Read Online Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill - Free Book Online Page A

Hurriedly, he wipes his mouth and runs back and forth with the bottle before he finds a place to hide it, behind a stack of tomes on the dining table. After rinsing Listerine through his cheeks and over his teeth, he then siphons it through his lips into the kitchen sink. Smoothing out the front of his red flannel shirt with the moist palms of his hands, he trots down the narrow staircase to the ground-floor reception.
Through the glass in the top portion of the front door, he sees the profile of a tall girl. Stylish tortoiseshell sunglasses conceal her eyes. Shoulder-length hair, ice-blonde in colour, is tied at the back of her head with a black velvet band, which gives the effect of sharpening her already striking cheekbones. But her young face, that in any circumstance is arresting, seems distracted. Although she gazes down Market Street, so bright with sunlight, toward the large and modern Student Union building, it is as if she sees nothing. 'Jeez,' Hart mutters. She is nearly a foot taller than him and he can already smell money.
When he opens the door, she turns to face him. Her tight lips part and there is a pause – a fathoming – before she says, 'Hi.'
'Hey now,' Hart replies, nodding his head to some inner rhythm and raising both hands as if he has just met an old friend unexpectedly, and wants to do nothing more than spend time with them. 'Let me guess. I'm not what you were expecting,' he says.
Kerry pushes her sunglasses up and into her hair. 'No.' She slinks through the doorway, blinking her pale-blue eyes quickly as she scans the walls. Sensing distress, Hart manages to sustain his characteristic warmth and endearing smile, in an attempt to put her at ease. 'Up there?' she says, and points toward the open doorway at the top of the staircase.
'Yeah, yeah, go on up, honey.'
With his eyes fixed on her wrap-around skirt, which is long and falls to the top of her leather boots, he follows her up the stairs to the lounge. As the stairs groan and creak beneath them, he becomes conscious of inhaling her fragrance across his copper-wire moustache. After Africa, and Guatemala before that, it is a sudden but refreshing opportunity to share time and space with all the things he enjoys about Western women: perfume, shaven legs, and painted lips. He briefly entertains an image of Kerry, naked, in his mind, but then dismisses it, feeling ashamed. After so long in the wilderness he suddenly worries about blowing his first lead with an inappropriate leer.
'So, Kerry, you saw the flyer in the library,' he says with a chuckle when they reach the lounge. 'I've been pasting those things all over town.'
She stays quiet. Hart loses his grin, fast. 'Sit down, honey. Umm, let me get you a drink. I haven't had time to go to the store, but I have some coffee. It was in the cupboard when I arrived. Guess I inherited it.'
Kerry approaches the couch. 'That would be nice.'
As he gets busy in the kitchen, he hears Kerry sit down in the lounge. When she crosses her long legs, the little whisper created by the innocent gesture runs a prickle down the nape of his neck. Shake it off, he tells himself. This ain't a date. Don't start with some Woody Allen routine. Ensconced in the kitchen, out of sight, he also looks at his hands and sees shakes. Christ, I'm an anthropologist. What if she needs a doctor?
'Will you be taping this?' Kerry asks, and he thinks her voice sounds even more feminine with the cultured English accent. It drifts through the arched white portal, separating the lounge and kitchen. 'Sure,' he says. 'But don't worry about a thing. If it fits my study, I'd like to use it for my book. With your permission of course, and I can always change the names.' Holding two cups of black coffee that steam in his chubby paws, Hart reappears in the lounge. 'Like it black?'
Kerry nods. Hart blushes. 'Just as well, there's no milk.' With the cups placed on the table between them, he pulls a wooden chair around to host his bulbous hips.
'It's OK