Boiling a Frog by Christopher Brookmyre

Author:Christopher Brookmyre [Brookmyre, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Published: 1999-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Blackmail is such an ugly word

The fires of the Moundgate scandal had been burning for a while before David Sanderson came to the uncomfortable realisation that he had helped start them; still longer before he began to appreciate the full ramifications. His part in the crime - and he now understood just how large a crime - had been smaller than others', but he knew he had been complicit all the same. Someone else might have lit the fuse, but he had built the incendiary device. He'd been under no illusions about the fact that he was assisting Beadie in fucking somebody over - his pockets were five grand the heavier, and people seldom punted you that for your part in an act of benevolence - but at the time he had had no idea who; or how far-reaching the consequences would be.

His involvement had started a fortnight or so after that business in the papers about the MSP who got a vibrator stuck up his arse. Previously, David wouldn't have naturally chosen that as his chronological marker, but the connection with subsequent events now inescapably underlined its significance. He remembered he'd been indoors, eating a dodgy donner pizza from the three-in-one take-away place; there was nothing on telly that night, and he'd started watching Leon on the video again. It had just got to the good bit when the phone rang.

He didn't recognise the voice.

'Hello, is that Mr David Sanderson?'

'Yes,' he said tiredly. 'But I don't want a new fucking fitted kitchen.'

'Oh, that's not what I'm ringing about. I'm not selling, Mr Sanderson, I'm buying.'

'Buying what? Who is this?'

'Meet me at the main entrance to the Burrell Collection tomorrow at ten and I'll tell you all you need to know.'

'Gimme a fuckin' break. The Burrell Collection. Who is this?'

'I told you, meet me--'

'I heard what you said. Go and wind somebody else up, ya sad bastard.'

'Oh, I don't think I'm the one who would be considered a sad bastard. Not by the Pattaya police, anyway. Ten o'clock. Be there.'

137

David had been left holding on to the phone, trembling like a fucking Parkinson's sufferer. Those two words had reached straight into his abdomen, grabbed his guts and squeezed.

Pattaya police.

Who was this guy? How could he know? And more to the point, what did he want?

David didn't sleep a second that night. In fact, he was doing well to breathe. He'd buried all that stuff so far down in his mind that he'd almost convinced himself it happened to somebody else. But all it took was two words to exhume the lot. She was fourteen. Fourteen was old enough in some countries. Twelve in others. Anyway, he hadn't known - how could he? Christ, she'd looked twice that if she was a day. They all did, and the fucking Thai cops knew it. That was why he got off with a fine. It was all in the past, though. All left behind, thousands of miles away, never to reach these shores.

Until now.

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