Masters And Lovers 1-4
Chapter 33
Dawn is breaking, and my imagination is whirring, working overtime.
Jade…
“Talk to me,” says Klempner. “What are you thinking?”
“The blood on Charlotte's bag. I'm wondering how badly she’s hurt. She wouldn't go down without a fight. Ben’s a powerful man, physically speaking. He and Michael do a lot of work together on the house and in the grounds. If he got Charlotte by herself and out of sight, down in the parking lot… If he took her by surprise, he’d have been able to overpower her… But she’d have fought back. Unless he knocked her unconscious with a single blow, he’d have had a fight on his hands. There’s a good chance Charlotte would have done some damage herself before she went down.”
Hope she’s fucking castrated him…
“After that, Mitch and Kirstie would have been easy for him. Mitch is a lot older, and Kirstie, well, she has plenty of nerve but she’s not a physical fighter and judging by the way Michael was panicking about the blood, Ben didn’t care much about being careful.”
Klempner hmmms… “Jenny's pretty resilient.”
Do I tell him?
“She's also pregnant.”
He double-takes and the car weaves before he takes a hold on the steering again. But his voice remains flat. “Does Ben know?”
“Yes.”
“I'm guessing he wouldn't like it? Not being sure who fathered his sister-in-law's child?”
“He liked even less when Michael told him it was definitely me…” Klempner shoots me another look. “Christ… If it is Ben, this will crucify Michael.”
“They're close, the two of them?”
“They would be if Ben didn't keep fucking up.”
“What does he fuck up over?”
“Charlotte. Me.”
him. What’s he
of Michael. And he knows he's
cheeks. “Right enough that the end justifies the means? He’d feel it was right to attack a pregnant woman
moral high ground?” I
snarls. “Or myself. I
brief camaraderie shattered, I lapse
say Ben’s ordinary?
brother. Michael is
the party? Kirstie was it? A friend of Jenny’s? Would Ben have any problem
My headache is returning.
“Briefly? How briefly?”
the problem was his…
flirting around his eyes. “Friday night?
“I suspect so, yes.”
Kirstie herself.
root, the same at the others. She’s sexually free, liberated, shares the view that
what you're telling me is that Eye-Candy's boring brother has a
size
he pick up his
led sheltered lives. They
me an odd
Never had a family…
… which passes.
does he feel
arrival on
ahead, absorbing that. “You think he’d
The more I think about it,