A change of focus [57]
Pettinger pored over the images Cherriman had smugly produced. Spread across the faux-alabaster kitchen worktop their several lurid messages were shocking.
Not so much for what they depicted but that Cherriman knew such things had taken place
‘They’re fakes.’
‘You have to prove that. In a court of law if necessary...’
‘I’ll risk that.’
Pettinger remembered a waxwork-buttocked judge, last seen handing wads of cash to greedy, now-dead, Gunita.
He sighed.
‘Cherriman, now Raptor’s gone, surely we can re-negotiate? I’ve no interest in Khakbethia...’
‘Me neither. I need a tame policeman here.’
‘It won’t be me.’
‘I think it will.’
Dirty tricks
Mutterings warned Drusilla not to approach too closely to the man
whose gun threatened her daughter’s life, e’en as the mob parted to permit her
passage. Rarely seen in daylight she
shocked the elders who’d known her, biblically, who’d pressed themselves
against her alabaster skin, soot-pitted pores of which now close resembled
leaf-mould.
She halted twenty feet
before them.
Described some swift finger-writ message in the air, whereupon
her daughter’s face became yellow waxwork.
‘She curses you?’ Tao, mildly incredulous.
‘I stole her magic...’
‘Then she cannot harm...’
Premature: his pale
passenger slumped against him, causing his gun to fall.'The Blacksmith's Wife' (illustrated on the left) precedes Tao's tale.
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