Malice in London Read Online Free

by the shafts of golden light streaming through the window.
    It was a typical night at the Fitzrovia Tavern. The kind of night in late April when a raw wind off the North Sea sweeps down Charlotte Street, impelling both the virtuous and the not-so-virtuous to seek refuge in the nearest pub. There was the usual crowd in attendance, and as Jill Burroughs worked behind the bar, mechanically drawing pints and mixing drinks, she realized for the first time since she had been in London that the novelty was beginning to wear off. And now that she thought about it, the sentiment applied equally to her boyfriend, her job, and even to her decision to travel before going back to university. She was in a rotten mood, she couldn’t deny it—
    There was a loud commotion in the front of the bar. “Did he think he could fob me off like I was a tourist from a coach?” roared a large red-faced man with a perfectly coifed mane of white hair who was holding forthat a crowded table by the window. “When I demanded to know how he could serve such filth, the bloody Frog had the cheek to ask me to leave. When he reads my review on Sunday, he’ll know who he’s dealing with, by God! It’ll be bloody Agincourt all over again!” As the table erupted in laughter, Clive Morton, restaurant critic and self-styled bon vivant fixed his eyes on Jill. “Pull me old handle again, would you, love?” he called out.
    “Pull it yourself,” she muttered under her breath as she filled another glass with beer. Or, better yet, she thought, get one of your minions to do it for you. Celia Cross, the proprietor of the Fitzrovia, had told her to watch out for Morton when he had arrived a little over an hour ago. The word was he’d been banned from his drinking club in Dean Street and was now reduced to performing for the plebs. He had come in alone and appeared at first to be waiting for someone. It wasn’t long, however, before he was joined by a crowd of hangerson. Jill recognized a couple of media types and one or two others whom she couldn’t place but who looked vaguely familiar. Clive Morton clearly reveled in being the center of attention. Jill plonked the glass down on the bar.
    “You’re not going to make me
come
over there, are you, love?” he asked loudly.
    “That’ll be one-sixty-five, please,” Jill said frostily.
    “You’ll have to train her better than that, Clive,” someone quipped.
    Morton got unsteadily to his feet and lurched over to the bar. He scattered a handful of change in Jill’s direction.“You should be nicer to me. I could do things for you, y’know.” He leered unpleasantly.
    His eyes seemed unnaturally bright and his manner was infused with a slightly manic quality that Jill suspected was fueled by more than alcohol. She glared at him. “What did you have in mind exactly?”
    “Show you a bit of the good life. For starters.”
    “And what’s for
afters
—me?”
    He smirked. “Don’t flatter yourself, love.”
    “Will there be anything else?” she said between clenched teeth.
    Morton’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll be the first to know, I promise you.” He picked up his glass and made his way back to his table, spilling beer on the carpet as he went.
    As Jill turned to get a bag of crisps for another customer, she sensed someone’s eyes on her back. She turned slowly around. He was sitting by himself at his usual table in the corner, staring at her. When he realized he had been caught in the act, he got visibly flustered and started scribbling in the notebook he always carried with him.
    The pasty-faced young man with the curly black hair (Jill thought of him as “the Poet”) obviously had a crush on her. He came in two or three nights a week for a couple of hours and pretended not to watch her. Whenever she served him, he seemed extremely self-conscious, to the point of incoherence, barely able to string two words together. One night when she was clearing his table, she’d found a crumpled sheet of