Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,51
you? How’s tricks?”
“Fine.” He frowned. Why had he just said that, when it was patently untrue? Force of habit, presumably. “How about you?”
“Awful. Everything sucks. I got kicked out of the clinic, my probation officer hates me and Raoul left me for a seventeen-year-old waitress.”
“Apart from that.”
“Lousy. Anyhow, what do you care? You never gave a damn about me.”
He remembered something. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. The injunction—”
“Screw the injunction.” Another pause. “Theo, I’m frightened.”
He opened his mouth, but all the words had been repossessed by the Vocabulary Bailiff. All of them except one. “Sis?”
“I’m frightened, Theo. Shit, I’m goddamn terrified. I think I’m going crazy.”
Well, he thought. “What makes you think that?”
“I—” Three seconds’ silence. Three seconds is actually quite a long time. “I’m, like, hearing voices.”
Again. “I thought Dr Ionescu had you on medication for that.”
“Not those kind of voices, you idiot. I thought—”
“Yes?”
“I got a phone call. It sounded like Max.”
His turn; four seconds. “Remind me,” he said, in a fake-casual voice he hated himself for. “Which one was Raoul? Wasn’t he your tai chi instructor?”
“That was Ramon. Theo, I heard him. I heard his voice.”
He felt as though he was standing in front of a door, through which he definitely didn’t want to go. “How did you find me?” he asked.
“What?”
“How do you know where I am? Where did you get this number from?”
An impatient click of the tongue, crisp as a bone snapping. “I’ve got you under twenty-four-seven surveillance.”
“You what?”
“I’ve been doing it for years,” she replied impatiently. “Oh for God’s sake, Theo. If I’d known you were going to make a fuss about it, I wouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m not making a fuss,” Theo replied gently. “Just out of interest, though, why?”
“To protect myself, of course. Don’t think for a second I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
She laughed, harsh and cold. “About you conspiring with that asshole Ionescu to get me certified insane and locked away so you can get hold of my money. So, naturally, I have you followed. Look, do we have to go into all that right now?”
In the past he’d tried counting to ten before saying anything. Then it had crept up to twenty, then twenty-five. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean, for what it’s worth, that’s a complete figment of your imagination, but—”
“You see? Now you’re saying I’m delusional. Fuck you, Theo, I should’ve known better than to expect any help out of you.”
“Sis—”
Click. Whirr. He sighed, put the receiver back and waited. Ten seconds later, the phone rang again. He picked it up.
“Hi, sis.”
“You’re a total bastard, Theo.”
“If I was a total bastard, you wouldn’t be my sister.”
“Theo.”
“Sorry. Look,” he said, before she could start up again, “about this phone call. You’re sure it was Max’s voice?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“So tell me about it. What happened?”
Pause, while she collected her thoughts. Considering the dreadful things she’d done to her brain over the years, it was still in remarkably good shape. The little brain that tried. “I was sitting by the pool,” she said, “and Lise-Marie – you remember her?”
The vulture-like French Canadian woman who guarded access to Janine with the single-minded ferocity of a dragon in Norse mythology. Like any near-death experience, hard to forget. “Yup. And?”
“Lise-Marie said, there’s a call for you, and I said, who is it? And she said, your brother, so I assumed it was you, so I said, put it through. And it was—”
Long pause. “Max,” Theo said.
“You think I’m crazy.”
“No,” Theo said. “Not this time.”
“Theo—”
“Sorry, sorry. So what did he say?”
Long silence. Just when he’d begun to worry, she said, “Hi, Jan. That’s what he said. And I said, who the hell is this? And he said, come on, Jan, don’t you recognise me? And then I screamed and threw the phone in the pool.”
Like you do. “Ah.”
“Who the fuck else ever called me Jan, Theo?”
Nobody; at least, not twice. “So what did you—?”
“I think I wasn’t very well for a bit after that,” Janine went on, “because the next thing I remember was waking up and Ionescu standing over me saying it’d probably be best to leave the straps on for a while. And then he asked me who the call was from.”
“Right. And what did you say?”
“I said it was from you. Well, I wasn’t going to say I’d just been talking to my dead brother, was I? He’d have thought I was nuts, I’d have been put away. I do not trust that man.
Theo pursed his lips. Dr