Swimmer by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9780727856975
Google: 5BbKAAAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 1706487
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Ten

The evening was still uncomfortably warm when they parked outside Gabriel Dragonard’s single-story house at the more expensive end of Lincoln Boulevard. Laura was wearing a skimpy pink top and a white mini-skirt, and Washington was sporting a pair of wrap-around sunglasses with yellow mirror lenses, so that he looked ineffably cool.

The house looked like an illustration from a Grimm’s fairy tale, with leaded windows and a bright red clay-tiled roof and bougainvillaea climbing all around the verandah. The lawn was almost poisonously green and looked as if it had been clipped with nail scissors.

There was hardly any breeze at all, and seagulls circled silently overhead as if they were flying through syrup. Jim hadn’t called Susan to tell her what he intended to do. He had the feeling that she would be badly upset if she knew that he had consulted another sensitive – no matter how dangerous it might be for her to try to contact the Swimmer, and no matter how adamant Michael had been that she shouldn’t try. After all, she had found Jim, rather than the other way around, so she must have felt the urge to help him from the moment they had first met.

‘Looks like the Wicked Witch of the West lives here,’ Washington remarked as they climbed out of the car. Outside the front door hung a bronze bell-pull with the face of a serene young woman on it, wearing a hood. Her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping, or dead; and for some reason Jim found her unnervingly creepy. He tugged her, and they heard a long and complicated carillon of bells.

‘See what your friend means about the dude’s dubious taste.’

It was over a minute before the door opened and a thin bespectacled man appeared. He had a wild overgrown bush of brambly gray hair and three days’ growth of prickly white stubble, so that he looked more like a species of wild animal than a man. He was wearing an emerald-green shirt, with a sand-colored linen vest and scrumpled linen pants to match, emerald-green socks, and sandals.

‘Jim Rook is it?’

‘That’s right. Pleased to know you. This is Laura and this is Washington.’

‘Come right in. You’ve, ah, brought the essential?’

Jim handed Gabriel Dragonard a plain white envelope. ‘I’ve brought a picture of Jane Tullett, too.’

‘Good,’ said Gabriel, holding the photograph at arm’s length and peering at it long-sightedly. ‘Wrong glasses, as usual. Why don’t you follow me?’ He led them through a tiled hallway with rough-plastered walls and into a large living-room, also tiled, but painted absolutely white, with white hessian-covered furniture and white lilies in tall white vases. At one end of this room was a large circular table, also white, with white chairs and white cushions.

‘Pretty white in here,’ said Washington. He walked appreciatively around the room, and then went across to the large sliding doors at the far end, which overlooked a yard filled with terracotta flowerpots, and a swimming pool.

Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly nine.

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