Read Online Deadfolk by Charlie Williams - Free Book Online Page A

Royston Blake. Bad, bad things is what I been hearin’. Shite that’ll put you away for a long un. Been a naughty boy, ain’t you. Murder’s a very naughty thing to get up to, I reckons. Speshly when iss yer own dear wedded wife on receivin’ end.’
    I’d been expecting summat along them lines, and I weren’t planning on letting it get to us. I didn’t even blink. ‘No one can touch us on that one. Not even the coppers. Tried to make a charge stick on us already, didn’t they. But it wouldn’t.’
    ‘And why were that?’
    ‘Dunno why you’re askin’ us. Whole town knows about it and I don’t mind if they does, bein’ as I got nothing to hide. No evidence, Baz. Nuthin’ sticks cos there’s nut’n to stick.’
    ‘Ah, but that ain’t true. There is summat. Summat that’ll stick to you like a burr on a mongrel’s arse.’
    I’d been keeping a cocky grin up all right until then, but suddenly it shrivelled up and dropped down me throat.
    ‘Woss matter, Blakey boy?’ he says. ‘Lost yer voice?’
    ‘All right, you reckons you knows summat. Tell us then.’
    ‘Never mind that. We knows what we knows, see? And thass a lot more than you wants us to know, I can tell you. So you best clear off and hope that I don’t spill the beans too soon. Know what I means? If I were you I’d shift arse out of Mangel. Pack up and move somewhere else, far away. And never come back. Hearin’ us all right?’
    I opened and closed my gob a couple of times. Then I licked me dry lips and says: ‘Leave? No one leaves Mangel.’
    ‘Ain’t my problem, is it? Oh, and you can take yer tart with you if you likes. You could say I’ve had her every way a man can, an’ I’m pretty sure there’s nuthin’ special to her. Course, I tried her out the other night one more time, just to be sure. But a tart’s a tart, ennit. Keep her.’
    I stared at him.
    He stared back. His eyes was crystal blue against the pink of his fat cheeks. We was stood a few feet apart, but I could smell the beer on him. He’d looked half-cut coming out the Bee Hive. But he didn’t now. It were me who were half-cut.
    He stared at us.
    I stared back. His fists was clenching slowly, like a gunfighter inching hand to holster. I wanted to look down but I couldn’t. All I could do were stare back and bide me time. I were Clint Eastwood and he were Lee Van Cleef. A fat Lee Van Cleef. And a heavily built Clint Eastwood, if I’m honest. I stared, and I knew me eyes looked just like Clint’s. My leather jacket were a poncho, and though my scalp were sporting nothing but a quarter inch of hair, I truly believed I had a cowboy hat perched up there.
    My eyes started watering. Clint’s eyes never started watering. Not that you saw anyhow. I thought about it for a second and decided his eyes must water sometimes, all that staring and squinting and sand blowing about in the dry air. And if Clint’s eyes watered then he’d have to blink. He were only human after all, weren’t he? Aye, course he fucking were. And if he blinked, it were all right for us to blink. I just about had to, tears welling up in my eyes and getting ready to spill down me cheeks as they was. Wouldn’t want Baz to reckon I were crying, would I.
    So I closed my eyes.
    It were only a scrag end of a second later when I opened em again. But already it were too late. His right fist pinged off my head around the left eyebrow. I closed me eyes again, thinking how that were the fist he wore his sovereign on. I opened em to find same fist closing in on me right kidney. I crunched that side up without thinking about it, like you’ll always do if you’ve grown up scrapping. It stopped the worst of it, but he still knocked half the wind out of us. I stepped back to give meself a chance, but the oak tree were there and I lost me footing and went down. Baz put the boot in straight away.
    I curled up in a ball and tried to guess what Clint might’ve done if he were us. It were a fair bet that he’d