Give The Devil His Due Read Online Free

good ones at that. The last I heard about Neil was that he'd become a sales rep. Successful I would imagine. He always had a very slick line in chat. I hadn't a clue about Trevor. I remembered him going to university to read law, but what he was up to now was anybody's guess. With so many spaces to fill there’d be plenty for us all to catch up on.
           Looking at Phil standing there on his ownsome it was obvious I was the first to arrive. ‘Where are they then?’ I asked.
           ‘Trev'll be here in about three quarters of an hour.’
           ‘What about Neil? Is he still coming?’
           ‘Yeah, he hasn't told me anything different.’
           We went indoors. Phil was one of those people always in the middle of something. I could see he had one of his PCs on. Virtually every room in his house had a computer. When asked why he hadn't got one in the bathroom, he said there was one on order. The man was sick, and needed to get a life.
           ‘Won't be a minute finishing this Will. Dump your gear upstairs and we'll go out the back.’
           I went upstairs, put my stuff in the spare bedroom and made a quick visit to the bathroom. Less than two minutes later I was sat out on Phil's patio. Phil, never one to wait for the sun to be over the yardarm, had a couple of chilled cans on the table.
           ‘I can't go mental Phil. I won't be up to it this evening if we have too many now.’
           ‘Don't worry, I shan't let you.’
           We sat there and talked for awhile. Phil had just passed his motorbike test and was feeling the need to give me a street-by-street account of his test route. I listened jealously. I’d wanted to sit mine but hadn't had the time for enough practice to put in for a test.
           Motorbike talk over, Phil was telling me how the reunion had come about. It transpired that Phil had bumped into Neil's folks a couple of weeks before. Neil's parents had Trevor's mother's home number and so that's how Phil had tracked the lad’s down.
           I wanted to know more. ‘So where are they coming from then?’ I asked.
           ‘London.’
           ‘What, both of them?’
           ‘Yeah.’
           ‘That's weird.’
           ‘What's weird?’
           ‘Them not travelling together.’
           ‘Well, maybe they've finished work at different times. Maybe they're coming from different parts of London.’
           Phil always had a possible answer for everything. I still thought it a bit odd that they weren't journeying together. After all, it was the same rail line that they'd be using. Why not get the same train and catch up on old times? Just as I was having that thought, Phil's next-door neighbour's dog went ballistic. There was someone knocking Phil's front door.
           ‘We're out the back, side-gate's unlocked!’ Phil shouted.
           A few seconds later, the gate moved tentatively open and a grinning Peachy appeared before our very eyes. I had to ask him, ‘Why the slow-mo entrance Peachy?’
           ‘I didn't know if you had the hound-from-hell back here.’
           ‘No he's next-door’s’. He's in their back garden. Just sounds like he's in mine.’
           I could see the relief on Peachy's face. Trevor ‘Peachy’ Kozen looked like he hadn't changed at all. Same baby face, tight black curly hair; he even had the same glasses on. Well, they probably weren't, but they looked like they could’ve been.
           The years had been very kind to him. He obviously still had the same canine phobia he'd possessed as a child. And why ‘Peachy’? Well, ever since we were adolescents and the sap started rising, Trevor had suffered from what Phil described as ‘peach syndrome’, named after the famous Professor ‘Simon (I Like ’Em Big!) Peach’ in the film ‘ The Italian Job ’. Trev liked ’em big too, and I mean