Read Online Dust and Desire by Conrad Williams - Free Book Online

nanosecond of his time.
    ‘So,’ he said, ordering a white-wine spritzer, ‘what are you up to?’
    I told him.
    ‘Found him yet?’ he asked. He made himself comfortable at the stool next to me.
    ‘We might have had a coming together of sorts.’
    Knocker took a lighter out of his jacket pocket, started rotating it between his fingers. ‘So what are you doing here?’
    ‘I like the cocktails. And I was thinking of signing up, maybe doing a few classes. We could enter competitions, be a team. Shit, you can even lead. What do you think?’
    ‘What is it you want, scummo?’
    ‘The woman Liptrott introduced me to, Kara Geenan. I wonder if you know where she is?’
    ‘How the fuck should I know?’
    ‘Okay, let me put it another way.’ I grabbed hold of his hair, snatched the lighter from his hand and set fire to his tie.
    ‘You fuck-me brainwank,’ Knocker said bizarrely, trying to back off.
    ‘Where is she, Knocker?’ The flames were tucking in and I reckoned his shirt would catch fire before they reached his throat. ‘You and The Lip are tighter than a gnat’s chuffpipe. You always know what he’s up to, who he’s up and by how far. Tell me, quick mind, and I’ll put you out.’ I turned to the barman. Glass of water , I mouthed. He didn’t bat an eyelid.
    ‘Last time I saw her,’ he said, ‘she was at a pub in Westminster. She was friendly with the landlord, some guy called Nathan. He’d know where she is.’ He was squawking like a wronged parrot by now. I was smelling burning hair. His chest wig was going up.
    ‘Name of the pub,’ I said.
    ‘Fuck it, Sorrell, come on !’
    ‘Name.’
    ‘The Paviours Arms,’ he said. ‘Page Street.’
    I doused him and threw him back off the stool. He landed on his arse and looked up at me, blinking a slice of lemon from his left eye.
    ‘What was in it for you, Knocker?’ I said. ‘Couple of K? Blow-job? Leg-up to the next broken rung on the ladder? Who is she? What does she want?’
    Every time he breathed, he sprayed a little bit of water like some fucking porpoise. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Me and Barry were delivering some watered-down booze for an outfit I’m in with, up Stanford way. This woman, she was waiting for us in the gaffer’s office one day. Said she needed to find some guy called Sorrell, an ex-copper. Said she heard we knew who she was talking about. Told us that if we gave her what she wanted, she’d well, let’s just say she was nice to us. Been a while since anyone was nice to me.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘ I’m nice to you. I like you enough to sort out your wardrobe for you. You look much better without that tie.’
    ‘You watch yourself, scummo,’ Knocker sprayed again out of his blowhole. I should have thrown him a fucking fish.
    I thanked the barman and left before the bulging suit arrived to make me kiss his knuckles some more.
    * * *
    Though my flat is pretty spartan, even more so now since it’s been burgled, I’ve always made sure I had some other stuff locked away in a storage joint called Keepsies, which is round the back of the police station at Paddington Green. Special stuff. Emergency stuff. Stuff that you just shouldn’t have lying around the flat. I nip over there and pick some of it up when my life starts filling up with warning signs.
    I know Keith, who runs the place, from way back when I first came to London in the early noughties. When I went solo, one of my first pay packets was courtesy of him, after I’d provided the evidence he needed that his wife was cheating on him. What he paid me was a fair whack, but nothing compared to what she had been siphoning from his bank account over the years.
    He gives me fifty per cent off the monthly rate for the smallest of his lockers, which is still big enough for, say, one of the larger widescreen TVs on the market, and thirty quid a month is no great drain.
    I was early – the place only opens after lunch on certain days of the