Read Online Gone Cold by Douglas Corleone - Free Book Online Page A

cheapest whiskey,” Zoey called across the bar.
    “Right away, lass.”
    Was it me? Or had the bartender’s mood just vastly improved?

 
    Chapter 14
    As night fell, the pub began to fill. I’d tossed back about four pints and flushed another couple down the toilet so as not to arouse suspicion or draw the ire of the grizzled barkeep. As long as I kept tossing money on the bar, I figured he’d continue serving me. But I also had the distinct impression that the Old Soak strictly enforced at least one unwritten rule: If you’re not drinking, you’re leaving—by force, if necessary.
    Which wasn’t an issue for Zoey. By close of Happy Hour, my sister had consumed an almost unthinkable amount of liquor, and there seemed to be no stopping her. Not that anyone but myself was trying. The pub’s patrons, the great majority of whom were male, encouraged her like we were at a frat party. Not that she needed much encouragement either.
    Best I could do was keep an eye on her, step in if some boozer began misbehaving.
    But she didn’t make it easy, repeatedly parading outside for smokes with plastered teenagers. I clung to the hope that Ashdown could monitor her from his crossover, which conceivably remained parked on the opposite side of the street, though I hadn’t really instructed him to stay put. He, too, had the photos on his phone and could feasibly be touring the innumerable dive bars along the road, his English accent be damned.
    One pub called Bishop’s was on this very block.
    Shortly after my sister returned to the bar following a smoke with a trio of teenage boys, the door to the pub opened again, and the atmosphere suddenly transformed. Like a rowdy classroom suddenly gone silent. From my spot at the end of the bar, I craned my neck to make out our newest reveler. A kid, somewhere in his early twenties, sporting a goatee and a badly receding hairline. Skinny, scrawny even, yet with the strut of a professional footballer.
    Dressed in a navy tracksuit straight off the set of The Sopranos, the kid sauntered through the throng, which parted in a way that would have made ambulance drivers jealous.
    To some he offered a nod, others a look that made them instantly shy away, like mares from a rattlesnake.
    The bartender stopped mid-pour, turned, and snatched an ice-cold rocks glass from the freezer. Then he reached for the top shelf, opened a fresh bottle of Dalmore, and decanted three fingers, neat.
    Sliding it carefully across the bar to his latest guest, he said, “On the house, mate.”
    The kid in the tracksuit swallowed the Scotch in a single go. Slapped the empty glass onto the bar, said, “Another, then,” and slid over a pile of cash half as tall as the pour.
    The chatting, which had briefly ceased, rose again, and the mood for the most part returned to normal. Yet a palpable air of trepidation lingered, like tear gas over a peaceful assembly.
    I raised my brows in Zoey’s direction. She replied with an inebriated shrug and a single finger that slurred, I’m on it, then she turned back to her current companion with a salacious grin and a question on her lips.
    Several minutes later she strolled over to me, said in my ear, “The tracksuit’s name is Kinny Gilchrist. He’s the son of some local gangster known as The Chairman.”
    I stole a glance over at the kid and his newly arrived entourage. They were seated in the back corner booth, which had been occupied by a different group of hooligans only a few minutes earlier.
    “Any luck otherwise?” I said.
    Zoey shook her head. “I showed the photo to a few of the blokes I took outside for a fag. Not a one claimed to recognize the girl. Or the wanker she’s with in the pic.”
    “It’s possible he’s not local,” I said, partially deflating. “But I’d like to confirm it with the Gilchrist kid. If he’s as connected as your friend over there suggests, he’ll know everyone in the neighborhood, if only for purposes of self-preservation.”
    “Want