Dirty Tricks Read Online Free PDF

muffled exchange at the other end.
    ‘Why don’t you pop in this afternoon and get it? I’ll be going out briefly at some stage, but Kay’ll be here.’
    Fair enough, I thought as I walked home. I was beginning to appreciate Karen Parsons. I’ve always been good at thinking on my feet. It’s the other kind of thinking I’ve never been able to muster, the long-term stuff. ‘Never confuse strategy with tactics,’ one of my tutors advised me, but I can’t even remember what the words mean. Over the short distance, though, I’m pretty impressive, and I admire the same quality in others. I liked the way Karen had picked up that my story about the wallet was in fact a message, and I liked the message she was sending back even more. It was risky. If I marched round there and demanded my wallet in front of Dennis, she would be in deep doo-doo. She was trusting me not to do that, putting that power in my hands. I liked that, too. It’s good to go dutch on power. I’ve always made a point of borrowing money from women early in the relationship so as to give them a hold over me. It also helps when the time comes to break off the affair, because you can talk about the money instead of feelings and love and messy, painful stuff like that.
    At a quarter to three I was in position behind the grime-sprayed glass of a bus shelter on the Banbury Road. The entrance to Ramillies Drive was about thirty yards away on the other side of the road. There I stood, waiting for Dennis’s car to emerge. It was mizzling steadily, so I had lashed out on a minibus ticket, which cost more than a taxi would here. The afternoon was cold and raw, and I soon regretted my choice of clothing, a light linen suit dating from my time in this country. But I wanted to present an exotic image, a man of the world blown in from foreign parts to bring some much-needed glamour to Karen’s drab suburban existence.
    I had hoped she would be able to get rid of Dennis quickly, but it was almost 4 o’clock before the red BMW finally appeared and roared away in the direction of the ring road. By that time I was chilled to the bone, exhausted from the relentless battering of the traffic, sullen and depressed. This had better be good, I thought grimly as I crossed the road and walked up the cul-de-sac to the Parsonage. This had better be bloody good.
    I had to ring the bell several times before Karen finally appeared. I knew at once that something was wrong.
    ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She sounded surprised and displeased. ‘Dennis isn’t here.’
    She was wearing clingy jeans and a ribbed woollen sweater which emphasized the lines of her body. It still wasn’t my kind of body, but dressed like that it looked quite different, a gym teacher’s body, supple, firm and fit.
    ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spent an hour and a quarter waiting for him not to be here.’
    ‘Why did you do that?’
    Ah, I thought. Right. Fine, if that’s the way you want to play it.
    ‘Sorry if I misunderstood. Just give me my wallet and I’ll be off.’
    ‘I haven’t got your wallet.’
    ‘I know you haven’t.’
    We measured each other with our eyes.
    ‘Then what are you doing here?’ she asked.
    This was not the first time I had dabbled in adultery. I’ve always had a yen for married women – it’s something to do with being an only son, I suspect, some sort of Oedipal urge to play Daddy’s part with Mummy – and I knew by experience how much care and tact is needed. However tenuous it may have become, once a marriage is under threat it can suddenly turn into a territory which has to be defended at all costs, like the Falklands. Neither partner has given it a thought for years, but let some outsider come barging in as though he owned the place and it’s war. Perhaps I had been too forward, I thought, taken too much for granted. After what had happened the previous evening exquisite delicacy had seemed uncalled for.
    ‘I assumed you wanted me to come. Why did you