Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher Read Online Free PDF

nicknamed him the Monk. It wasn’t only the shaved head, the skeletal features. He was the only one of their group who ever went near a church and he’d never, drunk much, even then. Never swore. You’d have thought he’d be the butt of their jokes but he wasn’t. If anything they’d fought for his friendship. Today he looked more like a monk than ever.
    Brian thought he needed a woman. Not an intellectual like Sheena. Someone easy and comfortable who’d feed him up on the wrong sort of food and enjoy plenty of sex.
    Mark leant against the bar and Brian saw that he was shaking.
    ‘When was the last time you had a decent meal?’ he asked, following that recent line of thought. ‘You need something to keep out the cold.’
    Mark said nothing. He shook his head as if the question wasn’t worth considering.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Brian demanded. ‘Has something happened?’ He had seemed so much happier lately.
    Mark paused then shook his head again. Brian didn’t want to push it.
    ‘Mavis’ll rustle us up something.’ Brian shouted to the manager. ‘Won’t she, Les? Mavis’ll stick something in the microwave?’
    ‘Whisky,’ Mark said. ‘That’ll warm me up.’
    ‘Of course.’ Brian kept the surprise out of his voice. ‘A double Teachers when you’re ready, Les. Medicinal.’
    He led his friend to the table by a radiator. It gurgled and churned like the inside of someone’s gut, but it gave out a little heat. Another couple of drinks and Mark might talk, Brian thought. Really talk. Like those long nights in the crappy students’ bedsits in Durham. What he really wanted was to put his arm round Mark’s shoulder and hold him tight. Just for comfort. But that wasn’t the sort of thing you did in a working men’s club. Unless your football team had just won the Cup.
    He bought another round of drinks but Mark didn’t seem inclined to confide in him. They sat for a while making desultory conversation. About a new contract Brian was bidding for – some insurance company based in Belfast. And about one of the kids in Mark’s school who was making his life hell. Then they left and walked up the hill together to the Coastguard House, well in time for the four o’clock deadline.
    The children loved Uncle Bernie from the moment he tripped over his feet on his way to the front of the room. Emma had been afraid that he wouldn’t hold their attention but though he spoke so quietly that they had to strain to hear him, he held his audience spellbound. He performed in the big living room. The chairs were cleared to the walls and the children sat on the floor. The curtains were shut because outside the weather was so chill and grey.
    Most of the adults stayed in the kitchen with their glasses of wine and their pints of beer, glad of the peace, but Emma, Mark and some of the other mums stood at the back to watch. The local news had been full of stories of a child who’d been abducted from a birthday party in a burger bar in North Shields. This wasn’t the same but they knew better than to leave a stranger in charge of their little ones.
    Uncle Bernie had a costume: wide check trousers and a loose jacket with a silk flower in the button hole. He asked for assistants and seemed to make a serious decision, considering the forest of hands that shot up with a frown. He chose David because it was his birthday, and Owen, because David was really too young and would need some help, and a pretty little girl with braided hair and a flowery frock.
    The show was coming to an end.
    ‘Now,’ Uncle Bernie asked. ‘What is it that makes a birthday special?’
    ‘Presents,’ they shouted.
    ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But what else? To make it really special?’
    ‘Friends,’ pronounced a precocious boy with glasses.
    ‘That’s a very good answer but it’s not what I was thinking of.’
    ‘A cake,’ called the pretty little girl.
    ‘Yes,’ said Uncle Bernie with something approaching relief. ‘A cake. Now, here