Bad Penny Blues (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 3) by Roberts Barrie

Author:Roberts, Barrie [Roberts, Barrie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

People come to lawyers because they’re worried and they expect their lawyer to wipe away all their worries like magic. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told a client, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mr Bloggs.’ ‘But I can’t help worrying about it,’ they say, I give them a confidence-inducing smile, ‘I can’t stop you thinking about it — that’s perfectly natural — but there’s really no point in worrying about it. That won’t get you anywhere.’

Nor is there and it won’t. If you can do something about a situation, then think about it and do whatever it is; if you can’t — well, forget about it. So after giving my clients that very sound advice I go home and worry about what I’m going to do about their case. Which is fair enough, really, because that’s what my job is. The trouble comes with my own problems. I haven’t got anyone to smile warmly at me and say, ‘Don’t worry about it, Chris Tyroll — it’ll all come out right in the end,’ and if I did have I probably wouldn’t believe them anyway.

The more time that passed after we received the bomb threat, the more I worried. I didn’t care at all for Sheila’s image of herself staked out like bait to lure our madman out of the undergrowth, because when he crawled out of the brush he’d be wielding a bomb.

Sheila and I had been bombed before and I didn’t much fancy another go. Anyone with any sense has a strong strain of cowardice. Nor did I fancy just sitting around waiting for it to happen. As the days passed and nothing went bang, I got more and more tense. Whether Sheila was equally worried I simply couldn’t tell. Much of the time she spent staring at an Internet screen as though it was a crystal ball and would somehow reveal the entire history of all her JSs. Much of my time I spent worrying about our situation instead of my clients’ cases, smoking too much and drinking a little extra. Every night, before I had a chance of sleeping, I had to patrol the street, the alley alongside the garden, the back lane and the garden itself. Stupid really, because our maniac had always struck when we were away from home. It wasn’t at all likely that I’d bump into him in the alley toting a large black spherical object with a smoking fuse. Still, I had to do it.

I was lying sleepless in bed one night when my partner poked me in the behind.

‘What are you doing on Sunday?’ she asked.

‘Why? Do you want a date?’

‘Not the way you are at the moment,’ she said.

‘Thanks a million! It may have escaped your notice that I’m somewhat concerned about the real possibility of losing you to the machinations of some explosive nutter!’

‘We’ve been bombed before,’ she said.

‘If you say that once more, I’ll scream,’ I said. ‘You also appear to have forgotten that last

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.