SSC (2001) The Dog Catcher Read Online Free Page A

Laurence.
    Sue had
been around dangerous men all her life, she knew this about them that they didn’t
bluster and shout, they didn’t issue funny threats like they did on the telly.
They didn’t say through gritted-together teeth: ‘If you do that again I’ll cut
your bollocks off and nail them to the letter box as a draught excluder!’
It was not the way of the violent to indulge in complex verbal linguistic
display. If they could indulge in complex verbal linguistic display they
probably wouldn’t be violent in the first place. And they didn’t issue warnings
like the weather forecast either; they didn’t say, ‘I’ll only tell you once,’
or ‘I’m warning you…’ or ‘I’m giving you one more chance but, I swear, if you
screw up again I’ll …’ They just did you right there and then with no prior
notice and no right of appeal. The only warning you might get is that sometimes
the situation they were in, like for instance it being their first day in a new
town, led them, occasionally, once in a while, to consider their actions. Sue
could see that Tony was thinking of doing Laurence right there and then with no
prior notice and she could also see that Laurence knew he was in danger of
being done and yet, strangely, Laurence didn’t seem frightened and he didn’t
seem bothered either. The old pouf went up in her estimation. Still, following
that, he stopped needling Tony and the danger passed.
    Tony
never bothered much with the Noche Azul crowd after the first few days; in the
early weeks of June he spent a lot of time driving backwards and forwards to
the coast, in the big silver car. When she didn’t have a client Sue would go
with him and sometimes she would bring The Dog as well. It would lie panting on
the black leather of the back seat until they arrived in Malaga or Marbella or
Nerja. Then while Tony went off to have his meetings Sue and The Dog would go
for long walks. At first she felt uneasy being back on the coast but having The
Dog with her gave her courage. A couple of times she did see people who might
wish to do her harm but they never got close enough to recognise her; also, she
realised, her appearance had changed since she had been in the village. Her
hair had grown longer, her skin was darker from the time she had spent in the
campo and the muscles of her arms were a lot firmer from all the wanking that
she was doing.
    One
lunchtime back in the village towards the start of July an amazing thing happened:
the bar went quiet. Sue looked up from her newspaper to see in the doorway an
officer of the Guardia Civil. The Guardia, Franco’s semi-military rural police
were hated up here. During the civil war the village had been an anarchist
stronghold and the Guardia had been in charge of reprisals when the republic
was lost. They had shot seventeen of the village boys along the cemetery wall
and the village had not forgotten. The officer strode up to the bar and started
asking Armando something, she couldn’t quite hear what but it seemed to be
something to do with a car from Madrid. Getting nothing out of the sullen bar
owner the policeman soon turned and left, climbing back into his Nissan Patrol
and gunning it back down the mountain. A few days after that, Sue was taking a
pee in the campo, the padre a few metres away furiously pulling himself off
behind an ancient gnarled olive tree, when she heard a sudden ‘Whooph!’ At
first she thought it was the priest coming, some of those old campo boys she
had found went off like hand grenades. Then turning the other way she saw in a
distant ravine that a car had exploded and was now on fire, it looked like a
silver Opel Omega with Madrid plates.
    Tony
said his car had been stolen while he was in Almunecar, but anyway he only
needed one more trip to the coast. He persuaded Sue to borrow Laurence’s Mini
for this trip south though Laurence lent it grudgingly.
    In the
end she wasn’t able to go with him and Laurence went on and on saying