Read Online Dead Money by Ray Banks - Free Book Online Page B

the bloody thing did to the front of the car."
    "You been drinking?"
    I glared at her. "It was dark. It was raining—"
    "Okay."
    "That wasn't the reason. You could've been out there, you would've hit the bastard thing, too." I sipped my brandy. It didn't help. "Fuck's sake, Cath."
    "Alright, I'm sorry I asked. So where is it now?"
    "You what?"
    "Did you take it in to a vet or something?"
    "It was dead."
    "So?"
    "So I dumped it down by the canal."
    She blinked at me, a smile and a frown battling it out on her face. "You're kidding."
    "What would you do?"
    "You're not kidding."
    "What was I supposed to do? Go knocking? Excuse me, is this your dog I hit?"
    She shook her head. "I don't know."
    "You don't know." I finished the brandy, got up to pour myself another. "That's right."
    She made a sniffing noise. I didn't turn. Maybe she was crying, maybe she wasn't. If she was, she sure as hell wasn't crying about me.
    "I'm going to have a shower," she said.
    "You do that."
    I poured another drink, then went to the whisky to kill the sweetness in my mouth. It worked. I drank two more until the fatigue hit me and I sat on the sofa staring at the clock. I heard Cath come back into the room, smelled the perfumed steam that wafted in her wake.
    "You coming to bed?"
    "Yeah." I finished my drink and left the glass on the coffee table. I didn't brush my teeth.
    I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Just as I was about to drop off, the mattress started to shake and I knew she was crying. I waited for her to stop. I wasn't good with emotion. Beale, I could handle. If he wasn't set to detonate, it was a moan or a growl, and most of that was a bluff. With the salesmen and the punters, it was a front – nobody'd ever hit a truly bad run, and luck was always on the turn, just you wait. With everyone else, it was a series of masks, the kind people wear when there's a stranger in the house – we're always this tidy, this hospitable, this honest-to-goodness nice .
    We are happily married.
    She wasn't going to stop, and I wasn't going to get any sleep unless I did something about it. I put an arm out to her and she pressed up against me. I heard the back end of a sob and put the other arm around her because it seemed like the thing to do. Her hair was still damp from the shower. It stuck to my neck like wet dog hair.
    "I love you, Alan," she said.
    I didn't reply. Nothing came to mind.

10

    "Hey, hi, Alan, could I have a quick word?"
    Should've known better than to try and sneak out the front way when Jimmy Henderson was in the building. The bloke had an office, but it was out back where he couldn't spend his time talking shite with our receptionist Laura and parking his gym-rat arse on the edge of her desk. Six months he'd been getting blown out by her, but he kept on. It was that persistence that'd put Jimmy Henderson in the sales manager's office. That, and his dad owned the company.
    I followed him back through to his office. He closed the door behind me, and I faced off against a wall of plaques and awards that probably meant a lot to Henderson but bugger all to the rest of the world. Henderson gestured to a chair in front of his glass-topped desk. I took a seat. He unbuttoned his jacket and planted himself on the corner of his desk. Smelled like a changing room in here. I could see the source through the table top – Henderson's Adidas bag, spewing sports socks.
    "Thanks for this, Alan. I appreciate you're busy."
    "No problem."
    "Hear you pulled in a full house."
    "Just windows and a front door."
    "Maybe some other time, then."
    "Yeah, maybe." I wasn't going to sell fascias and soffits to anyone. It was cosmetic. "What's going on?"
    "You got much on this afternoon?"
    "A couple."
    "Anything promising?"
    I was about to shake my head when I remembered the Henderson positivity. "They're all promising, Jimmy."
    He smiled. For a moment, I didn't know if he knew I was taking the piss or not. Then I realised I didn't care if he did know. "Good.