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Back The Double Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
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  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
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  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
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  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
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  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. Acknowledgements

Vidor had kept his eyes closed throughout this long lament, desperate to escape, but not wanting to anger her in case she questioned him about his actions on the day Ismail died. When he could no longer stand the note of complaint in her voice, he’d snapped. ‘Why don’t you go back home then?’

‘Have you ever been to Saskatchewan?’ Her voice was bitter. When he shook his head, the noise coming from her throat was like a strangled cat. ‘There’s nothing there for me but a mother who loathes me, and a father who’s a drunk. I’d rather be dead than go back there.’ She waved her hand over her body. ‘And with all these strange illnesses I keep getting, and everyone saying I’m crazy, I’ll probably die and get dumped in some unmarked grave, and that will be the end of my sorry, stupid life.’

Before he fled, he’d had a sense of impending doom, as though all the oxygen was being sucked from the air. How dare she insinuate he had something to do with Ismail’s death? The Canadian woman’s head had expanded and contracted like a balloon, before pulling free and floating up towards the ceiling. What’s happening? A pain had stabbed his left temple. The water in the pool was the colour of blood. The last thing he’d heard was the sound of running feet, and someone calling for a doctor just before his head hit the tiles and he blacked out.

In the mirror, he examined the bandage on his forehead. A minor abrasion, apparently, though for all he knew he might have been subjected to an experimental procedure. Like his roommate, the OCD chap. How else to explain the bloody bandage on the man’s head Vidor had spotted a few weeks back?

47

Gessen waved his hand over the chessboard with a flourish. ‘I’m feeling in a particularly magnanimous mood today, so I’ll let you be white.’ He gestured at the outdoors where everything visible was covered in snow. The boxwood hedge and pines glittered like great dollops of ice cream, and the falcon sculpture was transformed into a snow cone. ‘Isn’t it stunning?’

He beckoned to Vidor to come through, but he seemed reluctant to step into the room.

‘I woke with a terrible headache this morning,’ he said, hanging back in the doorway. ‘Must be from this bump I got yesterday.’ He pointed to the bandage over his eye. ‘Those tiles by the pool are dangerous. I think it’s only fair to warn you that I might sue you for personal injury.’

Gessen let this pass. Vidor’s skin was the colour of uncooked veal and his eyes were rubbed raw, as if he hadn’t gotten a moment’s rest in the night. ‘Up until my little mishap, I felt in excellent form. I even swam a few laps in the pool.’