The Pale House (A Gregor Reinhardt Novel) by McCallin Luke

Author:McCallin, Luke [McCallin, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

The desks outside Dreyer’s office were empty of personnel, papers neatly piled up and sorted next to half-filled crates. Reinhardt stood quietly in the doorway to the clerks’ office, wondering again if he had done the right thing in coming. There was a razor line of light under the door of that erudite judge’s office, Judge Erdmann, nothing under Dreyer’s, but there was a thread of music in the air. It was somewhat incongruous, but it was there and as he leaned his ear against Dreyer’s door, he realized it was coming from his old friend’s office.

He knocked softly, then again, harder, but there was no response. He opened the door, softly, onto musty darkness, and a soft, smooth trill of notes from a saxophone. A spreading rectangle of light flowed into the room, and there was a jerk of movement from the bed in the corner, and Dreyer rolled over. His face was red, puffy, and his breathing came high and edged with a ragged wheeze. Reinhardt’s heart sank as he looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” Reinhardt said. “I didn’t think . . .”

“Reinhardt,” Dreyer said, pausing for breath. “It’s all right. Close the door. Here, on the desk. Put the lamp on, then help me get this off.”

Dreyer was still wearing one boot, Reinhardt saw, as he clicked on the small lamp on the desk. Reinhardt heaved at it, and it sucked itself free. He stumbled a step backward as Dreyer rolled back onto his bed with a sigh, covering his face with his arm. He lay there breathing heavily, his belly mounding up and down, and then he struggled up onto one elbow and scrabbled around on top of a wooden crate that served as a bedside table.

“This what you’re after?” said Reinhardt, lifting the hip flask from the floor.

There was a fleeting look of embarrassment on Dreyer’s face, but he waved Reinhardt over, took the flask, and put it to his mouth. He drank deeply, sighed again, and lay back on the bed.

“Still don’t want any, Gregor?” he asked.

“None for me.”

Dreyer turned a bleary eye on him. “Not going all moral on me, are you?”

Reinhardt shook his head. “I’m not. But I’ve been there. Where you are. And it didn’t do me any good, in the end.” Reinhardt felt spread thin, utterly worn out by the pressure of the day, and knew it would not take much to tip him over the edge. He did not want to rediscover that part of himself that took solace in alcohol, nor did he want to be what he saw Dreyer had become.

Dreyer looked at him, blinked, turned his head up to the ceiling. “Oh, I doubt that,” he whispered. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, I think you wouldn’t turn this down so easily.”

“Why don’t you tell me, then?” said Reinhardt, sighing, as he shrugged out of his overcoat and sat in one of the chairs, crossing his left leg over his right and rubbing his knee. “Tell me. Tell me what happened to you, Marcus.

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