Cue For Conspiracy [antikvár]

PROLOGUEAutumn, 1970Alysia Belmont would never forget the scream she was sure she had heard. For months - years - afterwards she dreamt of it regularly. In her sleep she again and again imagined that thin wailing sound of pure terror, gradually receding, until there came the dull, heavy thump of a body hitting the ground. Then silence. As time passed the dreams became less frequent and less vivid, but even then the high-pitched cry of a happy child playing in a park would remind her of the horror that she would have wished to put from her for ever.Of course, the reahty had been very different from the dream. In fact, the scream - if there had been a scream - would have been drowned by the screech of brakes as the traffic in the street below came to a sudden halt. And there had certainly been no following silence. Instead, there had been the hooting of cars, shouts, a police whistle and later the wailing sirens of the emergency services.She had never seen the body splayed on the pavement, though she visualized it as an ugly sight, no longer resembhng a human being. She hadn't seen the eager crowd that had gathered so quickly, or the ambulance crew who had eventually placed on a stretcher the remains of what had once been a well-known man, covered them with a sheet and removed them to God knew where. Alysia had fled.She had run as fast as her high-heeled shoes would permit along the passage to the bedroom and flung herself on to the bed. Though it was only a few yards she found that she was gasping for breath. Her chest hurt and for a moment she thought that she was about to die. Everything had gone black and she seemed