Damned by Logic Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re looking at.’
    â€˜The usual “smart” remark.’
    â€˜If you would only explain what’s upset you?’
    â€˜You damn well know it’s that monkey.’
    He remembered he’d left Georgie on his bed. ‘Barbary ape, actually.’
    â€˜Who gave it to you?’
    â€˜I bought it.’
    â€˜Babs is right.’
    â€˜Makes a change.’
    â€˜You’ve been away umpteen times and never before brought back tourist trash. Some woman gave it to you. It stinks of cheap scent and there are blonde hairs caught up in the fur.’
    He stilled the sudden panic. ‘Can’t think why that worries you. The woman who sold me the ape had blonde hair and smelled as if drenched in something.’
    â€˜I know you’re lying.’
    â€˜Then there’s small point in my repeating the truth.’
    â€˜You made me look a fool. When I took Babs up to the bedroom, she had to poke her nose into everything. She picked the monkey up, smelled the cheap scent, saw the hairs, said you’d been having a very energetic cruise. Now she’ll tell everyone you had an affair with some slut on the boat. What are my friends going to think?’
    â€˜They’ll believe her and smile knowingly.’
    Eileen stormed off. She went upstairs. A door was slammed shut. It was, he thought, her character to be more worried about what people would think than the actual act of his adultery. But she would not demand a divorce. To be divorced could give friends the opportunity to say it was her fault.

FIVE
    â€˜P iera is going to shout,’ Noyes said angrily. ‘You took a goddamn risk.’ They were in the car still, negotiating traffic into the city.
    â€˜I didn’t have any alternative,’ Melanie countered. ‘I was sussed when I was given the sparklers.’
    â€˜How d’you know?’
    â€˜Come on, Steve, we can both name a man a split, even if he’s had a bath.’
    He muttered an acceptance of what she said. There was very often something – too sharp an interest, too marked a disinterest, repeated sightings – which identified a policeman to a villain, a villain to a policeman.
    â€˜To land them, I had to have someone who looked like he’d never lifted a bar of chocolate. And it’s a bloody good job I did pass ’em on. They tore my luggage apart and strip-searched me.’
    â€˜Who’s got them now?’
    â€˜He does – Ansell.’
    â€˜Didn’t he want to know why he was taking the monkey through?’
    â€˜He’d got beyond asking anything except for me to get ’em off. It’s a Barbary ape.’
    â€˜I don’t give a shit if it’s King Kong.’
    His temper was always on a short fuse. She introduced a touch of humour to try to defuse it. ‘Then King Kong would have been carried by Georgie and the law would have been very interested in him.’
    â€˜How d’you persuade him?’
    â€˜Diamond sex. Then said my suitcases were filled to bursting because of all I’d bought in the places we went to together and I couldn’t pack Georgie.’
    â€˜Anyone with half a brain would have wondered if you were getting him to run something black through.’
    â€˜His brain was still in bed with me.’
    â€˜He wasn’t fingered?’
    â€˜I told you, he’d have given himself away if he’d been carrying as much as an extra pack of cigarettes.’
    â€˜How d’you plan on getting it back?’
    â€˜â€œIt”? Poor Georgie? If he could hear you, he’d be very hurt.’
    This time, her light teasing annoyed him. ‘How?’ he demanded angrily, smacking the steering wheel of the car with the palm of his hand as he drove.
    She hurriedly answered. Noyes had the appearance of a Mr Anybody, but few equalled his capacity for violence. ‘I phone David and tell him where to meet me to return Georgie.’
    â€˜What