Read In Cold Blood for Free Online Page A

“Not any more. Not for years.”
    “Rose, then.”
    “It’s alright. It’s Beatrix.”
    “Beatrix, it is.”
    He smiled. Michael Pope had been in post ever since Control, the man Pope had replaced, had fled the country. Beatrix and John Milton had destroyed half of the Group in Russia and served notice that they were coming for the man next. Beatrix knew Milton better than she knew Pope, but the things that she did know about him suggested that he had been a very fine soldier and that he would make an excellent commanding officer of the off-the-books death squad of which she had latterly been the prime operative.
    “How are you?”
    “I’m good.”
    He waved an arm at the view. “Nice place you have here.”
    She brushed it off with wry disdain: “All thanks to the government’s money.”
    “How much did you get out of them?”
    “Two million dollars.”
    He shook his head in wry satisfaction. “The least they could do after what Control did.”
    “Yes, it was. But his debt is nowhere near paid.”
    “No,” he said. “I know it’s not.”
    “Is that why you’re here?”
    “Not about him, not yet.”
    “So?”
    “It’s about the others. One of them, in particular.”
    She motioned for him to sit and followed him across the roof. On cue, Mohammed climbed the stairs with a platter that held a silver pot of sweet-smelling tea. Mint tea was central to Marrakech culture, and he took special pride in his old family recipe. There was a spearmint plant in the courtyard and he stripped handfuls of leaves from it every morning; the leaves, sugar and a good tablespoon of gunpowder green tea would have been added to boiling water and left to steep before he brought it upstairs. “Miss Beatrix?” he said as he approached.
    “Do you want some green tea?” she asked Pope.
    “Please.”
    Mohammed set the glasses down and poured the tea from a height so that a thin layer of foam settled on the top.
    “Thank you,” Pope said.
    Mohammed ducked his head; he looked at Beatrix and she gave a slight, barely perceptible nod. He carried one of her Glocks in a holster beneath his djellaba , and, had she shaken her head, he would have taken it out and shot Pope there and then.
    “Is there anything else, Miss Beatrix?”
    “No, Mohammed. That’s all. Thank you.”
    With a watchful look back at them, he smiled thinly and went to light the candles in the lanterns that were set around the roof. When that was done, he went back downstairs. Beatrix knew he would be waiting just below.
    “Who’s he?” Pope asked.
    “An old friend,” she said, and that was true. She had worked with him on an assignment ten years earlier when he was a corporal in the Moroccan Royal Guard. She had saved his life and it was to him that she went when she moved here after leaving Hong Kong. She had asked him if he could recommend anyone to run the house for her and had been flattered when he had insisted that he would do it himself. He was a good man and she trusted him implicitly.
    Pope sipped his tea and replaced it on the table.
    “How is your daughter?”
    “She’s well.”
    “How has it been—the, well, you know—the time?”
    “Since I saw her? It’s been difficult.”
    He spoke carefully. “Does she remember what happened?”
    Beatrix tightened her grip on the glass a little. “She remembers me. I haven’t pressed her on the rest, but I think she does. I don’t know how you could forget something like that, no matter how young you were.”
    Watching your father shot in the head.
    Your mother shot in the shoulder.
    Your mother stabbing a woman in the throat.
    “No,” he said, seemingly uncomfortable with the subject he had raised.
    She had no time for his awkwardness. “It’s been a year, Pope.”
    “They don’t want to be found, Beatrix. And they know how to hide.”
    She had no time for excuses. “What have you got?”
    “I’m not sure you’ll like it.” She gave a terse gesture that he should continue. “None