The Tax Inspector Read Online Free Page B

her. She’s got to go. She’s out of here. She doesn’t count. You leave the Krishnas, fine,’ Benny said. ‘But you stay here with me. We can run this show together. I can go through the details for you any time you like.’
    ‘Did you work this out before Gran phoned me?’
    ‘They feed you at the temple,’ Benny said. ‘I know – you’ve got no worries, well you’ve got no worries here. I’ll guarantee a living. Don’t shake your fucking head at me. You can make two hundred grand a year in this dump, really. You can walk on fucking water if you want. We can set this town on fire.’
    The dog came and pushed his nose up between Benny’s legs. Benny kicked him away and he went back to the kitchen, slipping and scratching across the floor to where Gran Catchprice was hunched over her defective Semak Vitamiser.
    ‘This is our inheritance,’ Benny said. ‘I’m not walking away from that and neither are you.’
    Vish shook his head and rearranged his yellow robe. In the kitchen his grandmother was turning the single switch of the blender on and off, on and off.
    ‘Did you talk to Him?’
    ‘Who’s Him?’
    ‘You know who I mean … our father.’
    ‘He’s irrelevant.’
    ‘Oh yes? Really?’
    ‘His only relevance is these.’ He held up a bottle of pills – Serepax prescribed for Mr Mort Catchprice.
    ‘Benny, Benny. I thought you quit that.’
    ‘Benny, Benny, I’m not selling them. I’m trading them.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘Personal transformation,’ Benny said.
    Vish sighed. ‘Benny, he’s not going to let you do any of this. What do you think you’re going to do?’
    ‘Tonight,’ Benny rattled the Serepax and pushed them down into the grubby depths of his jeans pocket, ‘I’m swapping these with Bridget Plodder for a haircut. Tomorrow, I’m personally moving some of that stock off the floor.’
    ‘You’re selling cars?’ Benny was coated with dirt. He had grimy wrists, dull hair, this film across his skin, but there was, once again, this luminous intensity in his eyes. ‘You don’t even have a driving licence.’
    ‘He can’t stop me,’ Benny said. ‘I’ve turned the tables. I’ve got him over a barrel.’
    ‘Stay away from him, Ben.’
    ‘Vish, you don’t even know who I am. I’ve changed.’
    ‘You’re sixteen. He can do what he likes with you.’
    ‘I’ve changed.’
    For the second time that evening, Benny opened his mouth wide for Vish and pushed his face forward. Vish looked into his brother’s mouth. Whatever it was he was meant to see in there, he couldn’t see it.

4
    At three-thirty on Monday morning Vish performed his ablutions, chanted japa , and made prasadum – a stack of lentil pancakes which he laid in front of the guru’s picture before beginning to eat.
    At five-thirty Granny Catchprice had her Maxwell House standing up at the kitchen sink. She politely ate some of the cold pancakes her grandson offered her.
    At six-thirty the pair of them, she in an aqua-coloured, quilted dressing-gown, he in his yellow dhoti and kurta, opened the heavy Cyclone gates to the car yard and locked the Yale padlock back on its bolt.
    Just after the seven o’clock news there was a short, heavy thunderstorm.
    At seven-thirty Mort Catchprice, unaware that his elder son had spent the night in his grandmother’s apartment, gingerly nursed a newly registered vehicle through the yellow puddles of the service road and out on to the wet highway which was already heavy with city-bound traffic.
    At eight-fifteen Cathy and Howie came down from their apartment and crossed the gravel to unlock first the showroom and then the Spare Parts Department. She wore her snake-skin boots. He wore pointy-toed suede shoes. He walked with the weight on his heels to keep the toes from spoiling in the wet.
    At eight-twenty the air compressor thumped into life.
    At eight-thirty-three a high racketing noise cut across the yard from the workshop – an air-driven power wrench spun the wheel nuts