Read Going Wrong for Free Online Page A

it had been. If there were no one there to tell evil stories about him. call him low-class and criminal, insult his intelligence, Leonora would be him and he her. Still, the idea of harming Tessa seemed grotesque. In all his career he had never really harmed anyone. When Danilo came back after his stay in a Borstal institution they had run a very lucrative protection racket up in Kensal and once they’d had to rough up a publican a bit to show him they meant business, but the man only got a few bruises and a black eye. Of course there was the final showdown with Dream Traffic, and there was Con Mulvanney’s death. But that had been no one’s fault, certainly not his, it was what might be called an occupational hazard.
    He refused to think about Con now. All he ever allowed himself to think of in that connection was that it had marked the end of his dealing. He had had a good run, had made a fortune, escaped from Attlee House and all its associations. His hands were clean and so was his record.
    It would do no harm to ask Danilo to have dinner with him and there sound him out on the question of hit men, how to go about it and what it would cost. Not that he cared about the cost.

C HAPTER T HREE
    W hen there was a sale of his paintings in a country pub or some other suitable outlet, Guy would sometimes go and see how it went. On these occasions it wasn’t his habit to let it be known who he was. He liked to see customers’ reactions and was seldom willing to take his agents’ word or the sales figures. It was best to see for himself whether the current favourite was Man’s Best Friend, say, or Carry on, Kittens or Lady from Thailand.
    This week one of the sales was at a pub in Coulsdon that was nearer to a country club. It was a fine day, and the traffic was never terrible in August. Everyone was away. Guy went down in the Jaguar. It was champagne-coloured, though called “beige satin,” with cream leather upholstery and an air-conditioning system so good that on really stifling London days he was sometimes tempted to go into the garage and sit in the Jaguar with the engine running to get the benefit of its cool breezes. “You’ll kill yourself if you do that,” Celeste said when he told her and there was some sense in what she said.
    The pub was called the Horseless Carriage, which was a made-up name if ever he heard one. There were more flowers on the front of it in window-boxes than at the Chelsea show. Two large yellow posters outside advertised the sale of “original oil paintings, 7—70, all prices, each one unique hand-work.” He didn’t wince for himself but only when he thought of Tessa Mandeville’s reaction. He kept thinking of her. He couldn’t get the bloody woman out of his mind.
    The sale was in a large room at the back that had double doors opening onto a terrace and a rather shabby garden where the lawn had become a dust bowl and no one had deadheaded the roses. A lot of people were there already, in the sale-room and out on the bald grass. There was one glass of red or white wine for everybody who came. After that you bought your own. Two girls were taking the orders. He didn’t know them, had never seen them before, but he could see from the growing lists on their clipboards that the orders were coming in thick and fast.
    And why not? They were original paintings, and each one was painted by an artist working individually. The results were a lot more pleasing than ninety-nine per cent of what you saw along the Bayswater Road on Sunday mornings. They were harmless and pretty, their subjects innocent—children and baby animals, young girls, country cottages, or views of the sea. When he considered some of the pictures he had seen that were supposed to be so good—war and slaughter of men and horses, for instance—that he had once seen on an outing with Leonora to Blenheim Palace, or lopsided vases and deformed apples, paintings in that Guggenheim place in Venice of naked women in birds’