How To Kill Friends And Implicate People Read Online Free Page A

me.’
    I step out of the flat and pull the door closed behind me. I pause for a second, listening for any movement around me, or on the floors above and below. Nobody in the building seems to have noticed, and there are no sirens yet.
    I take the stairs two at a time on the way down, then walk out onto the street into the sun. I check the time. Perfect. I’ve got an appointment to meet another customer at four. I blend into the crowded street behind three hot young women in tight clothes, each loaded down with shopping bags. I slip off my rubber gloves and drop them into the nearest of the bags.
    I pull sunglasses from my pocket and put them on.
    That’s two botched jobs in a row, but maybe I can get back on track with the next one.
    Please, let it go smooth.

SEVEN
    CAL
    17:00
    Well, this is a fucking mess.
    I’m in Marxist Martin’s bedroom. Or, his ex-bedroom. Is it still really his room, now that he’s dead? Or is it just a room? Martin’s in the bathroom. He’s face down in his own blood.
    I was glad to find him face down, because it meant I didn’t have to see his nuddie little pecker. But then I walk in here, and there’s Dom Porter dead on the floor, his brains sprayed across the wall, and his own Steamboat Willie glaring at me through one dead eye.
    What the hell happened here?
    And where’s Paula?
    My first sign of trouble wuz when I checked my stash, and saw she’d taken all of my proof. Everything. Then, when she didn’t call me by four-thirty, like we’d fuckin’ agreed, I came round here.
    Getting in was easy, really. My da owns the building, so I’ve got a key to every door in the place. I’m pretty sure the tenants aren’t told that when they sign the lease. That’d be a fun clause for them to agree to. I’m not actually sure my da knows, either. Me and him don’t talk these days.
    It’s a long story.
    Well, not that long.
    I killed his favourite koi, years ago. I got high, and wanted to talk to the fish. Wanted to ask him how he stopped his skin from going all wrinkly. I mean, look, I’m in the bath for thirty minutes and I look like a fucking prune. This fish? He’s in there all the time, looks great.
    Well, not great, because he looks like a fish.
    But I have nothing against fish.
    I wouldn’t fuck one, but—
    (Well, look, that was just the one time, and for a bet.)
    Anyway. So I accidentally killed the fucking fish. He drowned in the air. So my old mate Joe Pepper, he turned up and tried to fix things for me before my da got home. First we tried stealing another one that looked the same, but that didnae work. Then we said, Hold on, why not just make it look like a break-in, steal some stuff from the house, and kill the other fish, too?
    Then my da would think that some fuckers had broken into the house, and killed his pets on the way out.
    And it worked, too, until we all went out for a drink to celebrate Joe’s graduation, and I got drunk and started telling stories about all the crazy shit we’d done down the years.
    Haw, howsabout that time I killed yer fish, and the bigyin here covered it up?
    Look, we were telling funny stories, and I thought it was a good ’un, okay?
    Live and learn, that’s what I say.
    That’s why I have to try pulling jobs like this, find my own Babycham. I got cut off over a fish, you believe that? But now there’s two dead bodies, and a load of blood, and I have no idea where my fake hooker has got to.
    If only Joe was here.
    He’d know what to do.
    Hey, that’s what I need . . . I’m in a mess here. My Babycham has gone all tits up. I’ll call Joe Pepper.
    We haven’t spoken in years, but he can fix it.

EIGHT
    CAL
    17:10
    The buzzer goes, and when I press the intercom I hear Joe’s voice. I click the button to unlock the front door and wait for him to come upstairs. He looks tired. He’s dressed all smart, in a suit that looks like someone pressed it around him. He’s no’ shaved in a couple days and, man, he looks stressed.
    ‘That