Walking in Darkness Read Online Free Page A

a steely strength.
    This was his honeymoon period with the media; he was new to this level of attention although he had been around for years, a face in the background, a useful man in his party, knowing everybody but not a leader. Now, he was suddenly hot and the press hadn’t yet got around to sharpening their claws. For the moment they loved him because he was new, because he gave them something different to write about, although how long that would last was anybody’s guess.
    Steve was one of the first to ask a question. It had been decided on by his producer, Simon, in advance, in discussion with Gowrie’s people, who liked to sow the audience with friendly questions. What would the senator do about street crime in the cities? Did he favour tougher punishment or more police on the streets? Or did he think society was at fault and what could be done about that?
    Gowrie went into hyperdrive on that one, talked angrily about crime and its threat to the peace of the decent people of America, said it was time America got the policing it deserved, talked of ways and means by which that could be achieved. You didn’t need to be a genius to work out that that was going to be one of his campaign platforms, but then all the candidates jockeying to be picked to run as president came out with the same promises on crime. Half an hour later Gowrie’s people were signalling him to leave. They all looked very satisfied, the press conference had gone well, he had answered every question ably, fluently.
    As he turned to go, a voice came out of nowhere. ‘Senator Gowrie, what do you believe will be the long-time effects in Central Europe of the war in the former Yugoslavia?’
    Gowrie stopped in his tracks and turned back. This was one of his specialist interests; he had worked in East Europe while he was in the diplomatic as a young man and was rumoured to speak a number of East European languages. Cleverer than he looked, but good at hiding his brains, thought Steve, which made him even cleverer, because if there was one thing the voters did not like it was a clever politician. They didn’t trust them.
    His press officers were hurriedly searching their clipboards of agreed questions. The most senior of them leaned over the battery of mikes and said curtly, ‘That question was not submitted, Miss . . .?’
    ‘Narodni, Sophie Narodni, of the Central European Press Agency,’ the blonde said, and her voice was as sexy as the rest of her, low and husky, with the faintest foreign lisp to it.
    Every man in the room was staring at her by now, and they weren’t thinking about politics. That was not what men thought about when they looked at this girl.
    The only man in the room who wasn’t goggling at her was Steve Colbourne. He had happened to be looking at Don Gowrie when he turned and had seen Gowrie’s face turn stiff and white as if he was fighting with shock, frozen on the spot like someone whose worst nightmare has begun. He hadn’t moved or spoken since, he was just staring at the blonde girl, and she was staring back at him.
    It wasn’t often that Steve Colbourne was surprised by anything. He had been a reporter for far too long in a corrupt and complex world where almost nothing was what it seemed or what people perceived it to be. He had thought himself shock-proof, but it seemed he wasn’t. Jesus, it couldn’t be. Could it? The air seemed to him to be charged, lightning almost visibly flashed between the two of them. His reporter’s mind crawled with curiosity. Don Gowrie and this girl? It was indecent even to think it: she was young enough to be his daughter, and had that lovely, untouched wide-eyed innocence that went with blue eyes and blonde hair and a certain shape of face in the young. He could not believe she was Gowrie’s mistress.
    But there was something. That was for sure. Every instinct warned about that.
    Then Gowrie visibly forced himself to break off from her, tore himself out of his trance, turned on