A Good Day To Die Read Online Free Page B

Europeans with their Filipina girlfriends on the back. The whole lot of them blasting on their horns as if their masculinity depended on it, and none of them going any faster than the choking pedestrians walking along the sides of the road.
    Slippery lit one of the Marlboros with a match and opened the window, letting in a fiery waft of pollution. He chucked the match out and immediately shut the window again. 'Christ,' he said, taking a long drag. 'Is it always like this?'
    'Always like what?'
    He waved his arm expansively. 'Like this. You know, hot, smelly and noisy.'
    'You get used to it,' I told him, wondering at the same time if he actually would, or whether I'd deny him the opportunity. He'd been right when he'd suggested I thought he deserved to die. I think heprobably did. He was almost certainly a killer himself, with few redeeming features and not even the first semblance of a conscience. But if there was a way of avoiding a murder and still getting our money, I was keen to take it. And no one, apart from Slippery and me, would ever know the truth.
    'So how long have you been out here for now, Dennis?' he asked, puffing on the smoke again. 'The whole time since you disappeared?'
    'Pretty much.'
    'You know, I couldn't believe it when I read about what you'd done. I really couldn't. You always struck me as one of the good guys. You were obviously a very decent liar.'
    I knew the bastard was baiting me, but I ignored it. 'I couldn't even begin to compete with you in the bullshitter stakes, Slippery. I reckon the only time you ever told me the truth was when you spoke to confirm your name, and you've even managed to change that now. Or half of it, at least. What happened? Didn't you think you'd be able to remember it if you changed the first part as well?'
    'I always keep it simple, Dennis. There's no point trying to confuse things.' His voice was even, but there was an underlying irritation in it. I'd obviously annoyed him a little, which suited me fine. 'And what's this fucking Slippery business?'
    'Don't you remember? It was the name we used to have for you in CID. Slippery Billy West. Onaccount of your ability to wriggle out of every situation we put you in.'
    He snorted loudly and derisively. 'What? And you ain't a wriggler? How many people did you kill? Six? Seven? And here you are with a nice suntan, living the life of Reilly. You've wriggled just as well as I ever did, mate, and don't pretend otherwise.'
    The car fell silent as we crawled through the traffic past the turn-off to the harbour, before finally speeding up as we came out the other side of Puerta Galera. The road here was relatively new, the best in the north of the island, and I'd soon passed all the crawling jeepneys and built up a half-decent head of speed. The sea appeared to our right through a coconut-palm grove - a brilliant, cerulean blue - but almost immediately the view was obscured by a ragged huddle of tin and wood squatters' shacks that had sprung up by the side of the road. In the Philippines, you're only ever one step away from abject poverty.
    'So,' I said eventually. 'You know why I had to come here. What about you? What are you running from this time?'
    He opened the window and chucked out his cigarette butt. The air outside was clearer and fresher now that the traffic had thinned. He didn't answer for a while and I thought that maybe I'd upset him, but then he sighed loudly. 'Something I should never have got involved in,' he said at last and he sounded like he meant it.
    'Isn't that always the way?'
    'I'm normally a good judge of these things,' he said, which is something I would probably have agreed with, 'but I fucked up this time.'
    'What happened?'
    He turned and looked at me carefully. I think he was trying to work out whether it was something he wanted to tell the man who, for a short time at least, had been his nemesis. I got the feeling that his instincts were erring on the side of caution, but that he also wanted to talk