Truth Dare Kill Read Online Free PDF Page A

quickly and quietly. Alec raised his brooding eyes and found me. He didn’t hesitate; he lifted the bar flap and came over, full of intent. He was an old pug, with hams for hands and plasticine for a nose.
    “Piss off, Red. You’ve done enough damage round here.”
    “I just wanted a pint, Alec. What’s the problem? Don’t returning heroes get a beer?”
    “Red, you’re no fucking hero for Sandra. She don’t want to know. So, save you, me, and all of us, some trouble and sling your ’ook.”
    I was aware of how quiet it had got. Sandra was standing as far away as she could from me, watching with hard eyes and sucking nervously on a fag. It had been the same eyes that had caused the barney the last time, over a year and a half ago. We’d been going out for a couple of months. I’d got digs round the corner in Peckham while I was getting trained up by the SOE. Sandra was fun, lively, beautiful and a champion cock-teaser. I never knew where I was with her; she could be dragging me into bed one night and sending me packing the next.
    I guess I’m slow. It took me five weeks to realise I was one of a string. I don’t like that; don’t like being taken for a ride; don’t like sharing. I told her so and she promised to be faithful. But I didn’t trust her. And I was right; the night she should have been out with her mates – one of them was supposed to be getting married – I found her with her tongue down the throat of a right wee spiv round the back of the Streatham Locarno. He deserved the pasting I gave him, and she came back to me; she liked men fighting over her, I suppose. She was less happy when I gave her a clip, and from then on Sandra and I were fireworks. So I suppose Alec was right to get me out of his pub before we started some new slanging match.
    “Ok, Alec. Point taken. I suppose I’m not as gorgeous as I was.”
    His eyes softened, as did his voice. “S’nothing to do with your fizzog, Red.
    You’re still prettier than me. She’s not bleedin’ worth it. She’s a tart with big tits. Which is what my clientele pays for. Forget her.”
    I looked round at his clientele, over to Sandra, and nodded to Alec. I turned and walked out. I tried to put Sandra out of my head, but couldn’t help wondering if I should have just done a Nelson and ignored what she was up to; enjoyed what she gave me. For when she gave, it was memorable. Jealousy is my curse.
    I shook her from my thoughts by focusing on the conversation I’d just had with Kate Graveney. I tried to make sense of her words and how they connected with me. I didn’t know whether to feel angry or relieved at being thwarted in my search for Major Tony Caldwell. It all seemed a wee bit too convenient for my liking. My short time as a detective in Glasgow convinced me that there was no such thing as a coincidence. But I’m also aware that I tend to get a shade paranoiac these days.
    I stopped and looked back down the hill. I kneaded my leg with both hands where it was aching; the damp seeped into the bones where they knitted. I thought about the year ahead; it held little promise for me. New Year celebrations are sadder than glad affairs at the best of times. And these weren’t. The skies were soaked with rain that could turn to snow any time. The wind was blowing straight off the North Sea and up the Thames with few enough buildings left to take the edge off. At least it was keeping the fog away.
    There was hardly a line of houses untouched; great swathes cut through residential streets and factories; stumps left where buildings either side had been straddled on a bombing run. Pipes hung out from nude walls like entrails, and wallpaper flapped in upstairs rooms open to the skies. Queues everywhere for everything. Half the city had no lights. London transport sent their buses and their trams out, but never enough, never on time to take the grey-faced folk off to their makeshift offices.
    I laughed. If there was a god, sometimes you had to smile and shake your head at his bent