Requiem Mass Read Online Free

written to pander to these. She obviously thought she was attractive and probably felt she could have been a model when younger, and he suspected she had reached that time of life when opportunities to prove her attractiveness would be particularly seductive. Of course, he had also heard her join in the criticism of professional models.
    Finally, the advertisement would allow a team response – suggesting that this was something the girls could all do together. There was always the risk that she would not reply, in fact he viewed this first attempt as something of an experiment to test her reactions to some obvious bait. When he’d developed the plan, he had deliberately not placed great hope on it; if it failed he would lose a little money, but he had plenty of that, and he would waste some time. So what? Time was on his side; he had waited nearly twenty years already.
    He had been slightly surprised when the woman had replied to the first advertisement, but relieved that the group of them had written in together. What had followed had been a simple process of elimination, done convincingly with style and reassurance at each stage, just as the marked sheep is extracted from the flock and isolated with minimal alarm.
    Thinking back over the detail of the elimination process he allowed himself some pride in the simple ways he had built in double-checks to encourage her to continue to the next stage. The hotel was typical of the type in London that did as much business by day as by night; large enough for his single booking to be unremarkable and smart enough to appeal to his target.
    Finding an attractive interviewer had been easy. He had called a staff agency with explicit requirements as to the physical impact, keyboard skills and style of the person he wished to hire for three weeks. He had then arranged to interview the candidates at the agency’s offices, selecting the one who was looking for money from one last assignment before she set off on a round-the-world trip. He briefed her, gave her the laptop, details of applicants and a small supply of brochures, printed by a different high street firm from the one that had produced his stationery. He paid in advance, and had given hisaccommodation address to which to send a daily print-out of interview notes and any commentary on the candidates. The temp had been delighted with an interesting job in a smart hotel for generous pay. He promised her a success bonus if they found good-quality candidates quickly. She had asked no questions and seemed incurious about this latest job in a long and varied stream of engagements.
    He handled all the correspondence himself, picking up replies from the North London address and typing the appointment letters. He had worried that the temp he used might notify the police of her involvement if she recognised the name when it eventually appeared in the press. With this candidate, though, the risk was minimal. She should be long gone before the police ever became involved.
    He sent her more than a dozen interviewees and then telephoned shortly after contact with the target and her friends to say that the search was over and her success fee was on its way. He asked her to return all the materials and the laptop to the agency where it was collected by one of the less reputable mini-cab firms. A week later, he left the PC, erased of all data, in a builder’s skip at a site near Aldgate.
    The laptop hadn’t been strictly necessary but he had found in the past that putting information in a computer conveyed authority and respectability. It was unlikely the police would ever be able to trace the purchase of the laptop – supposing that they ever made the connection with it in the first place. He had bought it from a PC warehouse on a busy Saturday, for cash; it was one of their most popular models.
    Thinking of detail his lips compressed into a rare smile as he considered the two beautiful, high-class escorts he had arranged to turn up at the