Read Online Poisoned Cherries by Quintin Jardine - Free Book Online

that it’s urgent.”
    Liam paused.   “You haven’t got another one up the duff, have you?”
    “We took great pains not to do that,” I told him.   “But that was a few years back now.   Did they take a number?”
    “Yes.”   He read it out, after I had grabbed a pen; it was a mobile, not a landline.   “She asked if you could send her a text message; she said she doesn’t like speaking on the thing.”
    Funny, I thought, then I remembered that Alison had always been a touch weird.
    “If it makes her happy.   I’ll do that.   Have you been told about the cast meeting yet?”
    “No.   When’s that?”
    I gave him the date and time, and told him how to find the apartment.
    “See you Thursday.”
    “Sure.   Hey, were you serious about the stuff in your tea?”
    “Nah.   Did you mean it, about the baggy pyjamas?”
    “What do you think?”
    “A pair of boxers is probably all you’ll need.”
    I hung up, and thought of Alison; our thing had been doomed from the start.   I could never take her as seriously as she had taken herself. I used to call her “Tomorrow’; she thought it was after the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, but actually, it was because she never came.   Eventually I found someone who did, and that was that.   Okay, I was a rat in those days; I admit it.
    I looked at the number Liam had given me; then I switched on my mobile and keyed in a text message giving her my landline number and inviting her to call me.
    I switched on the telly and was getting into David Attenborough telling me how important field mice are to the ecosystem, when my cellphone bleeped twice to tell me that I had an incoming text message.
    I accessed it and read.   “Can’t phone.   Can we meet?”
    Strange, I thought, but I sent back, “OK.   Where?   When?”
    Two minutes later, I bleeped again.   ‘9:30 tonight?   Cafe Royal?”   I read.   I frowned; I was getting into those field mice and there was a rerun of the afternoon’s premiership match on Sky afterwards.   Also, I didn’t fancy the Cafe Royal; it’s always busy and I’m at the stage of being recognised and accosted by punters I don’t know.   I don’t mind, but they can be hard to shake loose.   So I thought about it, then sent another message.   “Time okay, but not CR.   George Hotel bar.”   I waited, only partly focused on the mice.   It took her less than a minute this time.   “OK.   C U’.
    There is no doubt about it; text messaging is changing the face of the English language, as it is rote.
    thirteen.
    The great thing about my new temporary home was that it was less than ten minutes’ walk from anywhere in central Edinburgh.   As I had hoped, the George Hotel bar was quiet; there were a couple of Japanese tourists and a table of loud American golfers, but otherwise only the barman and me.
    He had just finished pouring what looked like a perfect pint of lager when Alison Goodchild appeared in the doorway... at least I guessed it was Alison.   When we had been together, she had been a thin, pale, understated wee thing, with poorly cut mid-brown hair, little or no make-up, and a bad habit of catalogue shopping for clothes.   In fact when I’d been watching Attenborough’s mice, she had come to mind.
    This woman had changed, and how.   Her hair was shoulder-length, shiny, and honey-coloured, high-heeled blue patent shoes made her look a few inches taller, and her clothes were closer to Gianni Versace than Great Universal.   Other things were different too; she wore eye make-up, and either she had switched to Wonderbra, or she’d been enlarged.
    Still, it had been a while.   I’d changed too, I guessed.   I waved to her, then glanced at my reflection in the bar mirror.   I was bigger in the shoulders than a couple of years before, and there were grey flecks in my side-burns and lines around my eyes that would be new to her.   My clothes were much the same though, even if I was wearing Lacoste