The Freedom Trap by Desmond Bagley

Author:Desmond Bagley [Bagley, Desmond]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780006152668
Publisher: Fontana Press
Published: 1990-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

In fact, it came back to the old moral problem -- when is a man justified in killing another man? I resolved it by quoting the phrase -- 'Kill or be killed!' If I were in danger of being killed then I would kill in self-defence -- and not until then. I had killed only one man in my life and that had made me sick to my stomach for two days afterwards.

That settled in my mind, I began planning arson. An inspection of the liquor cabinet showed a bottle and a half of South African brandy, the best part of a bottle of Scotch, ditto gin, and a half-bottle of Drambuie. A few tests showed the brandy and the Drambuie as being most flammable, although not as fiery as I would have wished. I was sorry I hadn't developed a taste for rum -- there's some nice 100 per cent stuff on the market which would have suited me fine -- although God knows what it does to the lining of the stomach.

Then I went to bed and slept the sleep of the morally just.

II There was no breakfast next morning. Instead of Taafe trundling his trolley before him he came in empty-handed and jerked his thumb at the door. I shrugged and walked out. It seemed as though the party was over.

I was taken downstairs and across the hall into the closely curtained room where I had signed the cheque. In the hall I passed an elderly couple, Darby and Joan types, who were sitting nervously on the edges of their chairs as though they thought it was a dentist's waiting room. They looked at me incuriously as I walked past them into the room where Fat-face was waiting for me.

There was a bleak look on his face. 'You've had a night to think about it,' he said. 'Your story had better be very good, Mr Whoever-you-are.'

I went on the attack. 'Where's that dab-sheet?'

'We don't keep it here,' he said shortly. 'In any case, it isn't necessary.'

'I still don't know what you're talking about,' I said. 'And if you think I've spent all night cooking up a cock-and-bull story just to satisfy you then you're crazy. I don't have much to do with my time, but I've better things to do than that.' I was telling him the exact truth.

He made a noise expressive of disgust. 'You're a liar. Can't you get it into your thick skull that the gaff has been blown? There's just one little detail missing -- your identity.' He shook his head pityingly. 'We know you're not Rearden. All we want to know is who the devil you really are.'

Now, why did he want to know that? I had a fair idea, and I didn't like it at all. If I wasn't Rearden then he'd want to know if I'd be seriously missed. That's an important thing to know if you're contemplating murdering anyone. Was I important? Did I have important connections? For whom was I working? And why? All those were questions he would want answering.

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.