Elementary: The Ghost Line by Adam Christopher

Author:Adam Christopher [Christopher, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Holmes, Mystery & Crime
ISBN: 9781781169841
Amazon: 1781169845
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2015-02-23T11:00:00+00:00

25

THE BENEVOLENT SOCIETY OF MOTORMEN

Despite the late hour, the Alpha Inn was packed with customers, a curious mix of young hipsters exploring the brave new world of the traditional Irish pub, and an older crowd of gnarled regulars eying the former, resentful perhaps that their haven was being slowly, insidiously invaded.

Holmes stuffed his hands in his pockets as he slid through the crowd, taking it all in, observing, collating. Sights. Smells. Sounds. Even taste, the air thick with a fug synonymous with the serious consumption of strong, imported ales. This was no place for the craft and hobby beers that were now so common in the bars of Brooklyn. But if you wanted a proper stout served, not warm as myth would have it, but at the precise, cool temperature of the cellar, then the Alpha Inn was the very establishment.

He saw them at the back, the group of seven men squeezed into a corner booth around a table designed to seat not quite that number. Little deduction was required to confirm it was the right group—they were all drinking and there were occasional bursts of hearty laughter, as loud as any emanating from the other clusters of friends gathered in the public house, but at this table the laughter was punctuated with quiet conversation, conversation which required the focused concentration—as focused as it could be, with alcohol being consumed—of the other members of the group. As Holmes watched them nod and smile and laugh and chat, he noted at least two men from the old photo in Paul Black’s office, the same photo that had allowed him to identify the Alpha Inn as the favored watering hole of the group of motormen.

The warm company of friends. Colleagues and co-workers, here to toast the memory of one they had lost: Liam Macnamara.

Holmes sidled closer, squeezing carefully through the crush of people standing four deep at the bar, his eyes firmly on his target. Given the average age of the group, some of the motormen would have been firm friends for years. A group like this was hard for an outsider to break into—and even for newer employees, like the man seated in the corner. He was at least a decade and a half younger than the two old hands jostling him with their elbows on either side, and he had his nose mostly buried in his pint glass, taking just the tiniest of sips of the dark ale, which was quite clearly not to his taste.

Two booths over was a young couple making googly eyes at each other, a half-empty tall glass of a lighter, reddish ale by the man’s elbow. With the couple paying more attention to each other than the hubbub of the pub around them, Holmes deftly rolled past the table, swiping the glass and vanishing back into the crowd. Circling another group of patrons, he headed back to the motormen, and as another raucous laugh orbited their table, he stepped closer and raised his own glass.

The young man in the corner gave him a smile.

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.