The Quiet Twin Read Online Free

itchy with the clap. Then it was lunchtime and he locked the door and slipped out of the coat he had donned for his professional duties; sat down at the kitchen table and ate a cold sausage with a slice of bread and a little mustard on the side.
    Not long ago, Beer had hoped to establish himself as a specialist for nervous disorders. He had worked in the clinic three days a week and nurtured a growing private practice on the side. He had resigned two weeks after his wife had left, and, unable to find a big enough patient base for himself, had soon drifted into general medicine. Now he had only a handful of neurological and psychiatric cases: a woman with a phobia of open water who liked to regale him with the details of her boudoir, legs crossed and gazing up into his ceiling cobwebs; and a young man of good family plagued by inexplicable headaches. Those he saw in the afternoons, in the drawing room, where they sprawled upon a red upholstered couch.
    It was the woman’s turn that day. She came at two, and overstayed the allotted hour; started speaking while he was still busy helping her out of her coat and hardly stopped through the seventy minutes of her visit, though once he startled her by pouring out a glass of water and standing by until she had drunk. He should have been listening but found his mind wandering back to Speckstein’s niece and his night-time visitor who had not shown, or else had left without a message. It had been foolish of him to write that note. He saw the woman off, finally, at a quarter past three, and stood in the hallway with his suit coat in his hands, unsure where to take his disquiet.
    The doorbell rang, startled him. He was right there, not a foot from door and bell, and it stung him like a slap: that shrill, angry ringing. He jumped and feared arrest, irrationally, implausibly expected a uniform, the waving of a truncheon, neighbours staring through the cracks of their doors. Nonetheless, he opened up almost immediately; checked his breath first, and the knot of his tie, and opened the door, only to find the laundry boy with a basket in his hands: a pile of fresh linen to which was pinned the scrawl of his name. He blushed and bid the boy wait, a man really, gone twenty-five, and a mug like a horse; ran into his bedroom to collect his dirty underwear, and scoop up a half-dozen shirts he had piled upon a chair.
    They stood in the hallway, exchanging the fresh for the soiled. The boy was conscientious in counting off every sock and singlet, and folded the underpants carefully over one outstretched arm, like a waiter piling on napkins. His maths was bad and it took a while, horse-face scrunched under the strain, when, all of a sudden, the fuse burnt out and left them in darkness.
    ‘Not again,’ the doctor cursed, and rushed the man into his living room there to finish their transaction by the light of the window. The oaf had to start over with his count: passed back whatever he had collected, so that Beer stood with linens over his arms and shoulders, and clutched in each hand a crumple of sweaty socks. Then recommenced that ponderous arithmetic, until accounts could be settled to the lad’s satisfaction and he left, basket in hand, a fistful of change jingling in his pocket.
    Alone again, the doctor shook his head then smiled about the encounter; lit a cigarette and poured a brandy, found his hand still shaky with the ringing of that bell. Once calmed, he went to the kitchen and bent to one knee to retrieve a box of fuses from under the sink. He lifted it out, hesitated, and then replaced it again, his thoughts running to Speckstein, and the girl. His electricity was out, and he wished for information.
    There was a place that could offer a fix to both.

Chapter 4
    The janitor’s flat was on the ground floor. Beer knocked twice before he saw the sign hanging from the doorknob informing him that the man was downstairs, in the cellar, where he had a workshop of sorts and seemed to spend much