Cold Read Online Free Page A

fabric, pulling down his trousers, exposing his flaccid penis.
    Iryna turned to Reikhman. She, too, showed fear on her face.
    ‘Now give him a treat,’ Reikhman said. ‘Strip. Show him your tits. Suck him.’
    She shook her head.
    Reikhman pulled out his Magnum hand cannon and pointed it at her. It could fire five shots in less than a second and punch through armour.
    ‘Do it.’
    Her eyes flickered a sidelong glance at Konstantin, who looked away. The two of them knew far too much, Reikhman thought, and worse, they were definitely lovers. He’d have to do something about that later.
    ‘Do it.’ he said. ‘In front of the camera.’
    Iryna stepped into the zone of focus and stared, unsure, at the camera. Reikhman waved the gun at her and she took off her jumper and unbuttoned her blouse. Her arms went behind her back to unhook her bra, in front of the man with the elephant face, a grim parody of a striptease.
    ‘Suck him.’
    ‘What the fuck?’ said a muffled voice from inside the mask.
    Iryna knelt down, her heavy white breasts wobbling, and with some tenderness she began to massage Pyotr’s penis, then she lowered her head and started to suck him, one hand cupping his testicles, the other flicking her hair back behind her ear. The man in the mask gasped – pleasure, terror, something in between.
    Konstantin was staring into space, zoned out, not there.
    ‘That’s enough,’ Reikhman told her.
    She stood up and backed away, shivering, hastily covering herself. The bully’s penis was fully erect, bobbing up and down stiffly, an actor taking the curtain call at the end of a one-man play.
    Something about the sight of the helpless half-naked man with the elephant face and the hard-on made Iryna look away. What was Reikhman going to do to him?
    Silently, Reikhman walked to the hob, picked up the pan full of spitting fat and the cup of sugar, and moved towards the man, who gave out a soft, low moan.
    ‘This is from the devil’s bastard.’
    And with that Reikhman carefully poured the boiling fat over Pyotr’s erect penis. The fat hissed as it made contact, the skin flaking away. Next he poured the sugar over it, to caramelise the wound. The room filled with the stink of boiling oil, burnt sugar, molten flesh. The bully’s screams were muted by the Elephant; the muffled sound seemed almost inhuman.
    Pyotr’s body threshed around in a spasm of agony; the chair splintered into pieces and he fell, writhing, his hands still handcuffed behind his back. Konstantin dared to steal a look at the half-naked, half-burnt thing on the floor. The eye sockets of the gas mask were filling up from the inside. The old man was drowning – drowning in his own snot and vomit.
    Iryna retched into the sink.
    After a while, Reikhman switched off the camera and returned it to the aluminium case.
    He locked the case, picked it up, nodded to Iryna and Konstantin and walked out. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Burn this dump. I’ll be in the car.’

SOUTH LONDON
     J oe woke up to discover on the pillow next to him – where his lover had once laid her beautiful head of hair, thick and blonde and lustrous – a large lamb bone, licked clean.
    ‘Stupid dog.’
    He kicked the bed sheets to locate the perpetrator, whose natural place was snoozing at his feet.
    No dog.
    Joe whistled: one long note, one short. Normally he would hear the scratchy pattering of Reilly’s claws upon floorboards, but there was no response. He whistled again. Nothing.
    Joe remembered Wolf Eyes and the weird twins following him in Richmond Park and began to worry. He padded downstairs in his pyjamas, put the kettle on and made himself a cup of tea. Out of the back window of his tiny kitchen he could see his back garden, which Reilly could get to through a dog flap in the back door. The fence was solid, the back gate locked. How on earth? His pushbike was leaning against the fence. Beside it, an upturned flowerpot. A clever dog could use the pot to stand on the