Raucous Read Online Free PDF Page A

ringing number came through the speaker.  The number rang for fifteen seconds and then was switched to an answer phone.  Simon pressed a button to end the call and slid his phone into the back pocket of his chinos.  “He’s not answering.”
    The Turk looked down at his desk, examining the back of his large hairy hands.  He tapped his fingers in quick rhythmic rolls.  He inhaled deeply and looked up at raucous.  “Do you have something to do with that?”
    Raucous still smiled.  He enjoyed being the smartest man in the room.  “In a roundabout way, I guess,” he said.
    “Enlighten us,” Turk smiled.  “Where exactly is Jim?”
    “I couldn’t tell you exactly where he is right now, but in an average car, following the speed limit, I can tell you he got to be in the town he was heading for sometime yesterday morning.”
    “You are sure of that?” Turk asked.
    “As sure as someone can be, when they are this thick.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    He was part of Christian’s life.  He was old now, visibly thinner, the bulk of manual work faded to leave sinew and skin.  His full, flat features had developed troughs and angles.  A wasting away of a sculptured face chipped down by time.
    The name wasn’t there, but the memory was.  This man was the first Christian had ever hit.
    The two lives never entwined.  There was no overlap.  This wasn’t science fiction.  Two worlds did not collide.
    But unmistakably him.  Twenty years on, an illness taking him down.  Ben thought of John Wayne in The Shootist, an old bastard of a killer, coughing up shit, hopped up on morphine while Richie Cunningham from Happy Days learnt the reality of a gun-man’s life.
    Ten a.m as Ben left the house, unwashed, unclean and heading for coffee.  The man was standing outside the tobacconist pulling on a filterless cigarette, making no effort to hide.
    The image hit Ben’s eyes, kicking memory into work.  A flick of a million connections and Ben saw the past.
    Christian aged six, in toweling shorts and blue striped shirt.  A Queens Park Rangers kid.  Short blonde hair and the piercing blue eyes.  Christian climbed on the old man’s knee.  Their mouths moved but Ben heard no words.  A faulty film recorded on a hand-held played out as remembrance.  The audio cable was disconnected. 
    A battered brass military Zippo, a rasp, smoke and a flame.  An inhale and the crackle of burning tobacco and paper with a circular red glow.   Christian’s right hand was encased in a child’s lace-up red boxing glove.  He swung and the old man blocked.  Ash fell from the cigarette and the old man laughed at someone Ben could not see.  Christian swung again and the old man blocked.  Christian dropped his arm.  The old man looked to a person out of frame, his mouth moving and each silent word encased in passive smoke drifting between his lips.  Christian swung again.  The old man’s cigarette flew from his fingers and mouth.  He looked to Christian and smiled.  He rubbed Christian’s hair with a big gnarled palm.  There was a sprinkling of blood on the old man’s teeth. 
    “Still fighting?” The old man asked.
    Ben jumped at the voice.  A familiarity without knowing why. 
    “I’m not who you are looking for,” Ben said.
    “I’m inclined to agree with you.  What happened to you?”
    “You aren’t from our lives.”
    “Our?  I was in yours. Still am.”  He held his right index finger to his lips, "But, shhhh, that’s a secret.”
    Ben entered his mind, he shut down externally.  He entered a trance.  His eyes lost focus, and would have rolled up white if they could like a possessed character actor destined to die in a John Carpenter B-Movie.  He looked dumb, distanced from the world with an open mouth and the unfocused stare of a lobotomised Jack Nicholson.  Jim took Ben’s arm and ushered him into the pub.
    The Somerset Arms was dying quickly. A Wetherspoon had opened and every ancient pub with expensive pints had