Blue Lantern Read Online Free Page B

it’s your cop reporting.”
    â€œHow have you been?”
    â€œNot so good without seeing you.”
    â€œI think you’re doing fine.”
    â€œWe should meet.”
    â€œI’m thinking about it. I’m very busy.”
    â€œYou’re very attractive.”
    She laughed. “I guess I should be fairly safe with a police officer to protect me.”
    Always in a hurry, she broke off the call, but in a way which invited him to call again, or implied that she might call him. Brodie lay back on the bed. He had indulged his curiosity by obtaining some information about Helen from published government records. She was a graduate of Hong Kong’s English university in biology. She had qualified in medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London, and had passed the US examination for registration there. And she was a member of a government subcommittee on practice standards.
    Brodie was awed, almost humiliated, by her academic and professional achievements. She was just two years older than him. Not that he had ever thought seriously of a higher education. Aunt Fiona had found many ways to suggest that the sooner he was earning his keep the better.
    Helen seemed to be a member of one of the many almost anonymous middle class families who lived in comfort in Hong Kong. When she was off duty she stayed at her parents’ apartment which was in the most exclusive part of Tsim Sha Tsui. He had walked past the block. She said her father had been a merchant in Amoy; her brother was part owner of a shipping company in the coastal trade. Helen herself claimed some affinity with the sea; and when Brodie, in one of their more meandering telephone conversations mentioned sailing, she showed interest.
    â€œI’m thinking of sailing to Manila at the end of the year,” he had said.
    â€œHow will you do that?”
    â€œCrewing in the Hong Kong-Manila race on Boxing Day.”
    â€œYou have a place?”
    â€œYes, a guy I know in government has a yacht.”
    â€œI’d love to do that.”
    â€œYou have to have experience,” he said, although he had very little.
    She sighed. “My family have been coastal seafarers for generations, and my brother has a forty foot ketch on which I’ve crewed.”
    â€œAre you really interested in the race?”
    She hesitated. “Yes, I am. I’d have to know the people I was with.”
    â€œOK. I’ll see what I can do.”
    â€œAnd don’t forget, having a doctor on board is always useful.”
    Manila, at this point, was a fantasy because he hardly knew her, but it was the genesis of a plan.
    He had asked Helen what she did with her time apart from work, and she said she was studying to specialise in anaesthetics. Every Sunday she attended the Anglican church. She went to piano lessons and choir practice once a week, and to classical music concerts whenever she could. He found this collection of virtuous pursuits so far beyond him that he could hardly comment.
    Helen’s church was close to the Mongkok station, and she mentioned that she had met a young police inspector there, Paul Sherwin. Brodie knew from Sherwin that he occasionally conducted the choir there.
    â€œPaul Sherwin is a friend of mine.”
    â€œI like him. I don’t really know him. I see him occasionally at practice. He isn’t always there. He’s very clever musically. And I feel he has some light of goodness about him. I’m very glad to hear he’s your friend.”
    It was trifling, needling, but he was curious whether Helen saw any ‘light of goodness’ in him.

3
    â€œTell me, why do fair men have dark pubic hair?”
    Andrew Marsden’s groomed figure filled the doorway. Brodie gasped, rubbed his eyes, and leaned over the edge of the bed, scooping up the sheet which had fallen on the floor; he dropped it across his body.
    â€œThis is a rule?”
    â€œSupported by extensive personal research. How