The Credulity Nexus Read Online Free PDF

to
Rik. The scratched and scuffed display showed a picture of two men
leaning against a police cruiser in the bright California sunshine.
Both of them were smiling.
    “That's you,
innit, with Ocky?”
    “You got any
booze, kid?” Rik's eyes stayed on the picture.
    Skiver shook
his head. After a while he walked to the door. “Come on,” he said,
and Rik followed him out of the house.

Chapter 5
     
    The Pigeons
sagged with age and neglect. Surrounded by crumbling, low-rise
apartment buildings on Romford Road, the pub presided over a paved
courtyard dotted with tree stumps and empty tables. Inside, Skiver
led Rik to the bar and ordered two large whiskeys. The room was
dark and oppressive and stank of stale beer.
    “Is this where
it happened?” Rik asked.
    “Yeah. Out
there.”
    “Any of these
guys the shooter?” A dozen, scruffy men lurked in the dismal room,
drinking alone or in murmuring pairs.
    “Fuck
knows.”
    The drinks
arrived. Skiver and the barman looked at Rik until he paid. They
took the drinks outside, despite the cold and the overcast sky, and
sat at one of the wooden tables. Rik placed the picture on the
table and raised his glass to it, downing his drink in one swallow.
The boy did the same.
    “Barry had
something of mine,” Rik said, getting back to business.
    Skiver was
immediately defensive again. “He said I could have his stuff – if
there was ever an accident or something.”
    Rik's jaw
clenched in irritation. The boy was lying. Ockenden was just not
the kind of man who thought that way. Rik couldn't imagine him once
mentioning the possibility of his death, let alone who should get
his things. He was about to snap back something to this effect, but
when he looked at the anxious boy in his ragged clothes, a wave of
sadness washed through him that Ockenden's few sticks of crappy
furniture and his dump of a house could be worth clinging on to for
this creature.
    “Don't worry.
I don't want his stuff. It's all yours. All except for one thing,
and that's mine.”
    Skiver blinked
at him. Rik could see he was trying to make sense of this turn of
events, trying to find an angle so he could get something out of
it.
    “Ocky and me
was close,” the boy said. “You know what I'm saying? Very
close.”
    Rik's face
darkened. He frowned at the boy in a way that made the youngster
swallow hard.
    But Skiver
pushed on defiantly. “We was lovers. He looked after me. He'd have
wanted you to do the right thing and help me out. You know what I'm
saying?”
    Rik glared at
him for several uncomfortable seconds. “You must be the most
stupid, ungrateful little sewer rat it's ever been my misfortune to
meet.” He got to his feet. “Stand up.”
    Skiver's eyes
widened in alarm. “You can't do nothing to me out here. They'll
call the cops. I'll have you locked up.”
    “Stand up,
moron. We're going back to the house.”
    Still Skiver
didn't move. “It's true. I was working the streets and Ocky was one
of my regulars. He took me in 'cause he said he loved me.”
    Rik leaned across the table,
his eyes burning into Skiver's. His finger stabbed at the picture
that was still lying there. “Do you think I didn't know my own
partner? Listen, you piece of shit, I have no doubt you were
working the streets, or selling dope, or stealing pension money
from old ladies, or all three. But when Barry Ockenden took you in
and showed you kindness, it was because he was a big-hearted,
generous man, one of the most open-handed and damn-fool giving men I'll ever
know.”
    That big rock
was still falling inside Rik, falling through the cold, dark
depths. He slapped his hand on the table and pumped up his anger to
stave off the grief that was building.
    “Don't you
dare abuse that man's memory for the sake of one of your sordid
little money-making hustles. Do you understand me?”
    Confusion was
written all over the boy's face. Strange emotions struggled behind
his eyes. In the end, a grudging remorse won out. “Yeah,” he