Free Hard Rain by David Rollins Page B

above the heads of the crowd and everyone cheered their approval.
    ‘Yes, yes!’ she replied, again using her fingers as scissors.
    Masters managed to disengage herself from the dancing. ‘C’mon,’ she shouted. ‘Let’s get out of here. This place has gone mad.’
    We stepped out the door and closed it, sealing off most of the noise behind us. I noted that the weather had warmed up a little and the wind had dropped. My jacket and T-shirt were now able to cope with what remained. ‘Do you know what all that was about?’ I asked Masters as we stood for a moment to get our bearings.
    ‘Yep,’ she replied, zipping up against the cold. ‘The boy had been circumcised. That’s a big deal hereabouts.’ She threw me a wry smile. ‘You got a problem with that?’
    ‘Me? Problem? I think it’s great that the penis is celebrated. There should be more of it. There should be a World Penis Day. I can see it being a hit back home in the Bible Belt.’
    I stepped off the sidewalk to hail a cab. It was coming up to 11:00hours – time to put in an appearance at the scene where Colonel Portman had been julienned by a crazed Veg-O-Matic.
    Ten minutes later we were in a cab crawling along streets where the folks who were loaded lived – lawns and walls and towering gates with intercoms. Even the trees looked snooty. Overhead a massive suspension bridge joining two continents blocked out the sun. I was busy making architectural comparisons between the homes on either side of the street when Masters spoke.
    ‘So, you didn’t answer my question.’
    ‘Didn’t I?’ I replied.
    ‘No, you didn’t.’
    ‘Hey, look at that pink building with the columns,’ I said, attempting a diversion. I knew where Masters was going. ‘You could cut that into slices and serve it at a wedding reception.’ Duh – cake . . . marriage . . . fiancés . . . Colonel Dick Wad.
    ‘I asked you whether you knew Richard Wadding.’
    The cab pulled to a stop. We paid and got out.
    ‘Well, do you?’ she asked again.
    I compared the address of the residence in front of me with the one scribbled in my notebook. I didn’t need to do that – check we had the right house. This was Portman’s place, all right. How many others in the street were guarded by uniformed policemen behind portable bulletproof shields? I couldn’t stall any longer. ‘Yeah, I’m familiar with a guy by that name. From a rich family been farming cotton down in Mississippi for half-a-dozen generations?’
    ‘Yes, that’s him.’
    ‘Then you’re going to marry a known fuckwit,’ I informed her.
    ‘What?’ She was staring at me, her cheeks suddenly red and her hands moving to her hips, unsure about whether she’d heard it right. But she had, she knew she had, and she also knew she didn’t want to hear me repeat it. ‘Jesus!’ she said, and spun away like a twister off up the worn stone steps to the front door.

Six
    M asters flashed her badge at the two uniformed officers armed with weathered, early-model MP5 sub-machine guns who were holding the fort. The men discussed our arrival between them before unlocking the door. Masters stomped past them. I showed my shield and followed her in, one of the uniforms in tow behind me.
    It was dark inside. A wide stairway with ornate carved banisters climbed upwards. A radio was playing somewhere. I did a circuit of the ground floor, which was empty, and arrived back at the stairway. From information I’d already seen, I knew this to be a three-storey house that was three centuries old, arranged around a central courtyard. The house was cool and still and smelt of various chemical solvents doing battle with aromas that most people fortunately never have to experience. I followed those smells up the stairs to the top floor. They grew stronger with each step, along with the radio’s volume.
    I heard laughter and voices. A woman was singing along tunelessly to a radio, or maybe it was the tune that was tuneless. I came down a