Confessor Read Online Free Page A

willow aslant a brook, and thinking of dead, drowned Ophelia.
    In a couple of minutes he was standing in the open, looking at the deep dark scars in the grass where the Rover had plowed in and blown up. DI Roach heard the choke in the back of the tall man’s throat, and the look of grief spread like blood across his face.
    “You knew the gentleman well?” Roach asked, as though he had to make conversation.
    “Alas poor Gus. I knew him, Inspector. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?”
    “Your what?”
    “He’ll be mourned by many.” Herb simplified it.
    The drive to London was slow and infuriating. Herbie had the radio on and there was some panic. Two mainline railway stations had been bomb targets. The FFIRA had telephoned code words two minutes before the devices blew, killing seven and injuring two dozen more.
    In the center of London’s West End two other bombs had exploded in cars—one carrying an American official to the Embassy in Grosvenor Square, the other taking a senior diplomat to Heathrow Airport. Both men and their drivers had been killed. The names would not be released until the families had been informed. The FFIRA had made a second statement, declaring that they had had nothing to do with the car bombs.
    “So that’s it,” Herbie said later to those assembled on the fifth floor. “No skid marks. No sign old Gus had to throw out the anchors. Just a couple of long deep ruts in the grass, then a wet burned patch. More like the car was detonated. Looked like a mortar bomb hit, not a car accident.”
    “It’s what the local law are saying.” Worboys looked down at the typewritten pages already stacking up in their red card folder. “Jesus, poor old Gus.”
    “Also, they’re saying identification’s going to be difficult.” Herbie steepled his fingers.
    Tony Worboys nodded and looked, as if for help, around the room. The Chief was still down at Warminster, comforting the bereaved, but he had called two other people in to listen to Herbie. They were in a kind of shock, for Herbie had been right about Gus being mourned by many. They all knew they had lost a part of themselves—something that often happens with an unexpected death.
    Four of them, including Herb and Worboys; Martin Brook, portly, bespectacled, owlish, once Gus Keene’s pupil, now his successor, and a young man from Registry called Angus Crook, who held a thick buffcolored folder containing a printout of Keene’s record. Worboys’s eyes settled on Crook. “Identifying marks?” he asked, as though this were a real question.
    “If he’s been burned to a frazzle, there’s going to be no way.” Crook was an earnest young man; a computer wizard, which is the main required skill for people who work in Registry these days. Nowadays you fed subjects into a computer that asked for code words and clearances before it spat out documents, and the SIS Registry was safe as proverbial houses because it was cut off from the world of modems and easy access by computer hackers. It had also led to many redundancies, for Angus ran the place with the aid of one other officer and three female Registry Clerks, who were also computer experts. Those in the know called them the Secret Five.
    “They’re going to be hard put to.” Crook had a gruff Scottish accent, which some said was an affectation. “If Gus is now just burned bone, they’re not going to make a positive on him. Bits of wristwatch. Maybe some coins.”
    “Surely dental records …?” Worboys began, but Crook smiled grimly and shook his head. “That’s for thrillers. Gus had perfect teeth. All his own. Never saw a dentist in his life as far as I can see.”
    Martin Brook got up and walked to the window, looking down the river Thames from this perch above London. “So, what’s the drill, Tony?”
    “The drill?” Worboys shrugged. “The drill is that we really don’t want the law scratching deeply into Gus’s life. The Chief’s insistent on that. He says