Cold Eye of Heaven, The Read Online Free PDF Page A

towards the pavement that leads to the pedestrian crossing fifty yards or so down the road. Yet another thing he knows he will never do again – is stand at that particular section of the kerb, taking his chances, cheating the traffic. He walks slowly under the lean winter trees.
    By the time he notices the Hardimans, it’s too late to backtrack.
    They are standing at the crossing, linking each other; short and sturdy, both dressed in monkey hats and puffed-up coats. Mr Hardiman isn’t a bad sort; does a bit of gardening and in the summer evenings they might stop by each other’s gate for an exchange of gardenish talk. He wouldn’t be too keen on the wife. One of those community types. Always pushing things through the letter box; leaflets about drop-in centres and cake sales or envelopes looking for church donations. Stops him now and then about old-folksy things; a tea dance one time, another time a meals-on-wheels deal. As if he wouldn’t prefer to eat his own vomit.
    Farley hangs back and hopes for the best as the green man hops up and begins to beep. The Hardimans waddle off. He lets three people go ahead of him and then dips in behind, trying to measure the distance – enough so as to keep out of their sight, but not so much that the lights turn red before he’s crossed over. At the same time he has to be prepared to zip off in the opposite direction of whatever direction the Hardimans take. He almost gets away with it, but for the wife, at the last second, lifting her head, like a dog that senses someone behind her. When he gets to the far bank they are standing there waiting like a pair of talking immersion heaters – ‘O hello there’ from one, and ‘There you are’ from the other.
    â€˜Ah!’ Farley says.
    â€˜We were awful sorry to hear the news,’ Mrs Hardiman begins.
    â€˜O, we were,’ her husband confirms and for a second Farley doesn’t know what they are talking about.
    â€˜What happened him at all?’ she asks. ‘Was he not well or what?’
    â€˜Well, I—’
    â€˜Did he slip in the snow maybe? Would that have been it? Because the way I heard, it happened in the street.’
    Her face is bulged from the cold and there’s a jellied, goitred look about her eyes that Farley finds distracting. He looks at the husband. If she wasn’t here they could have a conversation. He could ask his opinion on the garden, how best to get it over the cold snap. And he could tell him too, about feeding the birds in the snow with the strawberries the drunken dealer had given him Christmas Eve in Meath Street. He could describe the various reactions; the way the thrush had milled into the strawberries and the blackbird, although a bit more cautious, had tucked in too. And how the one that probably needed it most, the little sparrow, wouldn’t go near them: the strangeness of the fruit maybe or the seeds just wrong for its gullet. He could see what Hardiman had to say about that. Bring it up all casual like, so he wouldn’t think him soft. If the wife wasn’t there, gagging for information, that’s what he’d do.
    â€˜Well, I better be…’ Farley says. ‘You know yourself—’
    â€˜His heart – wasn’t it?’ the wife is saying now.
    â€˜That’s right,’ Farley agrees, not that he knows for certain. But with Slowey it was always going to be the heart.
    â€˜And the arrangements?’ she asks.
    â€˜Why, you thinking of going yourself?’ Farley says, pleased to see that, although he hadn’t intended it, the question has embarrassed her.
    â€˜Well, I don’t know really…’ she falters. ‘I mean, we are neighbours, I suppose. At the same time, I wouldn’t like to intrude. Although we didn’t really. I mean, I might just go to the Mass, and that. It depends really, on the snow situation.’
    The snow is gone, Farley feels like