The Skeleton Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

step away from Tessa, letting her friend’s hand fall from her shoulder. ‘I love that you think so much of me you have to come up with some noble theory to explain why my lover walked out on me.’ She looked around the room, taking in the dancers, the talkers, the drinkers. The vista of the people who loved and respected had no hope of chasing the sorrow away. ‘Whatever I was to him, Tessa, it wasn’t home. That’s why he left. Mitja just went home.’

4
     
    A lan Macanespie had once confided to a friend that he was not a man given to introspection. His pal had guffawed, almost choking on his beer. When his coughing fit subsided, he said, ‘Christ, if I looked like you, I’d take introspection over the view in the mirror every time.’ It was a point of view that had been reinforced when Macanespie had split up with his long-term girlfriend a couple of years later.
    ‘Next time I want to live with a ginger pig, I’ll buy a Tamworth,’ had been her parting shot. Increasingly, when he looked in his shaving mirror, he found it hard to disagree. His ginger hair had grown paler and more sparse, his stubble coarser. His eyes seemed smaller because his face had become fatter. He didn’t want to think about what his body looked like; these days, there were no full-length mirrors anywhere in his flat. When she left, she told him he’d given up on himself. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d been right about that too.
    Macanespie didn’t like the way that made him feel. He realised that his career had stalled, but that didn’t mean he’d shirked his job at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. OK, investigating war criminals and helping to track them down wasn’t where he’d imagined his law degree would take him, but it was preferable to writing wills and conveyancing in some scummy wee town in the central belt of his native Scotland. He’d carved out a nice little niche in one of the grey areas between the Foreign Office and the Department of Justice and it suited him just fine. The worst thing about it was having to share an office with that miserable Welsh git Proctor.
    But all that might pale into insignificance if today went tits up. His previous boss, Selina Bryson, had what a more charitable man than Macanespie might have called a laissez-faire attitude to her ICTFY operators. Macanespie described it more pithily: ‘She couldn’t give a flying fuck what we do as long as we deliver results she can take credit for and we don’t fart at the ambassador’s cocktail receptions.’ But Selina was history and today the new boy was coming to wave a big stick at him and Proctor. Making them come into the office on a Saturday, just because he could.
    He might be lazy but Macanespie wasn’t stupid and he knew forewarned was forearmed. So he’d called one of his London drinking buddies and sought the low-down on the new boss. Jerry had been happy to oblige on the promise of a bottle of Dutch genever the next time Macanespie left The Hague for London.
    ‘Wilson Cagney,’ Macanespie said. ‘Tell me about him.’
    ‘What have you heard so far?’
    Macanespie made a sardonic face. ‘Too young, too well dressed, too black.’
    Jerry laughed. ‘He’s older than he looks. He’s nearer forty than thirty. He’s got enough miles on the clock to dish out plenty of bother. He dresses Savile Row but the word is that he lives in a one-bedroomed shed in Acton and doesn’t drive. Spends all his readies on good suits and all his spare time in the office gym. Sad careerist bastard, basically.’
    ‘How did he climb the greasy pole? Merit? Backstabbing? Or trading on being black?’
    Jerry breathed in sharply. ‘I hope this is a secure line, mate, saying things like that. HR are bloody everywhere these days. He’s got the qualifications – law degree at Manchester, then a Masters in security and international law, according to our star-struck IT assistant. But he’s the only black face at his