Death of a Sunday Writer Read Online Free PDF Page A

Geoffrey could not see the point. Now, sitting out on the sidewalk eating shepherd’s pie washed down with a glass of wine made her feel that she might be anywhere. Amsterdam, perhaps, or Malmo.

Chapter Five
    That night, in her hotel room, she set about listing the errands for the next day. She still had to pick up Trimble’s personal effects from the morgue. That, disposing of the office and apartment furnishings, and seeing Buncombe for the last time should do it. Her enthusiasm for her little outing was ebbing. Eating supper outside had been the high point of the day; being alone in a small cheap hotel room in downtown Toronto was less fun than she had thought it might be. After supper, she had driven down to her hotel and gone for a walk. She had a glass of wine in a bar on Front Street, where the thumping music and bad light had made it impossible to read her book, and now she wanted to talk to somebody, to be among familiar surroundings, at home in Longborough.
    She found herself reminded of those first bad days after she had left her husband, and felt a mild panic. She was confused, now, because she thought she was well past the panic stage. She felt sufficiently free of Geoffrey that she had even told him where she lived in Longborough,and he had visited her several times, always hoping she would be ready to return to him, but each time he looked a little stranger, more unfamiliar. Inevitably, then, she had progressed from feeling secure to feeling restless, as if life in Longborough was not the end after all, but the beginning of the road outside the prison gates. And yet, now, on her first outing to Toronto, she was scared again, having to remind herself that the first day of anything was always like this.
    And then she remembered that The Trog was coming the following night. He had called the day before, from Bagdhad, it sounded like, judging from the background noise, and the idea of him cheered her up enough to send her to sleep.
    The next morning the city looked friendlier, and she had a good poke around the Market area, a much-renovated part of downtown that smelled of French coffee and hot bread at that time the morning. (She chose the Market café for her own breakfast, though, because it looked like a Longborough diner and she wanted a bacon sandwich.) She window-shopped for an hour and, by the time she was ready to go back to Trimble’s office, felt altogether better about her expedition and reluctant to abandon it so soon.
    Her landlord was waiting for her at the office. She had the impression that Peter Tse spent most of his time gossiping around his building, but at the same time she was very glad to see him.
    â€œYou had a visitor,” he said, from the doorway, before she had switched on the light. “I told him to come back.”
    â€œDid he say who he was?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid he ask for me or David?”
    â€œHe said anybody would do. He asked if you would be around today.”
    â€œDid he look like a bad man?”
    Tse grinned. “No. Maybe a little bit.”
    â€œWhen’s he coming back?”
    â€œEleven o’clock.”
    She looked at her watch. It was ten-fifteen. “I’ll wait here, then. I still have a few things to do here. Don’t go far away, will you?’”
    â€œI’ll be along the corridor. You want to eat with me again? I’ll pick you up at twelve.”
    Caution of a lifetime dictated no, thank you, and then she remembered how wrong she had been about Tse’s motives for mentioning the fifty dollars he was owed by her cousin. “All right. My turn to pay.”
    â€œI don’t care. What’s your name? Your first name.”
    â€œLucy.”
    He tasted the word. “Lucy. I’ll call you that. You call me Peter. You can’t pronounce my last name, anyway. The way you say it, it sounds like somebody else. Peter. Not Pete. Okay?” He flashed his teeth and went back to his own