Read Online Double-Barrel by Nicolas Freeling - Free Book Online

forward with a sharp disapproving nose. ‘This conversation is confidential and inviolable.’ He looked startled, as I had intended. He was one of these knowing businessmen with a hoarse chuckling voice.
    â€˜Certainly, if you wish. We’re quite undisturbed here.’
    I passed one of my real cards across the desk and enjoyed the reaction.
    â€˜Inspector … Central Recherche … what’s this about? I’ve made no complaint; we’ve had no troubles; as far as I know we’ve broken no laws.’
    â€˜Glad to hear it, but I’m interested neither in peculation nor the maximum agreed wage – I’m interested in the death of your technical director’s wife.’
    â€˜Oh my god … you mean this ethnographic hooha is …?’
    â€˜In this town I am an official of the Ministry of the Interior; I mean to stay that way. There’ve been more than enough policemen already.’
    â€˜How I agree. Poor Betty. But I fail to see –’
    â€˜You aren’t under any suspicion. This is verbal, informal, confidential, just like my own identity. Whatever you may say is not stenographed.’
    â€˜But I’ve told the police anything I knew – precious little, incidentally.’
    I believe in pushing, when possible, this kind of person off balance.
    â€˜I should like you to tell me the things you’ve suppressed in previous meetings with the police,’ pleasantly.
    â€˜I’ve suppressed nothing, damn it.’
    â€˜Generally called forgetting – often truly, at that. I’m not calling you a liar, but this affair concerns the life of everyone in this town.’
    â€˜But not mine, man.’
    â€˜Everyone.’
    â€˜Damn it, I don’t even live here. I come here two days, maybe three, a week. Reinders lives here. He’s the man you want.’
    â€˜But I chose to start with you. You stay the night here, sometimes?’
    â€˜Well, it has been known, when Will and I were working on a problem.’
    â€˜And where, then? Not in a hotel?’
    â€˜Well, no; they’re ghastly.’
    â€˜At Will’s house, no? Normal, natural, understandable – and much more comfortable.’
    â€˜I’m not trying to conceal it,’ defensively.
    â€˜You called her Betty, equally naturally.’
    â€˜You’ve no objection, I hope.’
    â€˜Quite the contrary, I’m delighted. Ever sleep with her?’
    That got to him. Business man, flabbergasted.
    â€˜Don’t give yourself the trouble of looking shocked.’
    He hoisted the expression off the floor and wrestled with it a moment. A small smile crept out.
    â€˜Well … I was just thinking that the last set of policemen turned round that very question without quite daring to ask it, and you come plump straight out. The answer is no. And what’s more she was a very conscientious woman and I don’t believe the boy-friend did either.’
    â€˜Why exactly did you give him the bullet, since as I understood there was no great gossip or scandal caused?’
    â€˜In the first place, because he wasn’t a particularly good craftsman. Second, because Will didn’t.’
    â€˜Will, I take it, thought it wouldn’t be fair.’
    â€˜Put it this way. Will wasn’t going to stand for the fellow hanging about Betty and to give him the push – it might be said he had acted out of personal motives, even spite. Whereas coming from me … I simply told the chap he wasn’t giving the ability to his work that justified my paying him that much. Betty, poor innocent, thought Will knew nothing about it.’
    â€˜What amuses me is that neither you nor Will are above pinching a handy bottom on a trip, but at the mildest indiscretion of the wife you’re all remarkably drastic.’
    â€˜We’re extremely careful to cause no trouble or gossip anywhere near our homes,’ curtly.
    I had got the background I