Blue Genes Read Online Free PDF

missus and I am more than capable of sorting out any of the assorted scumbags that have doubtless got their own very good reasons for having it in for Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns. You want this sorting, I’ll sort it. No messing.’
    When I saw the smile of complicity that flashed between Richard and Dan, I nearly decked the pair of them with the flying sweep kick I’d been perfecting down the Thai boxing gym. But there’s no point in petulance once you’ve been well and truly had over. ‘I think that little routine makes us quits,’ I told Richard. He grinned. ‘I’m going to need a lot more details.’
    Dan sat down again. ‘It all started with the flyposting,’ he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. I had the feeling it was going to be a long story.
     
     
    It was just after midnight when Dan and Lice left Richard and me staring across the coffee table at each other. It had taken a while to get the whole story, what with Lice’s digressions into the relationship between rock music and politics, with particular reference to right-wing racists and the oppression of the Scots. The one clear thread in their story that seemed impossible to deny was that someone was definitely out to get them. Any single incident in the Scabby Heided Bairns’s catalogue of disaster could have been explained away, but not the accumulation of cockups that had characterized the last few weeks in the band’s career.
    They’d moved down to Manchester, supposedly the alternative music capital of the UK, from their native Glasgow in a bid to climb on to the next rung of the ladder that would lead them to becoming the Bay City Rollers of the nineties. Now, the boys were days away from throwing in the towel and heading north again. Bewildered that they could have made so serious an enemy so quickly, they wanted me to find out who was behind the campaign. Then, I suspected, it would be a matter of summoning their friends and having the Tartan Army march on some poor unsuspecting Manchester villain. I wasn’t entirely sure whose side I was on here.
    ‘You are going to sort it out for them?’ Richard asked.
    I shrugged. ‘If they’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.’
    ‘This isn’t just about money. You owe me, Brannigan, and these lads are kicking. They deserve a break.’
    ‘So give them a good write-up in all those magazines you contribute to,’ I told him.
    ‘They need more than that. They need word of mouth, a following. Without that, they’re not exactly an attractive proposition to a record company.’
    ‘It would take more fans than Elvis to make Dan Druff and his team attractive to me,’ I muttered. ‘And besides, I don’t owe you. It was you and your merry men who screwed up my job earlier tonight, if you remember.’
    Richard looked astonished, his big tortoiseshell glasses slipping down his nose faster than Eddie the Eagle on a ski jump. ‘And what about this place?’ he wailed, waving his arm at the neat and tidy room.
    ‘Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m not going to demand the ten quid an hour that good industrial cleaners get,’ I said sweetly, getting up and tossing the empty tinfoil containers into plastic bags.
    ‘What about killing me off?’ he demanded, his voice rising like a Bee Gee. ‘How do you think I felt, coming home to find my partner sitting discussing my gravestone with a complete stranger? And while we’re on the subject, I hope you weren’t going to settle for some cheap crap,’ he added indignantly.
    I finished what I was doing and moved across to the sofa. ‘Richard, behave,’ I said, slipping my legs over his, straddling him.
    ‘It’s not very nice, being dead,’ he muttered as my mouth descended on his.
    Eventually, I moved my lips along his jaw, tongue flickering against the angle of the bone. ‘Maybe not,’ I said softly, tickling his ear. ‘But isn’t resurrection fun?’
     
     
    Richard barely stirred when I left his bed next