The Neon Court

The Neon Court Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Neon Court Read Online Free PDF
Author: Kate Griffin
full.”
    “Lady,” I snapped, “my friend here is diabetic. She’s just had an incident. The paramedics came and shot her full of stuff, and now she can barely stand, but they say she’s fine. I don’t want to try and get her back to Walthamstow tonight, I can pay, we’re not druggies or pimps or whatever, I just need to get my friend to bed, OK?”
    Mum looked at Kid, Kid looked at Mum. Neither looked happy.
    “Hundred and fifty quid a night,” said Mum.
    It was a silly sum. I said, “Sure, no problem.”
    “Paid now.”
    “Fine.”
    I saw Kid’s mouth twitch with displeasure that their bluff had been called, but Mum’s eyes were that little bit brighter. A piece of paper was shoved my way. I made up an address off the top of my head, and signed myself in as Dudley Sinclair. I fumbled in my satchel until I found my wallet, complete with twenty pounds in cash and a receipt for takeaway pizza. Behind it was a card. On the front was a picture of a woman wearing nothing but superimposed black stars over the strategic areas. On the back was a phone number, and a lot of carefully scribbled enchantment in blue biro. I shielded it as best I could with the palm of my hand, and slipped it into the credit card reader that Mum shoved my way. The price being asked on the reader was £175.
    I said, “Hundred and seventy-five quid? You said it was fifty.”
    “VAT,” she intoned.
    “Right.” I entered a random four-digit PIN, and mentally apologised to whatever god of economics I was slighting by this quick and illicitpiece of enchantment. The machine thought about it; the machine accepted.
    Mum said, “Top floor,” and gave me a key attached to a wooden yoke. “Breakfast is seven till nine.”
    “Got a lift?” I asked.
    “Uh-uh.” She held out a small clear plastic bag. I took it. Inside was a pink toothbrush, a stubby, half-used roll of toothpaste, and a beige face flannel. “Compliments of the house,” she explained.
    We smiled the skull smile of death come upon the earth, and helped Oda up the stairs.
    Our room had one double bed, a TV on a small wobbly stand, a bedside table the size of a frying pan, a tattered copy of the Bible, a tattered copy of the Yellow Pages, thick curtains, a window that didn’t open, a radiator turned up to blasting temperature, and no room to stand. It was, in short, a wallpapered attic, the roof sloping down to within half a centimetre of the headboard. Oda flopped onto the bed, curling up childlike. By turning sideways in the bathroom it was possible to fit yourself in; so long as you had short arms and no desire to move them, there was indeed space inside for you, the toilet, the sink and the plastic shower cubicle. A mirror, cracked and stained mortar grey round the edges, revealed a washed-out ghost, hair singed and eyes too blue for my soot-smeared, rain-streaked face. I looked away, unwilling to spend too much time in this shadow’s company, and filled the single plastic cup on the sink with cold water. I took it to Oda, knelt by the bed, said, “Drink?”
    No reply.
    She seemed already asleep, eyes closed, fists bunched up to her face like the portrait of a frozen scream. I unwrapped the flannel from its bag, dipped it in the cup of water, mopped at her face. The corner of the flannel turned red-black. I eased her out of my coat, threw it into the bottom of the shower cubicle and set the water to run on cold and wash away the worst of the blood. I rolled her onto her back, and she didn’t stir. Feeling every part the leery criminal, I peeled the shirt away from her skin.
    The little knife-sized hole in her shirt was stiff with dry blood.
    Beneath it, there was another knife-sized hole. It went through her skin and flesh, and passed between two ribs and straight down into herheart. Blood had clotted in it, a thick dark plug, and the flesh all around it was swollen and red. It wasn’t a slash or a slice, it was a puncture wound to the chest; it went deep.
    I cleaned her
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