The Cold Moon: Lincoln Rhyme Book 7 by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver [Deaver, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2008-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

chapter

TWENTY-TWO

Vincent Reynolds was studying the woman in the restaurant, a slim brunette, about thirty, in sweats. Her short hair was pulled back and stuck in place with bobby pins. They’d followed her from her old apartment in Greenwich Village, first to a local tavern and now here, a coffeehouse a few blocks away. She and her friend, a blonde in her twenties, were having a great time, laughing and talking nonstop.

Lucy Richter was enjoying her last brief moments on earth.

Duncan was listening to classical music on the Buick’s sound system. He was his typically thoughtful, calm self. Sometimes you just couldn’t tell what was going on in his mind.

Vincent, on the other hand, felt the hunger unraveling within him. He ate a candy bar, then another.

Fuck the great scheme of things. I need a girl . . .

Duncan took out his gold pocket watch and looked at it, gently wound the stem.

Vincent had seen the watch a few times but he was always impressed with the piece. Duncan had explained that it was made by Breguet, a French watchmaker who lived a long time ago (‘in my opinion the finest who ever lived’).

The watch was simple. It had a white face, Roman numerals and some small dials that showed the phases of the moon and was a perpetual calendar. It also had a ‘parachute’, an anti-shock system in it, Duncan explained. Breguet’s own invention.

Vincent now asked him, ‘How old is it, your watch?’

‘It was made in the year twelve.’

‘Twelve? Like in Roman times?’

Duncan smiled. ‘No, sorry. That’s the date on the original bill of sale, so that’s what I think of as the year of manufacture. I mean the year twelve in the French revolutionary calendar. After the monarchy fell, the republic declared a new calendar, starting in seventeen ninety-two. It was a curious concept. The weeks had ten days, and each month had thirty. Every six years was a leap year devoted exclusively to sports. For some reason, the government thought the calendar would be more egalitarian than the traditional one. But it was too unwieldy. It only lasted fourteen years. Like a lot of revolutionary ideas – they seem good on paper but they’re not very practical.’

Duncan studied the golden disk with affection. ‘I like watches from that era. Back then a watch was power. Not many people could afford one. The owner of a watch was a man who controlled time. You came to him and you waited until the time he’d set for the meeting. Chains and fobs were invented so that even when a man carried a watch in his pocket, you still could see he owned one. Watchmakers were gods in those days.’ Duncan paused. ‘I was speaking figuratively, but in a way it’s true.’

Vincent cocked an eyebrow.

‘There was a philosophical movement in the eighteenth century that used the watch as a metaphor. It held that God created the mechanism of the universe, then wound it up and started it running. Sort of a perpetual clock.

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