Read Online Ghost Music by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

Gideon. Just don’t any bastard try to take it down again.”
    â€œRight,” I said, raising my eyebrows, and I remembered what Kate had told me about Victor’s temper. He didn’t exactly frighten me, but at the same time I decided that it would probably be wiser not to rub him the wrong way. Like by telling him that his bedroom looked like a nineteenth-century whorehouse, or that I was flying to Sweden to spend two weeks with his wife.

Eleven
    As I carried my shoulder bag out of the main entrance of Arlanda airport, it was snowing. Not heavy snow, but light, mischievous whirls, like ghosts; and the wind was freezing.
    Nothing prepares you for the head-breaking coldness of the air in Sweden, especially after nine hours sitting in an airplane. You can feel it slamming directly down from the Arctic, making your eyes water and your nose run and your ears tingle so much that they hurt.
    Nothing prepares you for the gloom either, even at two o’clock in the afternoon, but then Stockholm is even farther north than Moscow, and by late September winter is already setting in.
    I stood in line for a Volvo taxi and it drove me due south on E4 to the city center. It was so hot in the taxi that I had to unbutton my coat, and the taxi driver reeked of cigarettes. Outside, I could see nothing but snow-covered fields, and pine forests, with only an occasional light shining through the branches. You have to wonder to yourself: who would want to live out here, so far from civilization, in the gathering darkness of a Scandinavian winter?
    At last, however, we reached the suburbs. A few clusters of small cement-colored houses at first, and then brightly lit apartment blocks and shopping malls. Then we arrived at the city center, with its busy overpasses and crowded squares and its streets of tall, narrow, eighteenth-century houses.
    â€œThis is Old Town,” the taxi driver told me, as we drove around a square with a bronze fountain in the center. He pointed acrossa dark stretch of glittering water, to a tall brick building with a lanternlike tower. “That is city hall. That is where they talk all elkshit.” He gave a cigarette-thickened laugh, and turned around to wink at me.
    We drove along Skeppsbron, the wide street overlooking the harbor. I could see three-masted sailing ships moored beside the dock, as well as yachts and motor launches. In the near distance, beyond the harbor, there was another island, with lights twinkling. Only a faint reddish streak remained in the sky to remind me that it was still daytime. I don’t think I had ever felt so far away from home.
    The taxi driver did a U-turn and pulled up outside an ocher-colored five-story building with an arched doorway and a decorative bay window.
    â€œThree hundred forty-five kroner,” he announced. “You want sex club?”
    I tugged four hundred-kroner bills out of my wallet and handed them over. “It’s okay, thanks.”
    â€œChat Noir club, Birger Jarlsgatan. Very good live genuine sex.”
    â€œReally, no thanks.”
    â€œYou want gay club?”
    â€œNo thanks. Just keep the change, okay?”
    â€œHow about restaurant? Fem SmÃ¥ Hus, Nygatan. Very good reindeer with lingonberry sauce.”
    I climbed out of the cab and approached the front door of No. 44. There were three worn-down steps and the door itself was solid ten-paneled oak, bleached by hundreds of years of sunshine and salt, with a black iron knocker in the shape of a grinning troll. There were five doorbells, with tarnished brass name plaques beside three of them, but the plaque for the second floor, where the Westerlunds lived, was engraved with the name b. olofsson. Maybe the Westerlunds had never bothered to change it.
    I pushed the button and waited. For some reason the taxi driverhadn’t driven away, but was still sitting in his cab, with the engine running, watching me. I pushed the button again.
    Now I knew why Kate had given me