The Wicked Go to Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

the jalopy in a farmyard…”
    “What happened?” asked Hal in a voice from which he stripped any suggestion of curiosity, to avoid giving Frank the satisfaction of making him wait.
    But Frank was not fooled:
    “Are you really interested?” he asked.
    “Course I am!”
    “When I got to the farmyard, the wife was watering the horses… She was carrying a storm lantern.”
    “I can see it now,” mused Hal.
    “She was short and fat and wore a headscarf.”
    “What happened then?”
    This time, Hal could not disguise his curiosity.
    “Get lost!” Frank snarled suddenly.
    “Oh, suit yourself… No need to get stroppy!”
    Hal sighed and groped his way to the tap. He turned it on and splashed water on his face. Then he drank from the tap. The water was warm and tasted of copper.
    “She had large, flabby breasts,” Frank resumed.
    Hal smiled in the dark and sat on the foot of his bed, facing the storyteller. There was less than a metre between them.
    “Hell!” he smiled. “You’re starting to strike me as a bit of a skirt-lifter in your own small way… Large, flabby breasts, eh?”
    Frank shrugged his shoulders.
    “Everyone can have a moment of madness… at certain times.”
    “True,” said Hal.
    “Sometimes it goes wrong. Other times, it turns out all right…”
    “Did it go wrong for you?”
    “You see…”
    “Did you rape the farmer’s wife?”
    “Shut your mouth!” cried Frank. “I don’t like that word,” he added, lowering his voice. “I grabbed her… She started shaking… Then screaming… I tipped her into the straw—the yard was full of it… I had her… with the flames blazing round us…”
    “Flames!” cried Hal. “What flames?”
    “The lamp had tipped over onto the straw.”
    Hal pictured the scene. A frown suddenly spread over his face and he said in a quiet voice: “Surrounded by flames! Damn! I’d have paid good money to get an eyeful of that. What happened then?”
    “I panicked.”
    “And?…”
    Frank reached with both hands in the gloom. His hands were big and covered with fair hair. Hal stared at them the way people stare at objects displayed in a glass case.
    “You strangled her?”
    “Yes,” Frank said without elaborating. “Right, your turn now… Let’s have it.”
    Hal stretched out on his mattress, which creaked under him.
    “Oh with me, it was simpler. It happened in a truck drivers’ cafe… I was a bit pie-eyed. I got into a shouting match with this guy who was there. It was about politics. I’m not interested in politics—it’s so damned stupid! All it’s good for is making a small number of crooked characters very rich.”
    “What happened?” Frank broke in.
    “Oh yes… What can I say? I didn’t like the line the guy was shooting. So I smashed a beer bottle over his skull, but it turned out his skull was pretty thin!”
    “What kind?” Frank asked matter-of-factly.
    It took Hal a moment or two for the question to register.
    “What?” he said.
    “The beer,” Frank explained. “What kind of beer was it?”
    “Virginia.”
    “Are you sure?”
    Hal became suspicious.
    “Of course. When I raised the bottle I saw the label upside down… It’s the sort of thing you remember!”
    “You’re lying!” cried Frank, leaping to his feet.
    “I swear…”
    “And I swear you’re lying through your teeth! Virginia bottles don’t have necks. So you couldn’t have crowned anybody with one.”
    Hal went quiet. He opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind.
    “You never thought of that, did you, you dummy!” Frank said as he kicked the mattress his cellmate was lying on. “Bull! Pure bull! Anybody would think you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes…”
    The mute sat up in his cot when he saw that the two men were at each other’s throats. He looked at each in turn, uncomprehending. He didn’t dare intervene…
    Frank grabbed Hal round the neck.
    “What do you want from me, eh? What are you after?”
    Hal bucked,