Killer Instinct Read Online Free PDF Page B

relief. “Wow, Charlie, he must have really taken a shine to you.”
     
    “Hmm.” I looked at the card he'd left with me again, and stuffed it into the back pocket of my offending jeans. If I'd any idea of the trouble it was going to cause, I'd have borrowed Gary's lighter and set fire to the damn thing instead.
     

Three
     
    I slept in until eight the next morning, but made up for it by working out before breakfast. I was inspired to take up weight training again when I moved into my current flat, which was once a gym. It stands on the increasingly fashionable St George's Quay – rented, I might add – overlooking the River Lune.
     
    When it had been a gym, it had never been a frilly sort of a place. Apparently the only women who used to go there were the owner's girlfriend, and a strapping wench who went in for Miss Great Britain competitions. It was a place for people seriously interested in building their bodies, not posing in a leotard.
     
    When I moved in all the previous owner had done was to haul out the fixed weight machines and benches. The walls are still peeling whitewash, except the one still covered full length in mirrors. The light bulbs and the floorboards are bare. I'd taken down the posters of oiled muscular men and women demonstrating the visible benefits of vitamin supplements, ripped out the urinals in the gents' changing room and put in some old kitchen units I bought cheap from the second-hand furniture place two doors along.
     
    The rest stayed more or less as it was. What was the office now houses my bed, and the main gym area has become my living room. I'd even hung my punchbag on the hook in the ceiling that had been put there for that purpose anyway. It swung elegantly in a corner, lending a certain sophisticated something to the place.
     
    People usually comment admiringly about the size of the flat, and how lucky I am to live there. They don't notice the creeping damp patches, or the collection of buckets for when the wind is driving the rain under the roof slates from just the right angle.
     
    I pay a pittance in rent, but with no written agreement. I knew full well when I moved in that the whole building was under sentence, and the landlord could chuck me out at any moment. Still, having viewed an increasingly depressing range of rat-infested bedsits when I first came to Lancaster, I figured that on the whole, it was worth the risk.
     
    When I'd had enough of the weights I dropped them in a corner and headed for the shower, stripping off my jogging pants and T-shirt as I went.
     
    While the roomy gents' changing room has since become my kitchen, the smaller ladies' room I use as a bathroom. I'm the only person I know with no bath but three showers. It still has the sign of a muscular female in a typical body builder's pose on the door. The only way you can tell the sex is that she has a bikini top stretched round her rippling upper torso. I leave her there to encourage me not to go over the top with the training.
     
    Afterwards, I dressed in jeans and an old shirt. Breakfast was toasted crusts, because I'd already eaten the rest of the bread and forgotten to get a new loaf. I dumped my toast plate in the sink and scooped the jogging pants into the washbag when I was done. Living on my own I have to be strict about being tidy, otherwise I'd never be able to see the floor.
     
    On a reflex I refilled the filter coffee machine and switched it on. Before long the whole place was filled with the heavy wafting scent of own-blend Java from the tea and coffee merchant in town.
     
    I emptied the kitchen rubbish bin, a tricky operation because I never get round to doing it until it's way overflowing, and struggled down the stairs to dump a weighty black bin bag out on the pavement. They come first thing on a Monday morning and I always forget until I actually hear the council truck grinding its way along the quay, by which time I've usually missed them.
     
    I was just making sure the top