The Dying Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

with more sensitivity and I apologise for being crass. Your remark that I denied myself everything but the truth was unscrupulous because you attacked me for what you suspect to be your own weakness. For the record, neither of us is that stupid. Thanks for dinner.

    Eyam X
    It was typical of him to write an apology that had the last word. The email remained in her inbox without being answered and was quickly buried as scores of new emails piled on top. But it stayed in her mind and she now recalled that she did write a long defence of her life at Calverts telling Eyam what she actually did; that for years after the crash her work was saving jobs and technology as huge sovereign funds took over struggling American companies, sacked thousands to make the numbers work and exploited or suppressed the innovations of those smaller companies. She said it was just dumb and narrow-minded of him not to see that this was important legal work, which was as much concerned with injustice as money.

    She never sent it. Then somehow it became too late to reply and a silence settled on their friendship that would turn out to be terminal, although at the back of her mind she’d always thought they’d make it up, and when he called that Saturday she had been really pleased, actually relieved.

    From the pocket in her purse she took out a slender wallet, which she flipped open to the two photographs. On the left was her husband Charlie Lockhart, dead from cancer, on the right her father, Sonny Koh, dead from suicide. She didn’t look at them often but she always kept the dead men in her life with her. They were always there. The little red diptych would now have to become a triptych of remembrance, as long as she could lay her hands on that picture of her and Eyam at Oxford, the only photograph she possessed of him.

    She stood the open frame on the bedside table and slid down into the bed to watch the footage of the riots that had been violently put down the year before. Suddenly it occurred to her that she was guilty of ignoring Eyam’s less attractive side - in particular his love of exercise of power. For some time before that dinner in New York she’d noticed him becoming colder, more removed and, she had to admit, objectionably pleased with his own opinions. Doubt made almost every personality acceptable to Kate. But as he rose higher and higher, Eyam had lost the ability to express the slightest worry about himself or his decisions. She had to confess that he had become a little boring. ‘You were a little bit of a prig,’ she said to the room.

    Eventually she slept. The following day she stayed in bed late watching the rooks plummet into the trees on the other side of the rocky spur, on which High Castle - complete with Norman fortress, square and church - stands like an Italian hill town. It was a fine and private place to do her grieving for David Eyam.

4

    The Prime Minister’s Spy

     
     
     
     
    Peter Kilmartin was certainly surprised. He arrived at Number Ten at nine forty-five p.m. on Monday evening, having been summoned five hours before, and was shown into the Cabinet Room by a brisk young woman who introduced herself as Jean. Temple was sitting at the prime minister’s place on the curved table in front of the fireplace, reading with his hand clutching his forehead. The cabinet secretary, Gus Herbert, stood back holding a red leather folder to his chest, while his free hand toyed with a signet ring. Temple looked up and removed the glasses that were so rarely seen in public. ‘Ah, Peter, good of you to come so quickly. I’ll be with you in a second.’

    Kilmartin and Herbert exchanged nods then both looked out through the two uncurtained windows at the end of the room. The dense drizzle of the last few days seemed to hang in the glare of the security lights. Some way off in the building there was a muffled whine of drilling, which Jean had explained to Kilmartin was caused by cabling work that could only been