A Not So Perfect Crime Read Online Free PDF

rumour leading to telephone calls and pressure behind the scenes. And that wouldn’t stop till the cuckolded husband ceased to be the visible face of a party that was inspired in equal parts by Vatican ideology and the most vicious variety of neo-cons.
    Mr Lluís Font MP asked us whether we minded if he smoked, lit a cigarette and continued with his tale.
    â€œA couple of weeks ago I sent my secretary to Paris and got him to buy the painting discreetly. The offending object cost me 18,000 euros ...” he remarked visibly annoyed.
“Take a look at this. I have bought you the exhibition catalogue. You will find all the details of the painting here,” he explained as he opened the catalogue and showed us the portrait. “Of course, if you want a closer view, you can come to my office on the Diagonal, by Via Augusta,” he added.
    Borja and I glanced at the catalogue and stopped at the page with the portrait of our new and distinguished client’s wife. The painting in question was an oil on canvas, signed by one Pau Ferrer and measured twenty inches by twentyeight. It portrayed a woman between thirty-five and forty-five years of age, in my estimation, who was contentedly sprawled over a dark red armchair. She wore a dark, possibly black dress, with a generously low-cut, seductive neckline above which the aforementioned necklace glittered. You could see the clasp, a flower of turquoise stones set with a small ruby. Her shoes certainly caught your attention. They were bright red, low-heeled with ankle-straps and very fetching. They would have had pride of place in any shoe fetishist’s wardrobe and it suddenly struck me that perhaps our honourable member of parliament was one such. At least, I thought rather enviously, he had the wallet for it and a wife ready to comply. I’d never be able to persuade my Montse to wear heels, let alone see her spend a month’s wages on shoes like that.
    I revisited the portrait. The woman was on the blonde side, and, although it had possibly seen the inside of an operating theatre, her nose displayed a degree of distinction. Dark, almost black eyes appealed languorously and seductively to the onlooker. Long, slightly unkempt hair fell over the dipping neckline. Her lips pouted, a dark, dark red, though not vulgarly so. It was a mouth inviting a kiss.
    There was no landscape or interior you could identify. The background to the scene was a mass of shades of grey splashed with a few brushstrokes of blue. I don’t know much about painting, and although I thought the portrait was pretty good, I found it quite disturbing. The woman was extraordinarily beautiful, I had to admit, but the expression on her face was strange in a way I couldn’t explain and it made me feel uneasy. The way she looked out, intense and distant, was the central focus of the painting. I’ve no idea why but I could only think it was a blank look, as if no real life inhabited those eyes when the artist painted them. They seemed – and I sensed that immediately – like the eyes of a dead woman. Montse would have called it a kind of premonition. I’m still not sure whether the chill running down my spine was triggered by looking at the portrait I found quite sinister, or by the frozen polar climate engulfing our office.
    â€œYour wife is very beautiful,” Borja murmured politely.
    â€œYes, Lídia is still a very splendid woman. Perhaps too much so ...” Lluís Font MP paused and extinguished his cigarette. “Look, I just want you to find out what the hell is going on. And I need to know as soon as possible.”
    â€œLeave it with us,” suggested Borja. “What’s your wife’s name? She’s Lídia? ...”
    â€œLídia Font, of course. Her maiden name is Vilalta, if that is what you mean.”
    I was quite familiar with the surname of Vilalta. If I made an effort I’d surely remember why.
    â€œHow does your wife fill