The Amulet Read Online Free PDF Page B

path down to the side of the Kelvin where I stopped and lit a cigarette. I didn't tarry long, though. Liz and I had spent a lot of time in this area, and I'd done enough wallowing for one day. I followed the footpath up into Maryhill.
    As I climbed away from Byres Road, the houses became more rundown, and the shops started to sport graffiti and metal shutters. Rubbish lay exposed in thick black plastic bags that had been ripped by dogs, seagulls, desperate drunks and drug-addicts. The faces of the people were more pinched, more pockmarked, and young people loitered in packs, daring me to look at them the wrong way.
    Yet even here reminded me of Liz. Where I had seen losers and down-and-outs, she had seen poverty and the downside of the class system. She had nearly brought me round to her way of thinking, but her death had brought my education to a halt.
    There, I'd done it. I'd thought about her again.
    Maybe wee Jimmy Allen would improve my mood.
    * * *

I had lied yesterday when I told Mrs. Dunlop about the phone book. Jimmy and I had been playing a game for nearly five years now.
    When I started out, it was as 'Adam's Detective Services'. Jimmy was running a 'cat and wife finding' service called 'Allen's Detective Services'. He rang me up to complain that I'd usurped his position in the phone book. We'd met for a drink, got on well together, then I found he had become 'Adams Detection Services'. I countered with 'Adams Detection Outsourcing', and we were off and running.
    I'd given up early last year at "Adams Detective Agency", but Jimmy had got the bug. He got fed up explaining to everybody why he was using the name 'Adams', and started working his way down the 'Acs', then the 'Abs'. I noticed as I approached his 'office'-the end block of a Victorian warehouse-that 'Abracadabra-we can do magic' had already been badly painted out and replaced by 'Abacus Detection-let us add it up for you'. I rang his doorbell and waited while he closed down his extensive security systems. Eventually the door opened and his small head poked through as small a gap as he would allow.
    "Oh. It's you, Derek. I wondered when I'd see you."
    He opened the door to let me in. By the time I had locked the door behind me and turned round he was already halfway across the barn towards his 'office'.
    Jimmy wasn't a private detective, or rather, he wasn't just a private detective. He was an antique dealer, a pawnbroker on the grand scale, and, rumor had it, a part-time fence for anything that wouldn't draw too much heat. He had been doing them all for more than fifty years, and his 'collection' had never stopped growing.
    Above me in the rafters hung musical instruments, stuffed animals, shop mannequins and fur coats. The floor area was a series of aisles: white goods and televisions to my left, books on shelves along all four walls, modern sofas and chairs to my right, and antique furniture ahead of me. I also knew that there was a hidden cellar where Jimmy kept gold watches, rings, gemstones, and enough diamonds to keep an Amsterdam jeweler happy for decades.
    Jimmy himself looked even more bent than usual. A chronic back problem had got worse over the last few years so that he now seemed to be permanently staring at the floor. He must have been in his late eighties, but he hadn't slowed down any. In fact, if you believed him, he still participated in a full and very imaginative sex life.
    If that was true, it had more to do with his chat and his easy way of making you laugh than his physical attributes. He was about five-two, and seven stone soaking wet. He had a hooked nose of which an eagle would have been proud, a liver-spotted scalp that resembled a map of the Hebridean Islands, and a grey goatee beard that looked like each hair had been glued on individually. He reminded me of a gnome from one of the Old Norse tales, or a leprechaun that had gone to seed. I laughed at that thought, and the sound echoed around me, causing sympathetic noises from