A Life in Pieces by Dave Stone & Paul Sutton & Joseph Lidster

Author:Dave Stone & Paul Sutton & Joseph Lidster [Stone, Dave & Sutton, Paul & Lidster, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Book, Prose, Anthology, Short Story
ISBN: 9781844351084
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2004-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

Four

19.30 Boyling stood over the dead body of his teacher and mentor Andrew Oleson, incredulous tears streaking his face. Acél was elsewhere in the apartment.

He’d arrived early at the usual meeting place two blocks over, then Acél had shown up right on time. He hadn’t tried to flirt with her in the clumsy way he was hoping she’d sooner or later find endearing: she’d had enough of that when he’d caught up with her last night. To the puppies be playing with the tigers in your country?’ she’d asked, sending Boyling weak at the knees with passion and depression in roughly equal amounts. ‘I think no, no?’ The eternal optimist in him could swear it caught the hint of a teasing smile on her lips – those full, dark, moist lips – but he didn’t get another chance because she’d left him in the street, wet and unrequited.

At the meeting place this evening she’d quickly become concerned at Oleson’s absence. It was strange that Windcott wasn’t there either: he was usually the first to arrive at a divvy-up. Acél had refused to wait more than ten minutes then run off to Oleson’s apartment. Boyling hadn’t been able to keep up so when he’d got there she was already searching the rooms.

And Oleson was dead.

A soft small hand rested now on Boyling’s shoulder. ‘He was the good man,’ Acél told him quietly, heartbreakingly. Then she continued more formally. ‘The Purpura Pawn it isn’t here. We go to Windcott.’ But Boyling didn’t know she was there: he was staring at Oleson’s body and telling himself that everything would be okay, just as long as he could be brave enough to not look away this time.

20.00 The Luxus was the largest casino in the city. Matthew Barrister had never stayed in any of the main structure’s two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight rooms, certainly had never seen the inside of one of its two hundred and thirty-eight Jacuzzi suites, but he knew what it was to lose money on the floors. From the hovering anti-grav slot machines on the ground floor beyond the foyer (part of the attraction of the Luxus was that it had reconstructed the old coin-operated machines from five hundred years ago), through the card tables crowding the encircling mezzanine, and up onto the first-floor gallery with its roulette wheels and craps stations, the Minister had dropped money in style. The layout of the vast gambling area was almost as intoxicating as the beauty of the circulating women and the drinks they served: all three gaming levels were open to the central space so even if you were losing you could hear the whoops of someone winning somewhere else, and if you were one of the winners you could survey those around and continue in self-encapsulating superiority. Glass and mirrored elevators went to each level at regular intervals around the walls, going up through each floor and eventually disappearing into the ceiling. Above that were the accommodation levels, which he knew sprawled out to both sides and far behind this playing area.

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