Read Online East of Innocence by David Thorne - Free Book Online

“Listen, gel,” I say, “you need to take it easy, slow down.” Says she’ll have plenty of time to rest when she’s dead.’
    ‘Sounds about right.’ The girl comes back with our beers, holds up a third in meek enquiry.
    ‘Go on then, seeing as you asked.’ He pays her, takes a swallow. ‘You? Still doing all that lawyering?’
    ‘Yeah, still doing the lawyering.’
    ‘You done well there, Danny,’ says Jimmy. ‘Me and Mum, we always say that. Proud of you, what you done, how you got out.’ He points the bottom of his bottle at the crowd. ‘Made summink of yourself.’
    This isn’t an area I want to discuss. Got out? Then what am I doing here, my mind full of thoughts of Vincent Halliday? I change the subject. ‘So, Karma. That your idea, Jimmy?’
    ‘My idea? You think…?’ He looks at me, sees that I am joking. ‘Cheeky cunt. Nah, weren’t me, Halliday’s new piece, it was her idea. You probably know her.’ He stands on tiptoe, looks across the bar. ‘Sat there in that gold dress. Debbie, used to follow her brother around, Paul Chance. Remember?’
    I follow his gaze, see a pretty blonde woman sitting on her own. I do, vaguely, a grubby girl in dirty white socks and sandals trailing a cloth doll. Looks like she’s come a long way since then. ‘Yeah, Karma, it was her idea. Reckons it’s classy. Eastern or summink.’
    ‘Right.’
    Jimmy takes a swig, looks at me. ‘Shit, ain’t it?’ He grins, slightly nervously; though he’s talking with me who has no vested interest, mocking any decision Halliday has okayed is dangerously seditious.
    ‘I’m nearly forty,’ I tell Jimmy. ‘What do I know?’
    ‘Tell me about it. I need someone like Debbie meself, keep me young.’ He casts a speculative look at the available candidates in the bar, comes up empty, turns back to me. ‘You seeing anybody?’
    I think of Sophie, gone from my life now as if she had never existed. ‘Nah. More trouble than it’s worth.’
    A man from the group Jimmy left is jerking his head in our direction. Jimmy notices, rolling his eyes at me but making sure his back is turned so the man cannot see. ‘Gotta go.’ He puts his hand on my arm, gives it a squeeze, says honestly, ‘Good seeing you, Danny.’ He swaggers off to the group and I watch him go wondering at the decisions we make at a young age and how they trap us for life; me and my schooling, Jimmy and his early immersion in the local underworld.
     
    I talk to some more people I know, my status as lawyer not causing any suspicion in this gathering of men who habitually live on the wrong side of the law. In this social stratum, lawyers are seen as neutral entities, their allegiances to either side, crooked or straight, merely a matter of which is willing to pay the most. I consider myself a basically honest man; but out here I am a long way away from the black-and-white certainties of law school, and my day-to-day work often reflects that. Cash deals off the books for house purchases, properties put in the names of geriatric Alzheimer’s grandparents babbling to themselves obliviously in nursing homes; I am upholding no cherished ideals. I often ask myself whether I am on a slippery slope. I like to believe that I am not, that my moral underpinnings arestill strong. But I am also aware that, so far, they have not been seriously tested.
    Debbie recognises me, I don’t know how; but, living in the goldfish bowl of my town, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. I am passing her, heading for the exit and home, when she calls my name. She is alone, texting on her phone, bored. She must be eight, nine years younger than me; she is dressed, even for this place, in an outfit that suggests an equal lack of taste and modesty. I already know, from conversations I have had tonight, that she was a dancer at one of Halliday’s gentlemen’s clubs, the current euphemistic term for a dark room with an expensive bar and a pole in the middle. She caught his eye