The Hireling's Tale Read Online Free Page B

have any friends in The Fen Tiger, but on the long list of his enemies Tbomes would have figured somewhere near the bottom.
    He didn’t order a drink. He had no wish to appear part of this company; besides, mostly what he drank was non-alcoholic and he didn’t particularly want Toomes to know that. ‘Were you on last night?’
    Toomes shrugged: a can’t-remember, don’t-care, wouldn’t-tell-you-if-I-was sort of shrug. Donovan rolled his eyes but hung on to his patience. It was a necessary preamble: Toomes would answer his questions eventually, but it was vital to his own credibility that he shouldn’t make it too easy.
    ‘Simple enough question, Donny: were you working here last night? Say, between eight and closing time - or midnight, whichever came first.’
    Toomes sniffed. He was a sturdy middle-aged individual with the beer belly that’s an occupational hazard. Apart from the people he worked for and the company he kept, Donovan didn’t have much on him. A bit of handling, a bit of aiding and abetting, it was probably better not to enquire where the venison sandwiches came from, but nothing that
entitled the man to wear the hunt button of the Castlemere Mafia. Only habit kept him from answering fully and frankly.
    ‘If you’ve any complaints about us not closing on time, Mr Donovan,’ he said stolidly, ‘you’d better take them up with the management.’
    ‘Give me any of your nonsense,’ growled Donovan, ‘and I’ll sick the VAT inspectors on them.’ With the end of transportation and public flogging, this was about the direst threat that a public servant could legally issue.
    Donny Toomes recognized the fact. He had nothing to hide, and knew he wouldn’t be thanked for holding out any longer. ‘OK, OK,’ he grumbled. ‘Yes, I was here. What do you want to know?’
    ‘There was an incident on the dock. Did anybody see anything?’
    ‘What sort of an incident?’
    Donovan bared his teeth in a feral grin. ‘The sort of incident where somebody ends up dead, Donny. A girl - blonde, about twenty-five, not wearing a lot in the way of clothes. Anybody see her?’
    Toomes began to look interested. ‘How little in the way of clothes?’
    ‘To the nearest round figure? - none. So if you saw her you’d tend to remember. I take it you didn’t?’
    ‘I don’t think anyone did,’ said Toomes regretfully. ‘They’d have mentioned it if they had. Where was all this going on, then?’ He craned his neck, looking out of the window as if there was a chance of a repeat performance.
    The Fen Tiger enjoyed perhaps the best location
in Castlemere, with a street entrance just off Castle Place and a rear entrance, one storey down, on to Mere Basin. The lounge bar was upstairs; down here was where the hard cases drank. It wasn’t the view that attracted them so much as the fact that if someone you didn’t want to meet came in one way you could always leave by the other.
    Hire boats mostly moored on the north side of the basin. Donovan pointed with his nose. ‘Over there somewhere. On a boat - the Guelder Rose , black hull, blue and cream upper-works. Did you see her ?’
    Toomes nodded. ‘I saw them tying up - about eight, eight-thirty? Man and a couple of kids. Didn’t see no twenty-five-year-old blonde.’
    ‘Did you see anyone else on the boat, a bit later? A couple of drunks, maybe - one wrapped up in a coat or something?’
    But if Toomes had missed a naked twenty-five-year-old blonde he wasn’t much interested in anything else he might have seen. He shook his head glumly.
    Donovan turned to face the room, meaning to repeat the question for general consumption. But the bar was empty. He gave a snort of scornful amusement. ‘Jesus, Donny, your customers are a shy lot. Anybody’d think they’d been up to no good.’
    Toomes sighed. ‘Listen, Mr Donovan, don’t take this the wrong way but … You come swanning in here with your threats and your questions, you’d be sensible to bring somebody with