Read Online A Reason to Kill by Michael Kerr - Free Book Online

Frank Santini in the first place.
    Walking out onto Wardour Street, he moved quickly away from the club, head down, staying close to the buildings and praying that no one he knew spotted him.
    Just a slight, nondescript looking man, Vic Pender was in a hole that he couldn’t climb, buy or talk his way out of. He had somehow run up a marker for forty grand at another West End club as he tried to play his way out of debt with the dumbfuck optimism that always keeps gamblers coming back to the well for more heartache.
    Stopping in shadow, Vic lit a cigarette with shaking hands as he recalled the night his life had changed forever. He had parked the car in the drive of his semi at Feltham, opened the garage and been braced by two thugs who appeared from nowhere to push him inside and pull down the up-and-over door. That was when he was read the gospel according to St Francis Mario Santini.
    “Say your prayers, copper,” Eddie Costello had said, pressing the muzzle of a gun to his temple as the other gorilla gripped him by the neck and forced him to his knees.
    Vic still had nightmares in which he heard the crisp metallic click as Eddie pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, and the resulting laughter of the two greaseballs as a stain spread out on the front of his pants.
    “Here’s how it is, Pender,” Eddie had said. “Mr. Santini bought your marker, so you now owe him forty big ones, plus interest. Call in Rocco’s tomorrow at noon, and Mr. S will see what he can do to help you straighten things out.”
    Christ, how had it come to this? He’d gone to the club as instructed. Been told by Santini that for just a little intel here and there, he could soon wipe out the debt. And that was it; he’d stepped over what had always been a hard line, and got in way too deep. Had even given up Joey Demaris to clear the books and get out from under the cosh. But that had just been the beginning. Frank Santini had made it clear that it was in Vic’s best interest to stay on the winning side.
    “If I go down, you go down harder,” Frank said at the dockland warehouse where Vic had been taken to witness the demise of the undercover cop he had sold out.
    He had openly wept as Joey – his mouth taped and arms bound – looked at him, accusation mingling with fear in eyes that were little more than slits in bruised, torn and swollen flesh.
    Vic had watched, mortified, as the young cop was beaten to a bloody pulp by four men wearing overalls and wielding pickaxe handles.
    It had been Dominic who had performed the coup de gráce, cutting Joey’s throat, even though his multiple injuries had rendered him unconscious.
    “Now you’ve been blooded, so to speak,” Frank had said. “This is what happens to anyone who acts against me in word or deed. I want you to know that you work for me now, Victor. You’re in up to your traitorous fuckin’ neck. And if you get noble and try to do the right thing, just remember tonight. What happened to this piece of garbage can happen to your wife, daughter, and everyone you care about. Capite cosa intendo?”
    Oh, yeah, Vic understood all too well. Only by feeding Santini with any intelligence that might harm the organisation, would he be able to keep his family alive and his arse out of prison, which was not a place a cop wanted it to be. Suicide was an option he had considered at least once every day, though he did not possess the strength of character to do what he believed would be the right thing. It would be a pointless exercise. He couldn’t even leave incriminating evidence behind to bring the gangster down. His family would only be victimised by proxy. There was no way out of the shit-pile he’d jumped into.
    Dom poured another Scotch and smiled as he looked at the framed photographs that graced the walls of his father’s office. It was a gallery of Frank’s heroes, featuring: Caruso and Lanza, who Frank said were singers, not crooners like Como, Bennett, Martin, and a host of other