In The Red by Clive Egleton

Author:Clive Egleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1990-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

14

Freeland couldn’t make up his mind whether it was the chink of grey light he could see in the gap between the curtains that had woken him or the fact that his feet were cold because the duvet had ended up on the floor. He turned over on to his left side to retrieve it and found himself gazing at an unfamiliar table lamp. For a panic-stricken moment he wondered where he was, then the voice of reason told him not to be such a damned fool. This was a single room on the third floor of the Hotel Movenpeck in Münster which the ever-efficient Anthea Clowes had booked for him. A calm, practical and eminently sensible woman, maybe she could advise him how to square things with Jenny?

He had booked a call to Lichfield within minutes of checking into the hotel the previous evening. Considering how many telephone exchanges were involved, it had come through very quickly and the line had been passably good too. He had asked after his father-in-law and had learned that Sidney Vail’s latest attack of angina had not been nearly as bad as Jenny’s mother had made out. On the other hand, his eleven-month-old son had developed a bit of a sniffle, which was hardly surprising. Like most houses in England, number 32 Chestnut Close was as cold as charity in winter and Mark was used to central heating.

He had told Jenny how much he missed her and how empty the house seemed when she wasn’t around, and he had meant every word. But Jenny had been sceptical and had asked him about Grothmann, and he hadn’t known how to answer that question. If he said he hadn’t bothered to see the former Feldwebel, she would know he was lying; if he told her the truth, she would be even more convinced that he was obsessed with the ghost of Chantal Kiffer. He had still been groping for the right answer when the line went dead; when he had tried to re-establish the connection, the international operator in England had told him the Lichfield number was engaged.

Freeland got out of bed, walked over to the window and drew back the curtains. Seven twenty-five: a cold grey dawn, the street lights still on, the waters of Aasee lake dark and forbidding, a thin covering of snow with a lot more to come if he was any judge of the weather. Jenny was right of course; he was obsessed with Chantal Kiffer, though not in the way she imagined.

There had been a time when he had been in love with Chantal and had thought she was in love with him, but with hindsight, he could now see that there had never been any commitment on her part; every time he had been invited to her bed, it had simply been to satisfy her needs. Had her husband, Emil, not been taken prisoner in 1940, she would not have spared him a second glance. Chantal Kiffer continued

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