The Goldfish Bowl Read Online Free PDF Page A

coming from somewhere behind him, a sound so steady and insistent it might have been the beating of his heart.
    Turning, he saw the vague outline of a man sitting on the counter behind him. A surge of adrenalin made his heart leap. He dropped the umbrella and fumbled under his jacket for the chrome-plated Colt, at the same time crying out to Franklin, who brought the flashlight around in a wide, sweeping arc.
    “It’s about time you guys got here,” said Jack Willows, squinting into the glare.
     
     

 
    III
     
    INSPECTOR HOMER BRADLEY’S crab-apple green office was on the third floor of 312 Main. The room was furnished with a large cherry wood desk, one leather chair and two plain wooden ones, and a pair of grey metal three-drawer filing cabinets. There was only one window in the office. It was small, faced north, and — until the beginning of the week — had offered a clear and unobstructed view of the brick wall of the adjoining building, less than six inches away.
    When Bradley had first moved into the office, he’d found the almost total lack of natural light depressing, even a little claustrophobic. But during the five years he’d been in residence, he had gradually come to know every subtlety of coloration in the brick and every nuance of texture in the crumbling grey mortar. Without him ever knowing how or when it had happened, the wall had evolved into a complex work of art that never failed to change, however minutely, from one day to the next. On more than one occasion an unexpected visitor had entered the office to find Bradley standing at the little window, studying the wall as if it were a valuable and much-admired painting.
    And now the wall was gone. Reduced in less than a week to an untidy heap of rubble, a dusty memory.
    Bradley drained his coffee cup and put it down on the windowsill. With his hands in his pockets, he stared out over the brooding expanse of the harbour. The water was matt black, pounded flat by the rain. In the background, the greyish-blue bulk of the North Shore mountains seemed to crouch under the sagging, bloated belly of the clouds.
    The view was quiet as a photograph, wonderfully gloomy and morose, perfectly suited to Bradley’s mood. Reluctantly, he went over to his desk and sat down. A dozen colour photographs lay spread out on his blotter. Alice Palm gazed incuriously up at him through a dozen sets of glazed and foggy eyes. He shuffled the photographs into a neat pile and put them to one side. Glancing up, he caught Jack Willows watching him. The expression in Willows’ eyes wasn’t all that different from Alice Palm’s. He looked bored, as if he was waiting for a bus. He was leaning against the crab-apple wall, his hands folded across his chest. During the five long minutes Bradley had kept him waiting, he hadn’t said a word or moved an inch. The boy was on his best behaviour, and Bradley knew why. He leaned forward in his chair and flipped open the lid of the Haida-carved cedar humidor his wife had given him on 24th January 1982, the day their divorce had been finalized. He chose a cigar, fished a big wooden kitchen match out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and lit up. When he had the cigar burning evenly, he waved the match into extinction and flipped it into the metal wastebasket next to his desk. Willows, a reformed smoker, stared impassively into the middle distance. No need to offer the box around.
    There was a light knock on the door. It swung open and a young woman walked confidently into the office. He had never seen her before, but Bradley recognized her immediately: her file had been languishing in his in-tray for the better part of a month.
    “Parker?”
    Claire Parker nodded, and shut the door.
    Bradley motioned towards the wooden chairs. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”
    Parker glanced at Willows, back to Bradley. “No thanks, I’d rather stand.”
    Bradley shrugged, a little irritated but not letting it show. According to the