Remix (2010) Read Online Free PDF Page B

.”
    Ric stopped talking. I pulled in to the side of the road and switched off the engine. I wanted to concentrate.
    “Then what?”
    “The next day I sobered up - as sober as I ever was in those days - and went round to see Bryan at his flat, to sort it out between us. He had a big place by Regent’s Park, in one of those wedding cake buildings. He was out, but his girlfriend was in. We shouted at each other…she slapped me, I grabbed her wrist…we ended up in bed. Bryan came back and found us.” Ric paused. “I’d never seen him so angry. Emma got scared and ran out. There were some commando daggers on the wall, Bryan collected them. He snatched one up and went for me. I thought he was going to kill me. He cut my arm, and it bled a lot. That stopped him. I took the knife away from him and chucked it across the room. He sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall, and started crying. I should have done something, I shouldn’t have left him like that, but I just walked out. I was seen leaving. In a state, blood on me.”
    I waited. Ric was shaking. Eventually, he said, “Emma came back later and found him with the dagger stuck in him, dead. She told the police what had happened, and they arrested me. Phil came to see me. He said I’d get off lightly, it was self-defence. I told him I hadn’t killed Bryan. He was alive, unhurt, when I left. Phil said that would be difficult to prove. His advice was to plead self-defence, I’d be charged with manslaughter and be out in three or four years. But I didn’t kill Bryan.”
    “D’you think his girlfriend did it? To save herself, maybe, if Bryan attacked her?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Or Phil? Knowing he could shift the blame on to you?”
    “Why would Phil want to kill Bryan? Bryan was a nice guy. My best friend. I don’t want to talk about this any more. Let’s get going.”
    It crossed my mind, as I started the van, that Ric might have blanked out the memory of killing his friend, because he couldn’t bear it.

    Chapter
    6
    *
    I didn’t ask any more questions. We drove in silence, at the sedate pace the van favours, down twisting country roads, and those lovely lanes where the trees meet over your head and you’re in a green tunnel. This was prime English countryside, at the best time of year for it.
    “It’s the next turning on the right,” said Ric. We were driving between a dry stone wall on our left, and a high mellow brick wall on the other side with trees visible over its top. “Those big gates.”
    I turned in and stopped, facing them. Behind the engine noise it was quite quiet, just birdsong; something you notice if you live in London where it never is quiet. The blank shark’s eye of a CCTV camera watched us. Ric got out of the van. There was an entry phone, but he ignored it. He climbed up the edge of the gate with insolent ease, swung himself over the spikes at the top, and down the other side. He disappeared for a moment, and the gates started to swing open. When the gap was wide enough he slipped between them and rejoined me.
    “I thought we’d surprise him,” he said. His face was grim. I realized the meeting we were on our way to might be a contentious one, and began to feel apprehensive.
    We bowled down a long tree-lined private road winding between landscaped wooded areas and lawns. It was all very lush. Two bull mastiffs dashed towards us and ran alongside, barking in a way that suggested what they really wanted was the opportunity to take a chunk out of our legs, if we’d only stop and get out of our vehicle.
    “They’re new,” Ric commented. “I wouldn’t talk to them, Dog, if I were you.”
    We passed a big lake, and then we could see the house, a substantial Georgian pile, the drive curving round a circle of lawn to meet it. It looked like something out of the estate agent pages of Country Life. In front was a crimson Audi with its boot open, and a man loading a bag of golf clubs. He looked up at our approach and