The Burning Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

option.
    And sometimes, she suspected, even when there was.
    Why they were called to him she did not know, but she found random phrases drifting through her consciousness when she considered the matter: stalking horse, Judas goat. Bait. There was an otherworldliness to him at times, the same feeling that might be inspired by a figure glimpsed in a churchyard at the closing of the day, slowly fading into the dusk as it walked away, so that one was uncertain whether one had merely come across another mourner in the process of departing or a presence less corporeal. Perhaps it was impossible to look at as much pain and death as this man had and not have something of the next world make an impact upon you, assuming that you believed in a world beyond this one. She did, and nothing in her encounters with the detective had made her doubt her faith. He wore aftershave that smelled of incense, and she thought that this was apt.
    But he could blend in. He could not follow his chosen profession otherwise. It was not a veneer of normality that he wore. It coexisted alongside his strangeness. Even now, dressed in his smart black suit, he carried a brown paper bag in his right hand. In it, she knew, would be muffins. Muffins were her weakness. For the right muffin, at the right time, she might even betray her fiancé, and she loved him deeply.
    She realized that she was toying with her engagement ring, slipping it on and off her finger, and she could not remember if it was the thought of Brennan, the man who gave the ring to her, that had caused her to touch it, or if she had begun twisting it when the detective appeared. She decided that she did not want to think about it, although this, too, she would tell the detective, at another time and in another place.
    He crossed the lot and walked up the damp path that led to her building. As he did so, it seemed to her that the heads of the black birds turned to follow his progress, perhaps attracted by the blackness of his suit, seeing in him one of their own. She wished that they would leave. She adjusted the blinds at the window, altering her field of vision, but the knowledge of the birds remained. They’re just birds, she thought: big black birds. This isn’t a movie. You’re not Tippi Hedren.
    She decided to force the birds from her mind. Perhaps she had been using their presence as a distraction, a means of delaying the conversation that was about to take place. She did not want him to refuse to help her, or her client. If he did, she would understand, and she would not think less of him, but she felt it was important that he agreed to involve himself. He had told her once that coincidences bothered him. The coincidences here were off the scale.
    She prepared to greet him. It was time.
    I passed through the reception area, barely glancing at the waiting man, and entered Aimee’s office. I placed the bag in front of her and opened it so that she could peer inside.
    ‘Charlie Parker, you are the very devil,’ she said, taking one of the pastries out. ‘Peach? They didn’t have raspberry?’
    ‘They had raspberry, but he who pays the baker calls the flavor.’
    ‘You’re telling me that you don’t like raspberry?’
    ‘I’m not telling you anything. It’s a muffin. It’s got peaches. Live with it. You know, I can see why Brennan is taking so long to add a gold band to that rock you’re playing with. Sometimes he probably wonders if he kept the receipt.’
    I watched her shift her hand quickly from the ring. To give it something else to do she picked at the muffin, even though I could see from her face that she had little enthusiasm for it. She could usually eat one any time of the day or night, but something had killed her appetite. She swallowed the fragment in her mouth, but ate no more. It seemed to taste too dry to her. She coughed and reached for the bottle of water that she always had on her desk.
    ‘If I find out he kept the receipt, I’ll kill him,’ she said,