morning. Brought us drinks. Put up the umbrellas when the sun got too hot. You know the kind of thing.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Well, I got talking to him and he said how Riedle was unhappy. He’d broken up with his boyfriend. They’d been seeing each other for over three years, had the latest in a long line of nasty rows. “Dmitri” had left the hotel, gone off with a new man.’
    ‘He told all that to a
pool boy
?’
    Mowbray seemed to be aware that the interaction sounded far-fetched.
    ‘Bernhard struck me as the confessional sort. Needy, artistic, you know? Any sympathetic ear will do for a type like that. “I’m in pain, come and listen to me. I’ve built a new house, come and look at it. I’m miserable, make me feel better.” And we tell strangers our secrets, don’t we? He’s never going to see the pool boy again, never going to build him a house in Luxor. He was a convenient shoulder to cry on for a couple of miserable days in paradise.’
    Kell felt a strange and disorienting sense of kinship with Riedle, the empathy of the broken-hearted man. He remembered his own dismay at Rachel’s treachery, then the long months of grieving that followed her death. He accepted the mint tea from the waitress, who smiled at Mowbray as she placed a glass on the table in front of him. Kell was surprised when Mowbray asked for the bill. What was the hurry?
    ‘You’ve told nobody about this?’ he asked.
    ‘Nobody, guv. Just you. I knew what it would mean to you, after everything that happened. Wanted to give you the opportunity.’
    Kell found himself saying ‘Thank you’ in a way that caused Mowbray to produce a conspiratorial nod. A small burden of complicity had been