Assassin Read Online Free PDF

smile touching his lips.
    'Who might have wanted to have a go at Harrison?' ask the policeman.
    'I told you, I don't know. And I don't know who shot me either. Satisfied?'
    'Not really but I don't suppose there's much I can do about it is there?' He got to his feet. 'I just thought you might have wanted us to catch the blokes who killed your brother. Next time it could be you who gets your skull ventilated.'
    The policeman wandered across to the window and looked out onto the car park below. Another ambulance, its blue lights spinning silently in the darkness, had just pulled up.
    'Do you think that Harrison would have given a damn if you'd been killed tonight?' said Riley. 'Do you think he'll shed any tears over your brother?'
    Carter didn't answer; he was looking down at the beaker of water which he held, his face set in deep lines.
    'You're protecting Harrison too by keeping quiet you know,' Riley continued. 'What have you got to gain by that?'
    'Staying alive for one thing,' Carter said.
    'If you decided to give evidence against Harrison, you'd be protected.'
    Carter laughed humourlessly.
    'Evidence about what?' he asked, innocently.
    'About all the pies he's got his grubby little fingers in. We heard that he's just moved into child porn.'
    'I'm only a driver. I don't know what he does. I don't care.'
    'Maybe if you'd cared enough your brother would still have been alive.'
    'Fuck you,' rasped Carter. 'It's not my fault Jim's dead. Do you think that's what I wanted?' His voice was a mixture of anger and sorrow.
    Riley shrugged and turned towards the door.
    'If you change your mind, you know where to reach me,' he said, turning the handle. 'By the way, Carter. We'll get you all one day. If you don't kill each other first.' He winked then closed the door behind him, leaving Carter alone in the room.
    'Bastard,' muttered the younger man. He sighed and lay back, closing his eyes. The pain in his shoulder had subsided to a dull ache and he gently touched the heavily padded wound, wincing as he moved the shoulder.
    He had been lucky, Riley had been right. Lucky not just because the bullet had passed through him without creating too much internal havoc but also because he hadn't been killed.
    He'd been luckier than Jim.
    The tears came suddenly, unexpectedly, and Carter cursed under his breath as if angry with himself for the private display of emotion. Not that he should be ashamed. Jim had been the only family he'd had. Their mother had died of cancer twenty years ago. As a ten year old, Carter could remember coming home from school and seeing her hunched in the chair in front of the fire, each day looking a little more shrunken until finally he'd arrived one Tuesday afternoon and found the ambulance waiting outside and seen two men carrying her out of the house. It had hardly seemed necessary to get two of them to carry her. In the final stages of her illness she'd withered to a mere six stone from her usual ten. It had eaten her away from the inside, slowly, painfully over eighteen months. But she'd never stopped fighting it, never surrendered to the pain.
    Carter wept for his mother too, fresh tears that he didn't bother to wipe away.
    The two boys had remained in the small house in Bermondsey with their father for another three years until a massive stroke had taken the old man. It hadn't killed him, just robbed him of his faculties, turning him into a helpless invalid who couldn't even feed himself. Ray and Jim would take turns looking after him, feeding him, cleaning him up when he messed himself. It was like having a sixty-eight year old child in the house and the strain eventually told on both boys.
    When his father finally died, Jim decided he'd had enough. He joined the army.
    Ray was left alone and, in the first few months, he felt resentment building up inside him. He needed to escape as well, not so much from the environment but from the memories.
    Since the age of nine he had boxed at a club in Islington and now he