To Kill For Read Online Free Page B

in an alley, carved up.’
    â€˜Please,’ he said to the ground.
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜I didn’t know what he was going to do, Joe. Honest.’
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜I owed a lot to Jimmy Richardson. I mean, Christ, I owed a lot, twelve grand. Richardson wanted my bollocks in a sling. Paget told me he’d straighten it out if I did a small job. I had to do it. What could I do? And Paget said he just wanted a word with her.’
    â€˜You believed him?’
    â€˜No. No, I didn’t. But I thought he was just going to put the frighteners on her. Maybe rough her up a bit. That’s all.’
    â€˜You knew I was seeing her?’
    â€˜Course. Everyone knew. But I never thought you were a grass.’
    â€˜So you knew she was grassing Marriot up to the law, and you thought Paget was just going to rough her up?’
    He looked up at me, then, and I could see that he knew he was edging closer to his own murder. He held my jacket loosely in his hands. I knocked them off.
    â€˜I don’t believe you, Bowker. I think you knew what was going to happen to her.’
    The pub’s owner came out again, this time with a couple of other men, one carrying a snooker cue. I told them all to fuck off. They looked at me and then at Bowker. The owner dithered and said something to the others. He turned to me and said, ‘I don’t want no trouble.’
    They turned slowly and went back inside. I didn’t think they’d call the law.
    Bowker was sweating now, and his hands kept coming up and holding onto my jacket and tugging it. He was looking up at me and what he saw made him hold on tighter.
    I was tired of his hands on me. They were dirty and sweating and gnarled and they’d touched Brenda up. They clung to me and tugged weakly and I didn’t want those hands to ever touch me again. I swiped them away and he staggered and I straightened him up.
    â€˜You killed Brenda.’
    â€˜You can’t hurt me, Joe, there are witnesses. They’ve seen you. You’re not that stupid.’
    My hand was around his throat before I knew it. He gasped and struggled, but there was nothing in him, no leverage, no strength. I raised him off the ground and pushed my face into his so that I could watch his eyes as he tried to hang onto life. His face was red, his eyes bulging, his mouth twisted. His hands scrambled against my arm. There was a crackling sound coming from him. I wanted to crush his throat. I wanted to destroy him.
    I didn’t kill him. I should have done, but he was right, there’d been too many witnesses. And I had other things to do. I could kill Bowker later. Maybe it was a greater punishment to let him live, to let him go back to his prison flat, and to a fat wife with swollen legs who didn’t care if some thug was out to get her husband, and to his lifelong losing streak.
    â€˜You grass me up to Paget about tonight and I’ll know, and I’ll come back for you.’
    I dropped him and left him on the ground, his face in his own vomit.
    I’d thought about holding onto him, using him as bait for when Paget showed up, but it was too long to wait and I didn’t want him jamming up the works or delaying me. I wasn’t thinking straight, I suppose. My head hurt, as it often did these days, a throbbing in the back of my skull that stretched through to my forehead and into the backs of my eyes.
    I drove back to Browne’s. When he saw me, he said, ‘Your head again?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    He went to the kitchen and came back with a couple of pills. I wouldn’t have bothered, but I had to be alert that night. I knocked them back and they wiped me out and I had to go lie down for a while.
    I woke once. At least, I thought I’d woken. The girl was standing by my bed, her arms by her side and her hair hanging down in plaits. She didn’t move, but stared with those large eyes. I reached out for her and touched