Orchestrated Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

practised it on its own kind. He felt inexplicably unnerved at the thought. For
     some reason this particular young woman refused to take on the status of a corpse but remained a person in his mind, her white
     body floating there like the memory of someone he had known. She was in the back of his head, like the horrors seen out of
     the corner of the eye in childhood: like the man with no face behind the bedroom door after Mum had put the light out. He
     knew he mustn’t look at it, or it would get him; and yet the half-admitted shape called the eye irresistibly.
    He tried to concentrate on the radio programme. A listener had just called in, apparently – to judge by the background noise
     – from some place a long way off that was suffering from a hailstorm, or possibly an earthquake. A distorted voice said, ‘Hullo
     Dive, this is Eric from Hendon. I am a first-time caller. I jussliketsay, I lissnayour programme every day, iss reelly grite.’
     Slider remembered being told that soundwaves never die, simply stream off into space for ever and ever. What would they make
     of that, out on Alpha Centauri Beta?
    He was going home early in the hope of scoring some Brownie points after the storms of the last few days. It struck him as
     a dismal sort of reason for going home, and he thought enviously of Atherton heading back to his bijou littlecottage, a few delectable things to eat, and a stimulating evening with a new young woman to be conquered. Not that Slider
     wanted stimulation or a new young woman – he was too tired these days for the thought of illicit sex to do other than appal
     him; but peace and comfort would have been nice to look forward to.
    But the house, which he hated, was Irene’s, decorated and furnished to her requirements, not his. Wasn’t it the same for all
     married men? Probably. Probably. All the same, the three-piece suite seemed to have been designed for looking at, not sitting
     on. All the furniture was like that: it rejected human advances like a chilly woman. It was like living in one of those display
     houses at the Ideal Home Exhibition.
    And Irene cooked like someone meting out punishment. No, that wasn’t strictly fair. The food was probably perfectly wholesome
     and well-balanced nutritionally, but it never seemed to taste of anything. It was joyless food, imbued with the salt water
     of tears. The subconscious knowledge that she hated cooking would have made him feel guilty about evincing any pleasure in
     eating it, even if there had been any.
    When they were first married, Slider had done a lot of the cooking in their little bedsit in Holland Park. He liked trying
     out new dishes, and they had often laughed together over the results. He examined the memory doubtfully. It didn’t seem possible
     that the Irene he was going home to was the same Irene who had sat cross-legged on the floor and eaten chilli con carne out
     of a pot with a tablespoon. She didn’t like him to cook now – she thought it was unmanly. In fact, she didn’t like him going
     into the kitchen at all. If he so much as made a cup of tea, she followed him round with a J cloth and a tight-lipped expression,
     wiping up imaginary Spillings.
    When he got home at last, it was all effort wasted, because Irene was not there. She had gone out to play bridge with the
     Harpers and Ernie Newman, which, had he thought hard enough, he should have known, because she had told him last week about
     it. Slider had said sooner her than him, and she’d asked why in a dangerous sort of way, and he’d said because Newman was
     an intolerable, stuffed-shirted, patronising, constipated prick. Irene primmed her lips and said there was no need for him
     to bring bowels into it, he wasn’ttalking to one of his low Met friends now, and if he spent less time with them and more with decent people he’d be able to
     hold a civilised conversation once in a while.
    Then they had had a row, which ended with Irene complaining that they