Dark Circles Read Online Free Page A

that?’ Wilson asked getting up and making his way to the kitchen.
    Helen McCann stood with her back to him, busying herself at the Nespresso machine. ‘You like a long coffee, I assume?’
    ‘Yes, thanks. You said that you had business in Belfast. What business is that?’
    ‘Not really business.’ She deposited two cups of coffee on the breakfast bar. ‘I’m so bored these days that I consider lunches and dinners with my old friends as business. I have a few board meetings to attend, a few charitable functions. I come to Belfast when I want to be busy.’
    Wilson stirred with the spoon that Helen had provided although he took neither milk nor sugar. He was the square peg in a round hole as far as Kate and her mother were concerned. They had all the advantages of money. They were educated at the best schools and colleges. They travelled the world, and not in economy class. His father had been an RUC man, and his mother was a teacher, the quintessential middle-class family. He wondered how his mother would feel at one of Helen’s lunches or dinners. He knew she would be out of place. Just like him in the sphere of the McCanns.
    ‘Kate is tired all the time,’ Helen said, sipping her espresso. ‘I’ve convinced her to hire a housekeeper.’
    Wilson’s eyebrows rose. He hadn’t been informed about the employment of a housekeeper. But then why should he be. Until something more permanent was announced, he was simply the lodger.
    ‘Do you see your mother often?’ Helen asked.
    ‘My mother’s dead,’ Wilson said.
    ‘No she’s not,’ Helen sipped her coffee. ‘She’s living in some Godforsaken town in Nova Scotia, as you very well know.’
    Wilson was stunned. ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I am one of the wealthiest women in this Province. I have one daughter to whom everything I own will pass one day. Surely you don’t think that I would be so remiss as to not check into the man who currently resides with her.’
    ‘I haven’t seen my mother since she remarried and left Ulster.’
    ‘How very peculiar. You haven’t seen your mother in more than twenty years.’
    ‘She gave up that right when she married within one year of my father’s death, and when it transpired that she’d had a relationship with her new husband over a period of years when she’d been married.’
    ‘You’re too harsh.’
    ‘This subject is closed,’ Wilson said.
    Helen was about to speak when Wilson’s mobile rang. He picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID, it was Stephanie Reid. He thought for a moment before pressing the green button. ‘It’s a bit early,’ he said as soon as the line opened.
    ‘And Good Morning to you too,’ Reid said. ‘You’re a right grump in the morning.’
    Wilson wanted to kick himself for his brusqueness. Thinking of his mother tended to leave him on edge. ‘Thanks. I wasn’t expecting a social call.’
    ‘It’s not totally unrelated to work. Are you busy today?’
    Wilson wanted to answer ‘yes’ but that would have been a lie. And Professor Reid might discover that lie. ‘Not really,’ he said finally. ‘Why?’
    ‘I’m not actually sure,’ Reid said hesitantly. ‘I was called out by mistake last night. It appears that a Belfast City Councillor by the name of David Grant had an accident while performing erotic asphyxiation. Something seems to have gone terribly wrong, and he ended up strangling himself.’
    ‘But,’ Wilson said.
    ‘It didn’t look right.’
    ‘Accidents rarely do. That’s why they’re called accidents.’
    ‘I can’t put my finger on it but I think there’s more to this than an accident.’
    ‘What might he local GP think?’
    ‘That the chair slipped while Mr Grant was trying to get his rocks off by simulating a hanging. I should mention that he was dressed in bra, panties and black stockings at the time.’
    ‘That must have been quite a sight. And you want me to do what about it?’
    ‘Maybe it wasn’t an accident. It looked to me like