Mercy Killing Read Online Free PDF

repercussions likely from the raised tempers caused by the emergency meeting he called a week ago. Fifteen of the members arrived within a
couple of hours of his phone call to the room above the Cressy Arms.
    Naturally, he didn’t ask Albert Woodville to be present, but he had asked the core people from the society, those he had known the longest and those he trusted to react calmly.
    The chairman had underestimated the reaction from Jude Watson and Jonathan Tey.
    He hadn’t expected them to become so angry, surrounded as young people were by so much more unpleasantness than his own generation and exposed to it more frequently.
    Now, as he sat in his chair in the safety of his own house, he could still remember Jude’s exact words, hissed at him from across the meeting table: ‘You let a bloody sex case join
us?’
    Jude had banged his fists on the table and Eric had heard the sound of his chair legs scraping back against the floor as he’d started to get up.
    He felt himself flinch, ready for the younger man to launch at him. Fortunately for Eric, on his arrival Jonathan had taken the last empty seat next to Jude, and had the size and strength to
hold him back with one hand.
    ‘I didn’t let Albert join knowing what he’d done,’ Eric defended himself. ‘I was as in the dark as you all were about his past.’
    Eric was shaking as he spoke and hoping that no one picked up on the wobble in his voice and someone saved him from being beaten to a pulp.
    ‘Come on,’ Jonathan said to Jude. ‘Let’s leave and cool off.’
    The two of them got up. Jude’s chair knocked to the ground as he pushed himself away from the table’s edge.
    Most watched the two walk towards the door leading back down to the pub, a few preferring to avert their eyes. Eric’s gaze followed Jude with a kind of fascinated horror.
    At the door, one hand on the handle, the other pointing at Eric, Jude said, ‘Someone’s got to put this right. It’s sodding disgraceful. He was around our kids.’
    Eric considered going to the police after Jude’s outburst but what exactly was he going to tell them? He had passed on to a few members of the amateur dramatic society that one of their
members had served time in prison for sex offences? A couple of them had lost their tempers and left early?
    He decided that, first thing the next day, he would telephone Woodville and let him know that he was no longer one of the East Rise Players. He wouldn’t even give him a reason. That
wasn’t something he wanted to discuss.
    The only problem being, of course, that by the time Eric Samuels made his decision, Woodville had been dead for some hours.

Chapter 10
    ‘Make that a half-pounder burger, love,’ said Leon, nodding at the waitress. He thought about trying a smile at her but he knew from previous attempts that women
found him creepy when he did.
    The look he got in return from the young woman serving greasy food on a Friday evening to people with nowhere better to go told him she still found him repulsive. Even so, he couldn’t
resist winking at her.
    From across the other side of the plastic table, Toby leant forwards.
    Leon mirrored his actions and their faces were inches apart, chins almost touching above the glass salt and pepper pots and bucket of cheap paper napkins.
    ‘We need people to remember us being in here,’ said Toby, ‘but not because you’ve frightened the life out of the staff.’
    ‘I’m still not sure this was a good idea,’ said Leon. He put his hands up to stop interruptions and added, ‘And I know we’ve been through this many times about how
we should appear to act normally and put ourselves a distance away around the time—’
    He paused to scrape his chair nearer to the table to allow another customer to get to the empty bench behind him. He made his movements as noisy as he could and made a point of speaking to the
young lad who was trying to get past. ‘You all right there, mate? Got enough room