Hard Knocks Read Online Free PDF Page A

You walk.”
     
    The three of us looked in the direction he’d pointed. The sky had darkened through indigo towards an inky darkness, but above the jagged black outline of the treetops, a waxing moon had risen.
     
    “Oh you have to be feckin’ kidding me,” Declan muttered.
     
    Elsa squared her jaw. “If you want to stay, stay,” she told him, dismissive, “but I am going. Charlie?”
     
    I hoisted my bag higher onto my shoulder. “I’m with you,” I said with a smile.
     
    Declan groaned. “Ah well, I suppose I can’t let you two ladies venture out alone on a night like this.”
     
    Elsa threw him a withering glance and set off at a determined pace. I fell into step alongside her. Within a couple of strides, Declan had caught us up.
     
    He immediately started up the conversation, as though he was using the sound of voices to keep at bay whatever might be lurking in the trees. He asked where we were from, and I learned that Elsa was born in Bochum, and had lived most of her life there. Declan’s family owned land outside Wicklow.
     
    “Before you arrived we were swapping our life stories,” he said to me then, grinning suddenly in the silvery light. “So, Charlie, what do you do in the outside world that bores you so much you want to be a bullet catcher?”
     
    I returned his grin. It was difficult not to. “I work in a gym,” I said. Supervising weight training programmes was something I’d only begun in the last year. It kept me occupied and fit, although lately I’d found the monotony suffocating. Sean had warned me against telling anyone about my army background, or the women’s self-defence teaching I’d done after that.
     
    “Keep it simple, but keep it light ,” Sean had said. “Invent as little as possible, just leave a lot out. They’ll be watching the best and the worst more closely than the middle ground. You’re just going to have to hold back a little, and keep to the centre of the pack.”
     
    “What if they check up on me?” I’d fretted.
     
    “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Madeleine will make sure they only find out what we want them to.”
     
    “So what’s your story, Declan?” I asked now.
     
    “Oh, my old man is in this business – works out in the States wet-nursing rock stars. He wanted me to join up first. You know, see the world, meet lots of interesting people, and kill them.” He laughed. “I thought I’d miss out the rough-arsed bit where you have to spend four years cleaning out lavatories with your toothbrush, and go straight to baby-sitting the Hollywood babes.”
     
    “What about you, Elsa?”
     
    She inclined her head slightly. “I was a policeman here in Germany,” she said, and although I caught the dim flash of Declan’s smile, we neither of us corrected her. “I left to get married, hoping to have many babies but, my marriage did not work out.” She shrugged. “And so, here am I.”
     
    The simple words belied a good deal of pain, I considered. Even the Irishman didn’t come back with a smart remark to that one, and for a few minutes we trudged on in silence. Until Declan put his foot into a particularly deep pothole, and picked up a bootful of cold dirty water for his pains.
     
    “Oh Jesus, will you look at that?” he complained. “What the feck do they think they’re doing leaving us to wade through this shit? And to think I’ve paid out good money for this.”
     
    “Don’t whine, Declan,” Elsa said calmly, “it will probably be the same for everyone.”
     
    “So, Charlie,” he went on, ignoring her, “what’s your story? I’m escaping from dead boredom, Elsa here is escaping from a dead marriage – what’s your little dark secret?”
     
    I didn’t get the chance to think up a believable lie.
     
    “Ssh!” Beside me, I almost felt Elsa tense and come to an abrupt halt. “Did you hear that?”
     
    “Hear what?” Declan said, although I, too, could have sworn I caught the quiet crackling of dried