Death in Disguise Read Online Free PDF Page A

dozen times over the past week, ‘I just don’t see why he has to come here . I shan’t change my mind about the money if that’s what’s behind it.’
    â€˜Oh, let’s not start on that again.’ He smiled. ‘I know an impasse when I see one.’
    â€˜If you won’t take it, it will go to charity.’ She added quickly, ‘You don’t know what it does to people, Master. They look at you, think of you differently. Already—’ Her face changed, becoming apprehensive. Soft and blurred. Her mouth trembled.
    â€˜Already?’
    â€˜You…haven’t told anyone? About the trust fund?’
    â€˜Of course not, since that was your wish. But don’t you think your parents—’
    â€˜My mother isn’t coming. He wrote saying she was ill.’
    â€˜That may well be true.’
    â€˜No.’ She shook her head savagely. ‘She didn’t want to come. She wouldn’t even pretend.’
    â€˜A visit on that basis would be worthless. Be brave Suhami—don’t seek false satisfactions. Or demand that others comfort and sustain you. That’s neither fair on you or them. You have everything you need right here…’ And he laid his fingers to his heart. ‘How many times do I have to say this?’
    â€˜It’s easy for you.’
    â€˜It is never easy.’
    He was right about that. Only once at meditation had she come anywhere near understanding what ‘everything you need’ really meant. She had been sitting for just over an hour and had experienced first a deep intensification of the silence then an extraordinary gathering of attention which she felt as a strong energetic pulse. Then there was a moment of luminous stillness so sublime that it seemed all her humanness, all the mess and pain and hope and loss that made up Suhami, vanished—subsumed into some inner core of certain light. A blink of an eye and it was gone. She had mentioned it to no one but the Master who had simply warned her against any zealous seeking of further such experiences. Naturally she had been unable to resist such attempts but it had never happened again.
    A year ago she had not even known he was alive and still occasionally experienced deep tremors of alarm when recalling the haphazard manner of their meeting. If a left turn had been taken instead of a right…
    She had been with half a dozen acquaintances in a wine bar off Red Lion Square. It was during the Happy Hour—that early-evening hiatus when the lonely, disaffected and dispossessed can swill themselves into oblivion for half the going rate. They were all smashed, flicking aubergine dip around with bread sticks. Asked to leave, refusing, being threatened with the police was nothing new. They racketed off, arms linked, shouting, forcing people off the pavement in Theobald Road.
    It was Perry who’d seen the poster attached to a board by a shabby doorway. The words ‘LOVE, LIGHT & PEACE’ were prominent as was a large photograph of a middle-aged man with long white hair. For no reason this struck them as hysterically funny. Jeering and snorting with contemptuous laughter, they charged up the worn, mica-freckled steps and through some swing doors.
    They found themselves in a small room, sparsely occupied, with a platform at one end. The audience was mostly women, mostly elderly. A few earnest-looking men with rucksacks or carrier bags. One wore a cap with a transparent plastic cover. He kept pursing his lips judiciously and shaking his head, making it plain he was not to be easily impressed. Everyone turned at the disruption and several people ‘tutted’ and sucked their teeth.
    The newcomers clattered along the row of tip-back seats and sat hoisting their feet up. They were reasonably quiet for about five minutes then Perry crossed his eyes in warning preparation and let out a long succulent raspberry. The others shrieked and giggled, stuffing