Dying for Millions Read Online Free Page B

I tried to concentrate on the tasselled lanterns and what seemed to be a shrine next to the till.
    But my eyes wouldn’t focus, and when I closed the paper firmly my hands opened it again.
Andrew Robert Rivers
…
    â€˜Szechuan chicken and plai’ ri’e?’
    It didn’t make sense.
    â€˜Szechuan chicken and plai’ ri’e?’
    â€˜Isn’t that yours, love?’ someone asked.
    Embarrassed, I got to my feet, left the paper on the formica table, and collected my food.
    I rarely drank spirits before a meal, but this time I left the containers on the hob to keep warm while I sank a large slug of Jameson’s. The sensible thing was to phone Andy, just to make sure everything was all right, but the logical part of my brain was outraged. Of course everything was all right!
    But it wasn’t. OK, Andy Rivers was not an unusual name – but Freya certainly was. In fact, I only knew one other, the teenage daughter of a friend. Andy had married his Freya when he was eighteen and into serious mistakes. She’d been a wispy girl, limp and pallid in the high-waisted, floating dresses already going out of vogue, and doing nothing in particular. I’d tried to love her, for Andy’s sake, but was relieved when after a couple of years she drifted off with a colleague of Andy’s further up the success ladder and into proportionately heavier drugs. She died of some bizarre drug cocktail before she reached her twenty-fifth birthday. Andy was by then deep into another relationship, but Freya’s death had shocked him into giving up even coffee. For a while, at least.
    The whiskey did little more than fuddle my thinking, so I emptied the rest of the glass down the sink and put the bottle away. To stop myself thinking about the notice, I watched the news while I ate. As soon as it was over, however, I was into worry-mode again. Clearly Andy was alive and well – the whole nation would have heard Michael Buerk breaking the news otherwise – but I was still uneasy. I reached for my ‘Do Tomorrow’ pad: Phone the
Evening Mail
and check the provenance of the death notice.
    And then I phoned Andy anyway. To ask after Ruth, naturally.
    â€˜Bloody virus,’ she whispered. ‘All those years teaching – you’d have thought my throat would be made of leather.’
    Her voice stopped abruptly.
    â€˜She’s supposed to be Trappist for the next week,’ said Andy, trying not to sound anxious but failing to sound amused. ‘So she won’t be coming over to Dublin for the gig there. That’s for definite.’
    â€˜What about the Music Centre?’ Surely nothing would stop her missing that.
    â€˜Yeah. A bit of a milestone, isn’t it?’
    â€˜I can’t imagine it without her. Couldn’t she come along to the party and gesture? It’s about all most of us can do after that level of decibels.’
    â€˜We’ll do what the medics say. Only thing.’ His voice was sombre.
    After that, I didn’t mention the ad.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
…
    The girl I phoned at the
Evening Mail
was adamant. There was a procedure for checking that notices placed by phone were valid, and it was always enforced. No one on the phone desk ever authorised a small ad without phoning back to make sure the caller was
bona fide
.
    â€˜Never?’
    â€˜Never
. We simply won’t accept the item if someone’s calling from a phone box. We’d want an office number if they weren’t calling from home. We actually prefer the information to be faxed.’
    â€˜So if I wanted to let you know I was engaged—’
    â€˜Ooh, congratulations! Not many people bother these days—’
    â€˜Which I’m not, you’d make sure my putative fiancé endorsed it?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    I thanked her humbly, aware that I was wasting her time.
    And mine; I looked at my watch. I’d better try to