Read Online The Goldfish Bowl by Laurence Gough - Free Book Online Page B

the straight-backed wooden chairs, her hands resting quietly in her lap. Willows had assumed his customary position, against the wall within arm’s reach of the door. Atkinson and Franklin were standing beside the cherry-wood desk. Atkinson’s small, professionally manicured hands moved graphically as he continued to describe the previous evening’s entanglements with Lynda, the skinny redhead from the cafeteria. Franklin had correctly guessed that his partner’s ostentatious parading of the feathers was aimed at Claire Parker. Embarrassed, he kept glancing over at her while at the same time carefully avoiding eye contact. Franklin was fifty-two years old and known far and wide as a happily married man, but he thought he knew how Atkinson felt. No one in his right mind would deny that Parker was an extremely attractive woman. And despite the inclement weather, it was spring, that time of year when the saps begin to glow.
    Bradley looked at his watch, a cheap Timex given to him by his twelve-year-old son, Christopher. It was two minutes past ten. Jerry Goldstein, who toiled in the bowels of the crime lab, over on Grant and Keefer, was late again. Bradley twisted the ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand. He was a punctual man and punctuality was a trait he admired in others. He snuck another look at the scuffed crystal of the watch. Three minutes past ten, and counting. Bradley went over to his desk and sat down. “What time you got?” he said to Dave Atkinson.
    Atkinson knew exactly what was on Bradley’s mind. “Five past,” he lied.
    Bradley opened his carved cedar humidor and helped himself to a cigar. He’d been smoking more heavily since the death of Alice Palm, and he didn’t like it one little bit. He was going to have to make an effort to cut back, and not just for the sake of his health. The cigars were costly as hell. Like most cops, he was on a budget.
    He struck a wooden kitchen match against the belly of his desk, let the flame settle, and lit up. A cloud of aromatic Cuban smoke billowed towards the ceiling, nine feet high and splattered here and there with dark, oddly shaped stains.
    The feeling of intense irritation caused by Goldstein’s tardiness refused to abate. Bradley glared at the Timex. It was what, about six minutes past ten, and he was already smoking his afternoon cigar — a cigar that had cost him a dollar fifty and wasn’t giving him a nickel’s worth of pleasure. Sitting bolt upright in his leather chair, he continued to stare menacingly at the watch, his eyes on the sweep second hand as it dragged slowly around the dial.
    At ten minutes past the hour, just as the construction whistle signalled an end to the morning coffee break, Jerry Goldstein finally waltzed into the office.
    “Sorry I’m late,” said Goldstein to the room at large. “It was unavoidable. A lady down on the second floor had a seizure, and I had to help regurgitate her tongue.”
    “Life and death,” said Bradley. “I figured it had to be something like that.”
    Goldstein nodded, ignoring Bradley’s tone. Goldstein was wearing a lightweight cream-coloured three-piece suit, a chocolate brown Italian silk tie and an impossibly white silk shirt. His shoes were made of canvas the exact same shade of brown as his tie, and had thick soles and heels of translucent pink plastic. His socks, also of chocolate brown silk, sported a pattern of yellow sundials. He gave Parker a lazy smile.
    “You must be the new crime-buster.”
    “Claire Parker.”
    “Jerry Goldstein.” Goldstein smiled again, his eyes twinkling. Thanks to his tinted contact lenses, his eyes were almost as blue as Paul Newman’s. His teeth were large, as white as his impossibly white shirt. Jumbled together in cramped and disorderly rows, they gave him a charming, almost piratical air. With his flash clothes, the eyes, his full head of curly blond hair and cherubic complexion, Goldstein knew he looked good. He also knew it was no time to