In the Morning I'll Be Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

balding, slightly harassed-looking guy who would make an ideal “innocent bystander injured in shooting” story for the news. He was wearing a blue suit and his shoes were shined to autistic levels of perfection. He was about twenty-five. The woman was brown haired, pale, thin, grey eyed. Somewhere around thirty. No lipstick, make-up, jewelry. She was wearing a black sweater, a short black skirt, and black low-heeled shoes. She wasn’t pretty, not classically so, but I could see how some men would lose their heads for her (some women too). There was an intensity, a self-possession to her that was uncommon.
    I put the .38 back in my dressing-gown pocket and opened the door.
    “Mr. Duffy?” the man asked with an English accent.
    “Yes.”
    “May we come in for a moment?”
    For just a sec I wondered whether they were, in fact, a really good hit team. It would be the sort of thing a really good team would do. Ask whether they could come in and when the door was safely closed and your back turned, plug you . . . but they were almost certainly those English Jehovah’s Witnesses that I’d heard everyone complaining about down at the fish and chip shop.
    “Aye, go into the living room, just to the right there. Do you want tea?”
    Both of them shook their heads. Perhaps, like Mormons, they didn’t drink tea or coffee.
    “Are you sure you don’t want any? The kettle’s on,” I shouted.
    “No thank you,” the woman said.
    I made myself a mug, poured a packet of chocolate digestives onto a plate, and carried it back into the living room.
    She had taken the leather chair and he had been relegated to the sofa.
    They took a biscuit each. Missionaries didn’t deserve the Velvet Underground so I put on Lou Reed’s fuck-you masterpiece, Metal Machine Music , an album of feedback loops and screeching guitars.
    “Do we have to have the music?” the man asked.
    I nodded. “Of course! In case they’re listening,” I said.
    “In case who’s listening?” the man wondered.
    I pointed vaguely at the sky and put my finger to my lips. I sat down, dipped a chocky biscuit in the tea, and ate.
    “So . . . Jehovah,” I said.
    “Who?” the man asked, and blinked so slowly you wondered whether Lou Reed had given him a mini-stroke.
    I brought the teacup to my lips and nodded at the lass. I looked into her strange pale eyes and suddenly remembered that we had met before.
    I froze in mid-drink. You know poker, don’t you? So you know what it’s like when you’re playing Texas hold ’em and you’re sitting there with a three and a five off suit and it’s the big blinds and you’re short stacked and the dealer spreads the flop and it’s a two, a four, and a six . . . and just like that you’ve gone from the shit-box seat to the bird-dog seat in the blink of an eye. The blink of a bloody eye . . .
    And now I was feeling slightly foolish sitting here in my dressing gown and fluffy slippers.
    “We’ve met, haven’t we?” I said to her.
    “I don’t think so,” she said in a refined English accent with an ever so slight foreign echo to it.
    I got up and turned off Mr. Reed. “Oh yeah, we’ve met before. Not a hundred yards from here in Victoria Cemetery, in 1982. You left me a note about a case I was working on. You’re MI5, aren’t you?” I said.
    Neither of them had any idiosyncrasies that would render them vivid but that was the point, wasn’t it? I had only seen her for a fleeting moment and her hair was a different color, but it was her. The fact that I was right was communicated only by a momentary eye twitch and a slight pursing of the lips.
    “Any chance of getting some names?” I asked.
    “I’m Tom,” the man claimed.
    “And I’m Kate,” the woman claimed.
    I took a big gulp of the sweet tea and set it down on the coffee table.
    “So, Tom, Kate,” I began. “Exactly how badly are you fucked and why do you think I can help you get un-fucked? There are plenty of coppers. Plenty of good coppers.