The Night Watchman Read Online Free PDF

I spoke absently; I’d already spotted the dead man sprawled on the plush white rug centring the living room.
    I stepped inside. A grey sock had been stuffed in the victim’s mouth and kept in place with a necktie wound twice around his head and knotted. It was cobalt blue with scarlet stripes, and it had been tied so tightly that his lips had been stretched far back, making his nose stick out grotesquely, like the proboscis of an insect. He was lying on his belly facing a faded yellow wall covered with museum-quality paintings, including a small one by Paula Rego of a prim-looking girl force-feeding a monkey. A fluffy green towel was tied around his waist, and his blue dress-shirt was unbuttoned. A blood-fringed bullet hole discoloured its back. He was short and stocky, with large, powerful hands. His grey hair was thick and closely cropped. He looked a bit like Pablo Picasso.
    Five characters of Asian writing were scripted on the wall behind him, each letter about the size of my thumb:. They were a familiar shade of brown – the colour of dried blood. As I traced them with my eyes, a pounding headache started in my head, which meant that I might soon lose track of myself. To remain where I was – and who I was – I concentrated hard on the dead man.
    What appeared to be pinkish yogurt had been smeared across his cheek and left ear; two empty Adagio packages – strawberry-flavoured – had been tossed on the carpet. I’d have guessed he was forty-five or fifty, but it was difficult to tell; death always made bodies appear wax-like to me – an illusion my mind conjures up as protection, I’ve been told by our police psychologist.
    The victim’s wrists were bound behind his back with thick, white nylon rope. A pool of blood had soaked into the carpeting.
    Making sure to keep my eyes off the thick stain, I knelt beside him. I lifted his arm. From its level of grudging flexibility, I knew that rigor mortis had reached its peak a few hours earlier and was beginning to ease up. Under the towel I confirmed what my nose already suspected about how deep his final panic had been.
    The tag on the necktie read Zara, a clothing store with shops at nearly every mall in Portugal. The price tag was still on: 19.95 euros. Keeping it on seemed a message sent to me by the killer about the cheapness of the victim’s life.
    I probed at the sock in his mouth with my pencil. It was jammed in tight, which meant it would’ve made it nearly impossible for him to breathe or swallow. The tie had torn both corners of his mouth, which was crusted with blood. He wouldn’t have been able to scream or even beg for his life.
    Sure enough, the bluish-grey tinge to his lips meant he’d suffocated. As I put myself in his place, my balls contracted and my throat went dry, and when Luci touched my shoulder, I jumped. Astonishingly, my headache was gone, and I had the impression that I’d moved back a foot or more from the victim. I looked down into my hands. Gabriel hadn’t written any message to me; instead, he’d drawn a stick figure surrounded by a circle of twelve dots, the Sioux sign for a threat that has you cornered.

Chapter 3
    The murderer steers me through the house until I stand just where he wants, staring at the finality of his work. Kneeling, I search the dead man’s misshapen face for the why of this death, listening hard for what he is unable to tell me. And although I’m aware that his blue-grey lips will never shape another word, the expectation of hearing a whisper of his final thoughts waits patiently inside me, hands folded in its lap, unwilling to walk away. Proof, I suppose, that I have never been able to accept the cold, one-sided deal that death makes with us.
    A confession: when I tiptoe through my insomnia at night, I occasionally catch myself searching for shapes in Ernie’s paintings that will prove to be coded messages from my mother. If she were still alive, I’d understand her better now – and be able to offer