The Prayer of the Night Shepherd Read Online Free PDF Page B

domestic island units were the Isle of Wight this was Australia. Amber, who didn’t have any staff to speak of, was on her own, bending over a corner of the unit, adding something herbal and aromatic to the cauldron of hot chocolate. She looked up.
    ‘Is he all right?’
    ‘Basking in adulation.’
    ‘Yes, he’s quite good at that,’ Amber said. No sarcasm there; Amber didn’t do sarcasm.
    Last night, all wound-up before the guests came down for dinner, Ben had snarled that yeah, he might have done live theatre before, but that was over twenty years ago, and back then he didn’t have to work with school pantomime props and a bunch of crappy amateurs.
    ‘He was brilliant, Amber. Genuine massive applause – well, as massive as you can get from— Anyway, you’d have thought there was a lot more of them, to hear it.’
    Amber was wearily rubbing her eyes, shoulder-length ash-blonde hair tinted pink by the halogen lights. She was probably about fifteen years younger than Ben, maybe mid-thirties, but more... well, more mature. She was wearing a big pink sweater and an apron with a cartoon cat on it.
    ‘Must’ve taken for ever to plan,’ Jane said. ‘Like the gas mantles – I didn’t even know they worked.’
    Amber looked worried. ‘Some kind of bottled gas. I don’t like to think of the safety regulations he’s broken. Plus messing with the trip switches last night to make sure the normal lights didn’t work – I mean, what if one of those old women had fallen down the stairs?’
    ‘Well, they didn’t. It was brilliant.’ Jane liked Amber moaning to her; you only moaned to people you could trust. ‘Oh yeah – good news – only one of the punters correctly identified both the murderer and the motive, so that’s just the one bottle of champagne to give away.’
    Amber blinked. ‘You did phone your mother, didn’t you?’
    ‘I did phone my mother. And there wasn’t a problem about staying over.’
    ‘Because I’d hate—’
    ‘There was no problem.’
    ‘It’s very good of you, Jane,’ Amber said. ‘The girl we had before wouldn’t do Saturday nights. They don’t seem to want weekend jobs any more.’
    ‘Jesus, Amber,’ Jane said, ‘this isn’t a job .’
    A holiday, more like. A regular weekend break, and they gave you money at the end of it. Well, usually.
    At first, Jane had thought Amber was a bit like Mum, but now she saw a clear difference. Amber’s modesty came out of this essential self-belief; she’d handled the food end of two significant London restaurants fronted by flash gits who treated customers like morons, knowing that she was the reason they could afford the arrogance. Flash gits faded fast, but Amber was never going to be out of work, Ben had remarked, talking about it to guests in the bar, naming names. I like to think I rescued her from that little scumbag. Can you bear to watch his crappy TV show?
    To Ben, virtually everything on the box, including the news and weather, had become crap from the day he finally negotiated his severance deal with BBC Drama. A couple of weeks ago, a Face from Casualty or EastEnders – someone vaguely familiar from something Jane wouldn’t have watched if the alternative was the Open University – had come to stay overnight at the hotel, accompanied by a gorgeous-looking woman who sat propping up her smile while the Face and Ben got rat-arsed and ranted on for hours about the bunch of totally talentless twats who ran the Corporation these days.
    ‘So who was the winner, Jane?’ Amber started setting out empty mugs on the wooden trolley.
    ‘Oh – guy with white hair? Like Steve Martin without the humour?’
    ‘Dr Kennedy. He’s the serious expert. The others are just here for fun. Kennedy’s written books on Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. He knows a lot.’
    ‘I thought Ben knew a lot.’
    ‘Ben? All Ben’s ever done is produce The Missing Casebook for the BBC. You’re probably too young—’
    ‘No, I think I saw a