Evil Relations Read Online Free Page B

for comfort.
    ‘Let’s go for it, then.’
    They refrain from running, but walk with adrenalin-induced speed to the long road bordering the estate. Fluorescent light spills from the newsagents’ shop, and outside the chippy crumpled paper bags flutter while discarded pop cans clatter in a gust of wind.
    The public telephone stands on the corner of Hare Hill Road. All three of them squeeze inside the peeling scarlet box with its tart iron-filings smell. He lifts the receiver and dials 999, the burr and clicks of the connection reverberating in the cramped space.
    His call is logged at 6.07 a.m. by Police Constable Edwards, the duty policeman at Hyde station.
    *
    ‘I asked for a car,’ David recalls quietly, 45 years later. He’s sitting on a pine chair he made himself, in the kitchen of his home in a remote and beautiful corner of Ireland. ‘I couldn’t think of anything to say. There wasn’t a story that I could give them over the phone. How could I sum up in a couple of sentences what had taken place that night? I definitely did
not
mention that there had been a murder. I just asked for a car. The bobby on the phone said, “Well, what’s it for?” I told him, “Look, we
need
a car. It’s an emergency. You’ve got to get a car to us. I’ll explain at the station.” He promised us a car was on its way, so we ducked out of the phone box and hid behind a privet hedge. I don’t know if it was somebody’s garden, I just remember kneeling down behind this hedge. Full daylight came, but still no car. I went back to the phone box and called the police again. I think I rang them twice or more because I wanted to be sure that the car was on its way. And it arrived while I was actually on the phone. I’ve never been so glad to see a copper in my life.’
    * * *
From David Smith’s memoir:
    The police car driver says nothing, on the dash a knife and large screwdriver, in the back a young wife and large dog, me sitting silent next to him, looking out of the window. I notice he jumps all the red lights, the streets pass quickly and with a weird noise, woosh
-woosh-
woosh. I stare ahead, pressing my back hard against the seat, feet against the floor, breathing rapid and shallow but starting to relax, getting closer to where I want to be.
    Are you all right, girl?
I ask Maureen. She answers softly that she is.
    Every ten seconds I feel the driver’s eyes on me for an instant, but he says nothing and looks ancient to me, double my seventeen. I look away from him.
    We approach the old Town Hall: Hyde police station and the magistrate’s court are wedged under the same roof, inside the same blank red walls. Two or three traffic lights come up in quick succession, we jump every one. Early risers on the suburban streets, heading for work, just another day in the life for them.
    I’ve entered a corridor that has only one exit, I know this and it comforts me, even though I don’t know where the exit is and I don’t know or even care where the corridor will take me. I only feel, inside myself, the madness of it all: Ian sitting composed and calmly nodding my dismissal, without seeing the Fall of the King. Myra smiling, eyes warm and friendly, without seeing the Capture of the Queen.
    What was it that you think you saw in me, Ian? You felt confident enough to kill in front of me, but what happened in your head? You say I passed the test – what fucking test? You don’t issue diplomas for this kind of thing. So we got drunk together and talked a load of shit together; it meant
nothing
, some bank robbers us. But to kill someone the way you did in front of me . . . Why you decided to do it only you know. Did you really believe your game, were you so fucking mad as to believe you were above everything? Didn’t you see your mistake:
I
am your mistake. But why?
    I need to know
why
.
    I sit in front of a small desk, next to me Maureen holds Bob the dog, on the desk are my knife and screwdriver. A windowless room with a coal