The Darkest Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

Again?’ She scraped her hair tight,tying the rubber band back in place, then taking another sip of the Coke. ‘What happened this time?’
    â€˜I was late.’
    â€˜Late? Why were you late?’
    I couldn’t tell her about Costa, so I just shrugged and raised my eyebrows.
    â€˜Oh, Zico.’ She picked up the magazine and slapped my shoulder with it before putting it down again. She lowered her voice and came closer. ‘How are we ever going to get a place of our own if we don’t have enough money?’
    â€˜I’ll find other work,’ I said.
    â€˜Where? Where is there other work? You lost so many jobs already. In the six months we’ve been together, how many jobs have you had, Zico?’
    â€˜You sound like your mother.’
    â€˜Screw you.’
    â€˜And there’s always the old man.’
    â€˜He pays less than anybody.’
    â€˜At least it’s money.’
    â€˜And he hardly ever works these days.’
    â€˜I’ll find something.’ I reached out to touch her, pull her close. ‘I’ll find something, I promise.’
    I held her to me, putting my hand on the back of her head and pressing her into me, before kissing her again. I didn’t care if her mother was watching us. Right then I wanted to be with Daniella more than I wanted anything else in the world. And that feeling was one of the only two things stopping me from leaving this town.
    â€˜You’d better go,’ Daniella said, looking over my shoulder to where her mother’s small, squat silhouette was standing in the doorway. ‘We’re closing for lunch.’
    â€˜Sure.’ I counted out a couple of notes onto the counter and took four cans of Skol from the fridge. ‘I owe a man a drink,’ I said, thinking about Antonio waiting for me. The least I could do was buy him a beer.
    I drained the Coke in a long, fizzy gulp that made my eyes water. ‘Can I see you later?’
    â€˜Not today.’ She tilted her head towards the door. ‘Mãe made me promise to go to Valdenora’s this evening.’
    â€˜You know she’s trying to set you up with her idiot son, don’t you?’ I whispered.
    â€˜Valdenora’s?’
    â€˜Uh-huh.’
    â€˜If you don’t get another job, maybe I might think about it,’ she said with a smile.
    I left the store feeling a little better for having seen Daniella. She had a good effect on me. But the shadow hadn’t finished yet. It still had more to show me.

6
    The smell of blood leaked out on the warm air as soon as I opened the door.
    The room was much like my own, except Antonio had not lived here long enough to make it a home. The only furniture was the unmade bed and a small chest of drawers with an open can of beer on it. There was a page from a magazine on the wall – a picture of a dark woman with naked breasts – and beside the door there was a pair of flip-flops and the same plastic bag he had been carrying when I last saw him. The beer cans were still in it.
    Antonio was slumped in the far corner of the room, beneath the shuttered windows. His legs were extended in front of him and his arms were splayed to either side as if he had come home drunk and collapsed there. He was not resting, though.
    He was dead.
    His head was tipped back so his face was angled towards the ceiling, and his throat was open, punctured with a sharp knife. It wasn’t cut from side to side, but had been pierced. Antonio’s murderer had slipped the narrow blade of a knife in and out, the same as I had seen Batista do to the pigs on his farm.
    Already the room was filling with flies, buzzing in their frenzied delight.
    The front of Antonio’s shirt was dark with blood that still glistened in the slats of sunlight cutting through the shutters. It had pooled around the place where he sat, collecting in a large puddle on the concrete floor. Small particles of dust had alighted on the