Starting Over Read Online Free Page A

gutter. I crawled across to it and picked it up. It looked like a tiny silver mushroom. I handed it to Keith and he began to laugh.
    ‘That’s a pellet from a .22 air rifle,’ I said.
    Keith wiped away tears of mirth. ‘So do you think we can rule out al-Qaeda?’
    We stood up. Keith handed the pellet to the uniformed inspector. ‘A souvenir of your first shoot-out,’ he said. We began walking towards the derelict house. ‘Come out with your hands up,’ I shouted, as though I was not a canteen cowboy. ‘Or I’ll stuff that pop-gun right up your rectal passage.’
    A bearded man appeared in the doorway of the house, gripping an air rifle by its stock. There were a few steps leading up to the front door and he stopped there, staring down at us. His hair was wild and matted and he was wearing an old trenchcoat. We stopped.
    ‘Rainbow Ron,’ said Keith. ‘Probably an alias. Drop your water pistol, sonny.’
    He could have been a vagrant or a runaway from a funny farm. Either way, he looked like someone with hardly anything to lose. Then, just as I started to feel the fear in my breathing, he threw the air rifle down the stairs. Keith stooped to pick it up. I kept my eyes on Rainbow Ron, and saw his gaze sweep down the street and fix on something. I turned to see what he was looking at. It was some old dear coming slowly down the street, on her way to the supermarket to blow her pension on two cans of cat food. Rainbow Ron started down the steps. I took a quick look over my shoulder; the uniforms were still behind their motor, peeking out at the action. The old woman kept coming, muttering away to herself. I held up my hand. She didn’t see me. She was getting closer. I held my hand up higher and shouted a warning. She must have had the volume on her deaf-aid turned down low, because she didn’t stop. Rainbow Ron reached the bottom of the steps as Keith straightened up, looking at the air rifle in his hand, and the old lady shuffled between us. I saw Rainbow Ron slip one of his dirty paws inside his trenchcoat.
    And I thought – knife?
    ‘Ah, that’s not a gun,’ Keith said, smiling affectionately at the air rifle and looking up to see what I saw at exactly the same moment – the snub-nosed handgun that Rainbow Ron had magically produced from somewhere inside his coat. ‘But stone me,’ Keith added, diving sideways. ‘That is.’
    Then Rainbow Ron had the old lady by her fake-fur collar and he was screaming at us to stay back, waving his black handgun in her face, and Keith and I had our hands above our heads and we were shouting at him to just calm down, calm down, and behind us I could hear the uniformed inspector calling for backup on his radio and in the distance the hundred-yard hero was going hysterical.
    I looked at the eyes of Rainbow Ron blazing like the winner of a Charles Manson lookalike contest from behind his greasy fringe.
    He looked stuffed and cuffed, jail no bail, going down for sure, and that made him dangerous. I took a step back. And then he flung the old lady forward, sending her sprawling, and I felt my blood surge to boiling point.
    Then he was off. Back up the steps and into the house. We gave chase. He went up the stairs and he kept going. We followed. But by the time we reached the second floor, Keith was dropping behind, clutching his ribs and gasping for breath.
    ‘I need a cigarette,’ I heard him say, and so then I was on my own. Rainbow Ron certainly ran fast for a raving lunatic. I followed him all the way to the top of the house. A skylight was open. I stepped out on to the roof, the city buzzing far below, and he whirled round to confront me with the gun in his hand pointing right at my face.
    And the anger was gone. All gone. All I could feel was the fear. I did not want to die on this roof. And when I tried to speak, almost cross-eyed from looking down the short black barrel of the terrible thing in his hand, nothing came out.
    It looked like a toy. A cruel, ugly toy.