The One a Month Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

was called an office. In size, its measurements were somewhere between a solitary-confinement prison cell and a broom closet. But it did have a desk (dilapidated), two chairs (in need of artificial lower limbs), a window (as mucky as a Victorian street urchin’s face) and a prototype computer (as slow as motorway gridlock).
    The internet had become an invaluable tool for research. I Googled Theodore Pope and quickly came across a comprehensive biography, the most important feature his death three years ago, aged eighty. Grace had joined him eight months later. The gravity of the grave was a fearsome force in uniting separated loved ones. Never mind, the background was useful.
    Richard had been engaged twice, once when he was nineteen and then four years later, while at Oxford.
Interesting
. His first fiancée was an Eleanor Reti, daughter of the mayor of Austin. They’d been dating since the age of fifteen, when they’d been students at the same expensive co-ed boarding school. Mayor Reti called the engagement ‘a match made in heaven’. Theodore Pope said it would ‘unite two important and influential Texas families’.
Spoken like a true cold-blooded, mercenary shit!
Grace believed the couple were ‘made for one another’ and would ‘produce beautiful babies’.
Yuck
! Six months later, it was off. According to Theodore, Richard had come to the conclusion that he was ‘too young to make such a lifelong commitment’. Eleanor and Richard had broken off their engagement ‘amicably, no hard feelings’, and remained ‘the best of friends’.
    Fiancée number two was a Jackie Reuben, whose father was a state Republican politician. Jackie was three years older than Richard and was an interpreter at the United Nations. She could speak twelve languages, but joked that she had difficulty with American/English. She met Richard in Washington at aRepublican Party ding, but that relationship had cooled and collapsed shortly after he graduated at Oxford. After that, the only mention of Richard was that he had gone into ‘government service’ – camouflage for every institutionalized sin one could dream of, especially in nightmares.
    I started making my own notes.
    What were the REAL reasons for the curtailment of the engagements?
    Where are those ex-fiancées now?
    Did Richard Pope ever marry? If so, is he still married?
    Any children to his name – acknowledged or otherwise?
    What kind of childhood did he have – emotionally?
    Any evidence of abuse in his past – towards him or against others?
    How strong was his relationship with his mother?
    Was his father overbearing, over-demanding, unbearable?
    Back in my hutch, the cheap digital timepiece on my wrist alerted me to the fact that a mid-afternoon drink was overdue. I was fast finding my way around and had already located the two most important features of the building – the men’s room and the refreshment robot. Like most police-station vending machines, this one tried to rip me off, promising me change but reneging on the deal. Not until I’d given it a kicking did it cough up. Nothing in this life was ever straightforward. Going nuclear for one’s most basic rights had become the norm.
    Returning to the file, I again focused on the first case, the murder of Louise Redman. A portrait photograph, presumably from a family album, showed a strikingly attractive redhead. I always flinched at these kinds of happy-family pics in the context of a crime so hideous. Although the colour photo was more than thirty years old, none of Louise’s vitality had faded with the passage of time. She seemed so alive, as if trying tospeak to me, to tell me something of what happened and who robbed her of the rest of her entitlement.
You owe me
, she was saying.
I was having such fun. I had so many plans. I was going
places. I was going to have kids. By now, I’d be a grandma, a success
story, if it hadn’t been for that bastard who took me by surprise. You
now know who it was. Go