Free The Dark Chronicles by Jeremy Duns Page A

looking up sheepishly. ‘It’s just that… No. Never mind, carry on.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Well… it just struck me that it’s very unlike Chief. He’s usually in well before nine on Mondays, isn’t he?’
    Osborne inspected a fingernail, then nibbled at it viciously. ‘Has he called in?’ he asked Smale, who was performing his usual duties as the head of Chief’s secretariat in parallel with his new role. Smale shook his head.
    ‘Perhaps traffic’s bad,’ I said. ‘God knows this place is hard enough to get to from the centre of town.’
    Osborne nodded: the old buildings had been a short walk from his flat.
    ‘It is a little peculiar,’ said Pritchard suddenly, the traces of his Morningside accent amplified by the room’s acoustics. ‘He called me in to see him last night but wasn’t there by the time I arrived.’
    ‘Oh?’ said Osborne, turning his head. ‘What did he want to see you about?’
    ‘The Slavin file – at any rate, his message was attached to that.’
    ‘What time did you get the message?’ asked Osborne.
    ‘Around seven. I’d just come back from Enfield and left straight away, but the house was deserted when I arrived.’
    ‘Perhaps he’d fallen asleep,’ I suggested.
    ‘I don’t think so. I checked pretty thoroughly.’
    Yes, I thought – you did.
    ‘I was worried something might have happened,’ Pritchard continued, ‘but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the way to Barnes’s cottage and didn’t want to call in a Full Alert without ample reason. I suddenly remembered Chief sometimes spends weekends in London with his daughter, Vanessa. I called her flat, and her roommate – a charming young Australian girl – told me she’d just left for a club in Soho, so I thought I’d drive in to see if Chief was with her – or if she knew where he’d got to.’
    ‘And did she?’ asked Godsal.
    ‘No. She also thought he was out at Swanwick and was equally mystified. But I bumped into Paul there.’
    The table’s eyes turned to me.
    ‘Caught red-handed,’ I said, grinning sheepishly. ‘I’ve a soft spot for jazz.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Pritchard, ‘is that what it was?’ Then, pointedly: ‘She seemed quite taken with you.’
    I did my best to blush.
    ‘Perhaps we should give him a call,’ said Osborne, rescuing me.‘Perhaps he’s simply slept in.’ He nodded at Smale quickly, before anyone could dwell too much on the unlikely image of Chief failing to set his alarm clock, and Smale walked briskly across the room and picked up a telephone sitting on one of the filing cabinets. As he dialled, I imagined the ring echoing in the empty house. To fill the silence, people conspicuously shuffled pieces of paper, fiddled with pen tops and suddenly realized they had lost their glasses cases, until Smale eventually replaced the receiver and shook his head, and we all went back to staring at him.
    ‘Call Barnes,’ said Osborne, and waved his hand to indicate he should do it elsewhere.
    Smale nodded and slithered out of the door. And that was that: the ball was rolling. Within a couple of hours, a team of specialists would begin prowling through Chief’s living room with dogs and cameras and ink pads. Looking for evidence, looking for blood. I’d carried out last night’s work in a kind of concentrated trance. Now I was gripped by panic as the reality of it came back to me, and a series of possible lapses leapt through my mind. Had I swept every inch of the carpet? Covered the bullet-mark adequately? I had a sudden flash of Chief’s dark, frozen eyes staring up at me from the floor – could I really have removed all trace of that horror?
    Osborne clapped his great hands together. ‘I think we should start. I know some of you have to prepare for the Anguilla meeting later. There is only one item on today’s agenda – the Slavin dossier, which I trust you have all now read. All other matters will be covered in our next meeting.’ He turned to Pritchard.