Brotherhood of the Tomb Read Online Free PDF Page B

piece of discreet jewellery, a mere hint of expensive perfume. But for the accent, he would have taken her to be French. She was petite, with short blonde hair, a down-turned mouth, and tiny ears like shells.
    Her next words had been, ‘Shall we get out of here?’ She had taken the initiative from the beginning, otherwise he would never have got as far as ‘Go’. They had driven down the coast in her small blue Mercedes. Everything was autumnal: the air, the sea, their mood. She drove too fast for the narrow Irish roads and too skilfully for it to matter. It was dawn when they arrived back at his house. ‘You have appalling taste’ was the last thing she said before leading him to bed.
    After leaving the CIA, he had returned to Ireland to finish the doctorate he had abandoned eighteen years before. Coming back to Dublin had been like a physical blow: the old places, all the memories rushing at him, striking him deep in the pit of his stomach, and him helpless before their onslaught. Rathmines, Ranelagh, Donnybrook, Ballsbridge - the names had leapt out of maps and off the fronts of buses at him, each with its own sweet or bitter flavour, its own particular weight of memories and associations.
    He had returned with such hopes, such expectations. Dublin would restore him to youth, or something like that. Dublin would revive in him the ideals of twenty-four years ago. Well, that had all been a fantasy, and he knew it now: even if the city had been preserved in aspic all these years, nothing of the past would have returned to him, or at the most a glimmer, a teasing reflection in a rusted mirror.
    His years at Trinity had shaped his life. He had lived and worked in a palace of grey stone, surrounded by dreams and poetry. Not the past only, but a present
    that seemed not wholly real. It had been less the magic of the place than the enchantment of youth: he had come to understand that in time. But then he was aware only of snow falling on dark, pitted cobblestones, and sunlight on mullioned windows, and the bell in the campanile ringing out against the shadows at dusk as he walked through soft-lit courtyards to Commons. And Francesca. Always Francesca.
    Now he was back, but the magic and the poetry had gone. He had tried to find them again in Ruth, but all that remained was a sense of bewilderment and shame. Pressed for a reason, he could have given a dozen. But at heart he knew there had only ever been one reason for his inability to love or be loved: Francesca’s death. But that was the past. He had to come to terms with that. In the dark, he lay listening to the sound of his own breathing, unable to surrender himself to sleep.
    He slipped out of bed again, knowing sleep would not come. There had been so many nights like this: they just had to be endured. He crossed to the window, as though drawn by the pale lamplight. A man can resign from the Agency, but his mind and body never relax.
    He heard the footstep just as his hand reached for the curtain. A single step followed by silence. He stiffened and lowered his hand. Silence. Cautiously, he eased back the edge of the curtain and bent his eye to the crack.
    His dark-adjusted eyes found the man almost at once. On the opposite side of the street, away from the lamp. He was cold and restless and looked like someone who had been standing there a long time. Waiting for something. Or someone.
    FIVE
    Patrick let the curtain fall. For half a minute he stood by the window, forcing himself to be calm. Ruth was still asleep, her heavy breathing plainly audible to him across the room. Moving quietly in the darkness, he found his trousers and the thick sweater he had been wearing the day before. His shoes were beside the bed.
    Downstairs, he paused in the kitchen. A row of gleaming, wooden-handled Sabatier knives hung on a magnetic rack. He selected one with a six-inch blade and slipped it into his belt. It was razor-sharp: he knew, because he had honed the entire set three days