Dial M for Monkey Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken him long, one of his goons had kicked the door in.  Clint heard Big Terry’s voice then… he woke up in the boot of a car.  By the time they stopped driving and opened the boot he had a very good idea what was in the box he had been lying on, however he wasn’t about to admit that to himself let alone Big Terry.  The cardboard quickly gave way, revealing some neatly packed pieces of wood, a plastic bag full of metal fixings and a sheet of instructions.  Clint looked at them for a moment before climbing back to his feet.
    ‘You want me to build you a desk out here?’ he asked without thinking, instantly regretting it.
    Big Terry stopped dead.  His hand gripped the gun tighter and he turned back to face Clint, squinting in the evening sun and casting a surprisingly long shadow on the forest floor.
    ‘Is that it?’  he knew if he had made a mistake it was too late to do anything about it and instinctively went with it.  ‘You threaten me, you kidnap me, you drag me out here to the middle of fucking nowhere in a blindfold, make me drag this shit all the way out here and then you want me to make you a fucking desk?  Or perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps it’s a nice shelving unit?’
    Big Terry raised his arm and squeezed a single shot at Clint, the bullet burying itself in the tree behind him.
    ‘I suggest you shut the fuck up and read the instructions.  Now, I’m busy.  I’m looking for something.  I’ll be around. Watching.  Get building, dipshit.’  He moved off into the woods out of Clint’s line of sight.
    Clint stared for a moment at the space Big Terry had occupied.  He should make a run for it.  But what was the point?  Where would he go?  Big Terry had picked him up at his own house, he knew about Katie and to be brutally honest he didn’t really have a clue as to how to get back to wherever the fuck the car was anyway.  It seemed that for now furniture assembly was on the cards.
    He removed the pieces of wood one by one and laid them out on the soil around him; six pieces of wood in three pairs.  He knew what it was. Two of the pairs were similar, over six feet long but one pair thinner than the other.  The final pair were two small squares.  As he knelt down to arrange the pieces on the ground pine needles stuck sharply into his flesh.
    Shelves, he thought.  Perhaps Big Terry has befriended a fox in need of storage solutions.
    Clint picked up the bag of fixings and tossed it from hand to hand.  Carefully, he pierced the plastic with his fingers and poured out the contents onto one of the pieces of wood.  He reached out a hand a spread them before finally picking up and unfolding the instructions.  He looked at the list of items that should be included and stared for a second.
    Two small square bits of wood.  Check
    Two long slim bits of wood. Check.
    Two long wider bits of wood. Check.
    Twenty eight nails.
    He began counting but only reached twenty four before he ran out.  Damn it.  He started again, this time he had only twenty three nails.  Either way there weren’t enough.
    ‘Bi-’ he began but thought better of it.  Most likely Big Terry would do something unspeakable if he found out.  He decided the best course of action was to do the same thing he did at home - bodge the job.
    He looked back to the list and that was it.  Wasn’t it?  He moved his index finger downwards, his lips moving as he read again.
    Yes, that was it.  He needed a hammer but he wasn’t going to ask Big Terry for that.  That was a sure fire way to get the claws lodged in the back of his head.
    ‘You want a hammer, I’ll give you a hammer,’ Clint muttered under his breath, surveying the scene around him for a rock or something heavy enough to knock the nails in with.  As he did so he turned over the paper in his hands to see the instructions for building the thing.  His eyes widened as he stared at the page but before he could really take in what he was seeing the wind blew, catching