Crusher Read Online Free PDF

me, pulled the paper suit off and left it crumpled on the floor, collapsed onto my bed and shut my eyes.
    *  *  *
    If I had any dreams, I didn’t remember them when I woke mid-morning, the pale cool sun shining on my face. My first thought was that I was late for work—really late for work—and that my alarm clock must not have gone off. Then I remembered it had, and I had switched it off and gone back to sleep without ever waking up. Then I remembered everything else. I lay there staring at the grey cracked ceiling, trying to feel something. Did the part of me that should feel the right sort of sorrow, did that part of me not believe he was dead? The rest of me believed it. So many thoughts were crowding into my mind I couldn’t begin to put them in any order.
    Should I go to work? The police still had the clothes I’d been wearing yesterday, and the uniforms I had brought home to wash. Andy kept spares in the office, but gave them out grudgingly and docked your pay so that effectively you bought them—he’d never let you wash and return them …
    To hell with it, I wasn’t going in to work. Someone murdered my dad yesterday, in this house. At the same time a tiny voice in my head said, “So what? You’re not dead.” I let it talk. Maybe it had something useful to say. “You’re lying in bed, you feel fine, you’re calm, you’re not in shock. You’re actually a bit hungry, you should fix yourself some breakfast. What’s the big deal about weeping and wailing? It doesn’t get you anywhere. It’sjust feeling sorry for yourself, and you don’t do that.” Yeah, that’s right, I remembered. I don’t do self-pity; I’d never feel anything else if I did.
    “Should I call work?” I asked the voice.
    “Sod that. What are you going to tell that twat Andy—
Someone murdered my dad so I’m taking the day off?
Call him later, maybe. Right now there’s other stuff to think about.”
    It was true: as I lay there the thoughts and worries in my head were still jostling and milling about aimlessly, like tube passengers on a station platform when all the trains have been cancelled. Where’s my dad’s body? When do I get it back? Who sorts out the funeral? Who do I tell?
    Who the fuck killed him, and why? It must have had something to do with that script, or whoever did it wouldn’t have taken the laptop. What the hell had my dad found out? Who had he talked to? He’d come in a bit pissed on Sunday night, and happy, the way he was when he’d had a chance to talk about himself and how he nearly had a career—he used to flaunt his failure like a badge of integrity, or make a comedy routine out of it, and often enough it got him a few free pints. But where had he been drinking? There were a dozen pubs within fifteen minutes’ walk of our house, and he didn’t mind catching a bus if he’d worn out his welcome locally.
    Maybe it wasn’t that complicated after all. Maybe it really was just some smackhead who’d heard that I used to deal, and thought he’d chance his arm and see what he could find. Maybe I hadn’t closed the door properly when I left that morning, and he’d sneaked in.
    Wait, no. I swung my legs out of bed and sat there on the edge of the mattress, frowning, trying to focus. Dad had lost his keys, and the next morning he was killed, by someone who’d come into the house while he was working. Did he really lose those keys, or were they lifted from his pocket?
    What was in that script of his? I needed to read it, the latest draft anyway. The cops hadn’t been interested in that angle. If they’d asked, I would have told them that Dad used to back everything up, religiously. He’d written half a novel once, years ago, and lost all of it when the hard disk crashed. Since then he used an external drive, and then memory sticks, when they got cheap enough. The memory stick had gone, yeah, but he backed up his stuff into AnyDocs as well, the free email and web space provider. I knew his