Jig Read Online Free

signs that said HEATHROW flashed past in a blur. Office buildings became streaks of dying light. A hundred. A hundred and five. The Camaro vibrated. The music filled the car at maximum volume.
    Come on over, baby, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on …
    They didn’t make rock and roll like this any more. Now it was all pretension and posturing boys in make-up. It was a yawn these days.
    Pagan beat his hands on the steering-wheel.
    I said now come on over, baby, we really got the bull by the horn.
    â€˜ I ain’t fakin’ ,’ Pagan sang at the top of his voice. One hundred and ten. The reality of speed. Everything was focused. Everything was crystal and hard. Speed and loud music and the wind making your face smart. ‘ There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on! ’
    He saw the flashing lights behind him. He smiled, drove the pedal as far to the floor as it would go, took the Camaro up to one hundred and fifteen, teased the Special Branch car a few miles more. This is it. This is the way to squash old pains. Let the poison drain out of your system at one hundred and twenty miles an hour with the Killer drowning all your thoughts.
    He released the pedal. He pulled the car onto the shoulder and waited. The Rover from Scotland Yard drew in behind him. Pagan shut the music off, closed his eyes. The man from Special Branch was called Downey. He wore a soft felt hat, the brim of which he pulled down over his forehead. He had a waxed moustache and his breath smelled of spearmint. He stuck his head in the window of the Camaro and said, ‘Frank, for Christ’s sake, why do you keep doing this?’
    Pagan looked at the policeman, grinned. ‘Therapy, my old dear.’
    Downey shook his old head. ‘You been drinking, Frank?’
    Pagan blew into the man’s face. ‘What do you think?’
    â€˜This is the third time in the last ten days,’ Downey said. ‘One day, you’ll kill yourself. Bound to happen. Is that what you want, Frank?’
    â€˜Can I count on you, Downey?’
    â€˜Count on me for what?’
    â€˜To be a pallbearer. To bear my pall. You’d look good in black.’
    Downey stepped away from the Camaro. He said, ‘Funerals depress me. Yours might be different. Might be uplifting.’
    â€˜Wall to wall merriment,’ Pagan said. ‘Would be quite a ceremony. Everybody from Scotland Yard would turn out and cheer.’
    â€˜Right,’ Downey said.
    Pagan smiled. He slid the Camaro forward a couple of yards, then stuck his head out of the window and looked back at Downey. ‘You been eating scrambled eggs, Downey?’
    â€˜Scrambled eggs?’
    â€˜You got some stuck to your wax there.’
    Downey’s hand shot to his upper lip. He felt nothing. ‘Fuck off, Frank,’ he said.
    But Pagan was already gone.
    Frank Pagan’s office overlooked Golden Square on the edge of Soho. It was an impersonal place, filled with chrome and leather furniture. At night – and it was ten o’clock by the time he got there – you could catch a thin glimpse of the lights of Piccadilly, that garish heart of London.
    Pagan had visited countless houses similar to Charlie Locklin’s during the past twenty-four hours. He had talked with scores of people exactly like Charlie in Irish enclaves throughout London, such as Kilburn and Cricklewood and Chalk Farm, known IRA sympathisers and those with affiliations to that nebulous terrorist network. He’d talked with criminals who’d done time for bombings and other acts of what Pagan considered thuggery. He hadn’t turned up anything on Jig. He hadn’t expected to. What he’d encountered was a solid wall of silence and ignorance. Everybody had heard of Jig, of course, because the bloody man was notorious and his name was in all the tabloids, but nobody knew anything about him.
    Even those journalists who had written with sneaking respect for