Read Online The Scioneer by Peter Bouvier - Free Book Online Page B

stepping away from him, pulled her T-shirt over her
head.
    The
lopsided grin fell away from Lek’s handsome face and his voice was
suddenly sombre.
    ‘Who did
that to you?’ There were three cigarette burns around her left
nipple. ‘That wasn’t an accident,’ he said definitively, before she
could lie.
    ‘Calabas,’ she sighed. ‘I gave him some lip yesterday, so
he tied me up for an hour and put his fags out on me.’
    ‘I
see, ’ Lek nodded and
picked the T-shirt up off the floor. ‘I think… I’ll have to… talk
to him,’ Lek said, sounding as though he were simply balancing out
a difficult equation in his head, rather than considering paying a
visit to a violent pimp. But still, there was something in his
tone, a certain resignation that left Crystal cold.
    ‘You
don’t need to do that,’ she said. ‘I can fight my own battles.
So look, just stop a
minute for Ringo’s sake. Slow down. Let’s have a drink. Go and
sit.’ She shooed him away, pulled her shirt back on and wandered
into the kitchen.
    Lek
flopped into a big leather beanbag and picked up a newspaper. A
prominent prosecutor had been found dead outside the New Old
Bail ey, having overdosed
on Tiburon. It seemed he had undergone a particularly heated
morning of intense cross-examination. ‘Reports suggest that he was
seen ‘drowning in the air’’. Lek threw the paper on the coffee
table, disgusted with himself. He lay back and looked at the ivy
covering the ceiling. Instead of cutting it back when it started
creeping through the woodwork of her window-frames, Crystal had
cultivated it instead. He thought about his own place, further east
along the river, with its clinical white walls and sterile
stainless steel shelving units, adorned with a few ornaments and
photos he would never see again. This place felt like a home
though, and if things had been different, he would have asked to
stay.
    Crystal
appeared with two glasses of Juniperus, set them on the coffee
table and was about to sit down when the doorbell rang again. Lek
sat bolt upright and Crystal ’s stomach lurched. The man on the phone. He was
here.
    ‘Are you
expecting anyone?’
    Crystal
opened her mouth to explain, but Lek saw the look in her eyes and
knew at once that she had betrayed him.
    ‘He said
he wouldn’t hurt you. They just want to bring you in,’ her voice
began to crack. ‘He said he would kill me if I didn’t help them,’
she was crying now, ‘He told me to keep you here,’ she sank into
the corner of the room and buried her face in her hands.
    Six
floors up and no way out, Lek considered looking for something that would pass as a
weapon, but a flash of inspiration hit him and he sat down again,
seconds before Delić kicked the front door in and lurched into the
room. He had already pulled a Meister out of its holster and
pointed it at Lek’s head, when he noticed Crystal crouching against
the wall.
    ‘Who the
fuck are you?’ he said, by way of an introduction.
    ‘I’m
the woman you spoke to
on the phone,’ she answered between sobs.
    ‘I didn’t
speak to nobody, lady. I’m only here for this prick.’ Delić focused
his attention once again. ‘Lek, Lek, Lek....’ he said with a grin,
and shook his head in a gently admonishing manner. ‘How are you
Doctor? Wow… this is all a bit fucking dramatic for you, isn’t it?
Not your typical day, I’d guess, playing with your test-tubes,’ he
bent his head sharply to the right and Lek heard the vertebrae at
the base of his neck crack. ‘Now, the word is you’re carrying
100,000 cred of the big man’s money, that right?’
    In spite
of the violence surrounding his work, Lek had never found himself
staring down the barrel
of a gun. ‘Not quite Delić,’ he said, weighing his options. ‘That
is, I don’t have it with me. I’ve stashed it. Why? Is that all you
want? The money?’
    Delić snorted
derisively. ‘No. You’re worth a lot more to me than a hundred K.
Pechev is paying five times