Forbidden Reading Read Free Page B

solicitor.’
    ‘There’s a manuscript that’s long been missing from my collection.’ Mrs Weiss spoke as though Justine hadn’t said anything. ‘I’ve heard this precious document is finally being made available. I want you to acquire it for me.’
    Still seething, Justine wouldn’t allow herself to be won over by the pull of intrigue. ‘There are others in your library better suited for acquisitions. Employ one of them. I’ve just told you: I shall be tendering my resignation.’
    ‘I’ll double your salary.’
    Justine stiffened her back and sniffed indignantly. ‘Do you think I’m a whore? Do you think you can buy me with a measly increase in wages?’
    ‘I think we’re all whores,’ Mrs Weiss said solemnly. ‘We may not all share the same price but I’ve yet to meet the woman, or man, who puts virtue above personal gain or the realisation of their own ambitions. Such perverse morality goes against the grain of human nature.’
    ‘I’m not a whore,’ Justine said with quiet dignity. ‘I do put virtue above personal gain and I’ll be telling that to a competent lawyer for the industrial tribunal.’
    Mrs Weiss laughed. ‘Surely, you won’t leave today?’ she purred. ‘You won’t throw away your career on the same day you’ve been given a chance to single-handedly acquire La Coste .’
    The final two words were delivered like a killing blow.
    Justine heard them and reeled as though she had been struck. She stopped walking toward the vault door and turned to see the earnest expression on the older woman’s face. A hundred questions rushed to the front of her mind, each more important than the last. If she had found the breath to speak she knew she would have stammered in excitement. But the one thing she would not have done would have been to repeat her intention to leave. The idea of declining Mrs Weiss’s offer was no longer an option. Justine wanted to get her hands on La Coste .

One
     
    For one brief moment Justine found herself wondering what she was doing.
    She sat at the back of the church, innocently admiring the grandiose frescos and architecture, marvelling at the beauty of the stained glass and smiling approval at the ornate carvings on the pulpit and chancel. With the onset of twilight, candles had been lit around the chancel and within recesses in the broad stone pillars, and she was bathed in the warm glow of their guttering light. A memory of incense perfumed the air with a sultry cinnamon tang. The excess of detail around her was more than Justine was used to observing and, as she gazed with awe on a vividly sculpted crucifix above the altar, she tried to understand why she was troubling herself with Mrs Weiss’s acquisition. The library’s patron had bullied and abused her, subjected her to the most disquieting ordeal in the vault, and only stopped Justine from tendering her resignation by giving her the chance to acquire a mere manuscript.
    Yet, going against her better judgement and flying in the face of common sense, instead of telling the library’s patron to hand the job to someone else, Justine had eagerly returned home, packed an overnight case with her passport and a few essentials, then set off to attend the rendezvous that Mrs Weiss had organised. There had been a taxi ride, a train journey, the purchase of a pocket-sized phrase book to help surmount the language barrier she anticipated facing, then a short flight out of the country. That had been followed by another train journey, a second taxi ride and a short walk to one of the lesser-known churches in rural Provence. Everything happened so quickly she supposed it was only within the tranquillity of the church that she had found the chance to contemplate her actions. But it still struck her as bizarre that she was willing to do so much after suffering Mrs Weiss’s sadistic abuse.
    ‘I’m doing this to get La Coste ,’ Justine told herself. Her whispered voice was like a prayer in the stillness of the