A Perfect Crime Read Online Free Page B

lit up once the hairdresser was done. I almost didn’t recognise the dignified man looking back at me.
    I t was still early, so I went to play pool. Being the middle of the morning, the place was empty, so I suggested to the boss that we play a game.
    He looked at me sideways and then replied evenly, ‘I don’t really know how to play.’ He was already holding a cue.
    ‘Me neither.’
    He fluffed the break, so I wanted to let him go again, but he said, ‘Rules are rules. No special favours here.’
    ‘OK,’ I replied, took up my cue and bent over the table awkwardly to make my shot.
    The first game was worth fifty, but I didn’t want to win and he was unwilling to pot the balls.
    ‘I’m rubbish,’ he kept repeating.
    I knew he was just bullshitting, waiting for the perfect moment to clear the table. Which he did, swiftly finishing this game and the next.
    He wanted to raise the stake for the third game and I said fine.
    ‘I want a proper game this time,’ he said, to which I said fine again.
    He knew the fight hadn’t risen in me yet, so he continued his pretence, considering each shot carefully, aligning the cue and changing his mind, even though he could’ve made every single one.
    I grabbed a beer from the fridge, bit off the cap and took a glug. I closed my eyes. To be honest, I was fed up. It was the same every time I played pool. I’d want to play at first, but by the third game all interest in it would’ve seeped out of me and my opponent would nag me more and more.
    This guy wasn’t making real shots, only trying to make mine more difficult. ‘You’re letting me win,’ he said with an ingratiating smile.
    I went to take a look. I knew he thought I wouldn’t be able to pot anything, so I bounced the white off the cushion and sank a ball before clearing the table until only the black remained. He looked like a soldier about to be decapitated in battle and put his cue to one side, so I deliberately potted the white. It was his turn now.
    ‘That was careless, brother.’
    ‘Buy me a beer,’ I said.
    He wanted to play another game, not for money this time, but I shook my head.
    ‘There’s something I want to say, but I don’t know if you’ll understand. Even though you’re older than me.’ ‘Try me.’
    ‘Every time I play pool I get this nauseous feeling and I end up thinking I’d be better off dead.’
    ‘I understand. I understand more than you do.’
    Of course he understood. What on earth could be worse than spending your life running a pool shack, watching the balls being racked up and sunk, again and again. It was like Dostoevsky wrote in
The House of the Dead:
force a prisoner only to pour water from one bucket to another and then back again, within days they’re contemplating suicide, or else how to get the death penalty.
    For lunch I ate fried chicken wings, my Last Supper, and bought a cheap razor. Back at home, I waited and made sure everything was in place. I felt like a craftsman admiring his handiwork.
    I closed my eyes and imagined a tangerine light, Kong Jie shaking her hair free, slipping off her silk skirt and curling up under the covers. As she stretches, pressing her lips together, skin pulled taut, her body rises and falls. And I’m like a soldier on a dawn raid, marching my gun through the rainy night. I’m coming, my bodystarting to explode open like fireworks, but I stretch it out, until the moment detonates completely. I think I might have more to come, but I don’t.
    I tore off a piece of toilet paper and wiped my sticky hands. I felt pretty gloomy. It was as if grey molecules were rising from the ground and falling from the sky at the same time, as if the whole world was drowning in them.
    Afterwards all I could think was that the moment was approaching. I could hardly wait. I changed into another T-shirt and some tracksuit trousers, grabbed my switchblade and started pacing.

Execution

A t 2.30 I caught sight of her talking to the guard. She was half an