Torn Apart by Peter Corris

Author:Peter Corris [Corris, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781742371399
Google: fJJl5m119HwC
Amazon: 1742375367
Barnesnoble: 1742375367
Goodreads: 7350673
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I was heading for home and my Mac when Sheila called on my mobile. Mindful of my precarious legal position, I pulled over to take the call.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘Almost home.’

‘Can I visit? I’ve got something to celebrate.’

She was waiting out front when I arrived. She put her arms around me and we kissed. Then she pulled back, pointing to my armpit.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘For protection only. Come in and tell me what’s happened.’

I thought it was going to be something legal—applying for the document Viv had mentioned, or a positive result from the divorce records search, but her manner and her clothes told me something different. She was wearing a blue silk dress with a faux fur jacket. She’d had something done to her hair and her shoes looked new. She moved with the same grace as before but perhaps more confidently. No whiff of tobacco smoke. She produced a bottle of champagne from her bag and waved it in my face.

‘I got the part.’

Her face was alight with happiness and it communicated directly to me. I reached for her and we kissed again. It had been a long time since I’d had what has to be one of the great human experiences—the blending and sharing of sexual and emotional and professional pleasure. It had happened a few times before—when Lily won a Walkley award for journalism; when Glen Withers got a police promotion; when Helen Broadway’s vineyard scored a gold medal; when Cyn had got a commission to design a building. I hadn’t expected to feel it again, but here it was.

We opened and poured and drank. She told me about the role in the film she’d auditioned for—the avenging mother in a thriller about a miscarriage of justice. She said she needed to project sex and danger and cracked it at the audition.

‘I have to thank you, Cliff.’

‘How’s that?’

‘You supplied the sex charge and you still aren’t sure that I didn’t arrange to have Patrick killed, are you?’

I’d taken off my jacket, removed the shoulder rig, stowed it away, and taken out the notebook I’d opened just that morning to keep track of what I was doing. My habit was to write down the names of the people I was dealing with under the case heading and draw connecting arrows and dots between them indicating possible guilt, possible lies, gaps in information. I showed her the dotted lines running from her name.

‘What’s that mean?’

‘What you said—a maybe.’

‘What’s this?’

I’d drawn a line through the information about James O’Day, the fire at the hotel in Hamilton, and the aggrieved publican.

‘No connection,’ I said. I was high on adrenalin and alcohol. ‘Case closed.’

‘But not for me?’

‘Not yet.’

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