Read Online Killer in the Shade by Piers Marlowe - Free Book Online Page A

something heavy beat against his head.
    Rollo could not see who wielded the weapon, for the man was shielded by the open door. He sprang forward, shouting, reached the door, and found no one there. He turned quickly, but tripped over Moore’s prone bulk. He was on his hands and knees, his head lifting, when a heavy blow knocked him unconscious.

    Rollo came awake with a bright light burning over his face. When he tried to rise he found his limbs were tied. He sank back and said to whoever was behind the glare, ‘What’s the point of tying me up?’ He closed his eyes. ‘Take that damned glare away.’
    â€˜When I know who you are and why you’ve followed me,’ said a voice with a distinct Midlands accent.
    Rollo felt he could only lose by playing a cat-and-mouse game. Shock tactics, on the other hand, just might work.
    â€˜I’m a reporter and I want to know how a dead man can leave a fingerprint at the scene of a murder.’
    He heard the man holding the torch steady catch his breath. It was the only sound, followed by silence until the other spoke.
    â€˜A dead man can’t be convicted of murder,’ was the quiet reply, which was unsettling.
    Rollo raised himself as high as he could and snapped, ‘Where is Carol? You’re her uncle, Peel, and you know why she’s disappeared.’
    â€˜I was about to ask you that question, Hackley,’ came the quiet and still more unsettling rejoinder.
    â€˜You mean you don’t know where she is?’ Rollo’s voice was thick with incredulity and disbelief. ‘Why, damn it, you’re the reason she broke off ourengagement.’ He stopped, eyes widening, so that he winced against the glare, and fell back prone. ‘How do you know my name?’
    â€˜I’ve searched your pockets.’
    â€˜Carol’s told you about me. After all, she would have told her aunt.’
    The light went out, and darkness wrapped Rollo’s head like a thick, cool bandage. He wondered how it could be so dark on an autumn afternoon and decided he might have been brought to a cellar. But where was Moore? He listened, trying to catch sound of the other’s breathing, but could not even hear the breathing of the man who had doused the torch.
    The smooth voice said out of the darkness, ‘You can’t see me, Hackley, but I can see you clearly.’
    Rollo tried to laugh. It didn’t sound a very good effort.
    â€˜You some sort of cat that can see in the dark?’ he gibed.
    â€˜I can see in the dark — yes. Darkness is my noon. I live in the shade other men shun.’
    On the point of laughing again at thispreposterous notion, Rollo lay silent and tense, aware of memory tilting pieces of a kaleidoscope in his mind — the blue Escort making no real speed, as though the driver had to be careful as he avoided fast traffic, a jewel thief who vanished during the power cuts as though he could drive without lights, a killer who had escaped from a house leaving lights blazing as though he could not stand their brightness. The memory bits shook again, and Rollo’s mental kaleidoscope revealed a girl running away because she had learned a truth that she couldn’t live with. The girl, when she turned, had Carol’s scared face and there were tears in her eyes that dropped on to a sheet of paper on which she had been writing.
    The pictures in his mind were grotesque, but they were strung together like parts of a film from which they had been cut and put together in the wrong sequence.
    He felt himself shivering though he was aware that there was moisture on his face and between his shoulders and on the backs of his hands.
    The voice in the dark spoke again.‘Have you heard of nyctalopia?’
    That word smashed the kaleidoscope. Nyctalopia — day blindness. Otherwise night sight! The man who had bound him was a nyctalops!
    â€˜I can see by the look on your face that you have. So you believe