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sight. When it was fully down, the panel blended with the surrounding woodwork
so well it was unnoticeable. He flicked another switch and the wheelchair
started to move across the thick piled black carpet towards the desk.
                He
picked up the phone and said, “Yes?”
                “Phil Ryker here, sir. Downstairs at the front door. You have a visitor, sir,
name’s Brother Simon. You want I should let him in? It’s gone midnight, sir.”
                “I
know what time it is, Phil. Call Edwards and have him show Brother Simon up to
the study. Oh, and Phil, how much longer is that god-awful party going on for?
I can hear the din from here.”
                Ryker’s voice crackled over a bad connection on the line.
“It shows no sign of dying down, sir. I was speaking to a member of the band
during their last break, the guitar player. He says they’re booked until two.”
                “Ah
well, there go my plans for an early night,” Stock said with a chuckle. “Okay,
thanks, Phil.”
                “I’ll
attend to your guest, sir. Goodnight.”
                Stock
put the phone down. He liked Phil Ryker , always had. Ryker was the type of man you could rely upon. Hard as a diamond and as honest as a Puritan. He was the
only man Randolph Stock trusted.
                The
desk at which he sat was as large as a billiard table and made from solid
mahogany. Dark and richly grained it shone in the subdued lighting of the study
in a way that made Stock think of old leather. The desk was uncluttered. A
simple blotter, a desk tidy containing only three pens and a few paper clips, a
brass goose-necked reading lamp, three telephones, and in pride of place to the
left of the blotter, a plain silver frame containing two photographs. The first, a black and white shot of his wife, Marlene, taken
thirty years ago, showing her in a swimsuit, reclining against the aft rail of
the Heracles, the yacht they’d rented that summer. The second was a color photograph of a young man wearing the cap and gown of
a graduation student. A handsome young man with clear blue eyes, bright with
the hopes of a successful future; the square chin up-tilted, almost defiantly,
challengingly, ready to meet the world head on and cope with whatever it set
against him. The graduation student was Stock’s first-born son, his beloved
Frank. Randolph Stock reached out a hand that was unmarked by the passage of
time and touched the silver frame with a long carefully manicured index finger,
stroking it lightly along its length. For a moment tears
glistened in his faded blue eyes but he blinked them away impatiently. Hopefully his visitor tonight would be bringing him news. News
that would ease the searing agony of his son’s untimely death forever.
                He
made himself comfortable in the wheelchair and opened a drawer in the desk. The
drawer contained a bottle of whisky, two crystal tumblers, a box of Havana
cigars and a Colt Python .357 revolver with a four inch barrel and an engraved
mother of pearl grip. He opened the cigar box and withdrew a hand rolled
Havana, took a small gold penknife from the pocket of his vest and clipped off
the end. There was a polite tap at the door. Randolph Stock lit the cigar and
let the smoke roll over his tongue, finally blowing it out through his lips in
a thin stream that eddied upwards to the ceiling. “Come in,” he said loudly.

 
 
    In the pool house Paula Devereaux was giving Dean Rulski his first lesson in
lovemaking. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered with anyone as young as Dean;
she preferred her men older, men like her college tutor for example, or the
salesman at the car rental place she used a month ago. But tonight she was
feeling horny and there was no one else at the party who even vaguely
interested her. Typical of her mother really, to throw a party for her
daughter’s eighteenth