Harm’s Reach. Alex Barclay. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Alex Barclay
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Полицейские детективы
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007594757
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38

       Chapter 39

       Chapter 40

       Chapter 41

       Chapter 42

       Chapter 43

       Chapter 44

       Chapter 45

       Chapter 46

       Chapter 47

       Chapter 48

       Chapter 49

       Chapter 50

       Chapter 51

       Chapter 52

       Chapter 53

       Chapter 54

       Chapter 55

       Chapter 56

       Chapter 57

       Chapter 58

       Chapter 59

       Chapter 60

       Chapter 61

       Chapter 62

       Chapter 63

       Chapter 64

       Chapter 65

       Chapter 66

       Chapter 67

       Chapter 68

       Chapter 69

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Alex Barclay

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      Ingrid Prince realized that the white walls in every Prince family home created a diorama effect. People watched from the outside, studying, deducing, then leaving, even after brief encounters, with lasting judgements. Ingrid Prince, the beautiful, radiant wife! Robert Prince, the handsome, wealthy husband, a man of fine stock!

       Oh, what they see … and don’t see.

      Ingrid closed her eyes.

       I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.

      ‘Close those beautiful cat eyes, Ingrid, and say it three times. “It” is wherever you want to take us. I am Tahiti. I am Tahiti. I am Tahiti. Then – bam! – eyes open – bam! – I shoot!’

      She could hear Sandro Cera’s voice in her head as he stalked around her all those years ago. Handsome, talented, orphan, immigrant Sandro Cera, the rags-to-riches-and-back fashion photographer; Ingrid Prince, at his feet, blonde, tanned, extended on the white floor of a freezing studio in Brooklyn, shivering by a faulty space heater.

      Camera in hand, Sandro would rise up onto the balls of his feet, crouch down, close in, create distance, his body twisting and turning as if he was the one to be captured.

      Ingrid did as he asked, closed her eyes, used his three-times trick.

      ‘No lips moving!’ Sandro said. No leeps. ‘These are thoughts I’m talking about. Three times, sweets, three times: I am silent, I am silent, I am silent!’

      ‘My teeth are chattering is why my lips are moving!’ said brave, bold, new-girl Ingrid, just turned seventeen. ‘I’m fucking hypothermic … times three.’

      Click flash click flash click flash. And the photo that made them both famous was the one that was taken just afterwards, as Ingrid laughed, her head thrown back, then forward, the lens capturing a warm and beautiful smile with no Brooklyn ice, just St Tropez, St Tropez, St Tropez.

      It was a different world. It was New York in the Nineties – when they partied below ground and cauterized their hearts’ wounds with the fire of quick fucks. Sandro Cera had been dead years – a gradual, then sudden junkie demise. In the live art installation of Ingrid’s life, Sandro Cera was the lightbulb in the corner, flickering ominously, bound to blow.

      Yet his was the advice she was now hearing.

      Three times.

       I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.

      Ingrid looked around the Colorado rental. Even the temporary homes she sought refuge in were white-walled, sparsely furnished, neutral. When their SoHo loft was shot for an interiors magazine, the stylist pared it back even more, took pieces away. Pieces: furniture, paintings, sculptures, reality. How suddenly the landscape can change when its elements are plucked away.

      Ingrid heard a noise at the front door. Light on her feet, she walked out into the long polished hallway. Her suitcases were at the end by the door: a set of five, olive green, edged in brown leather with accents of gold.

      Now, there was banging at the door, hammering. Ingrid froze. The door burst open. She felt a rush of adrenaline.

       This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends.

      She backed into the kitchen, then turned, set to run for the French doors, but she could make out two dark figures standing there. Ingrid was briefly blindsided by her reflection in the glass.

      She knew what she looked like to others. She knew what her husband looked like.

      A Swedish proverb came to mind: Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen.

      Everyone knows the monkey, but the monkey knows no one.

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