Read Online Graven Image by Charlie Williams - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t want to bring it too close, he’d said. Gnash was showing me the way to Graven’s new place.
    The new Destiny.
    ‘I been thinkin’,’ he said, spying round a corner before stepping out. ‘I remember where I seen a brothel bouncer recently. Remember I said I seen one? Yeah, it was a thing on telly.’
    Destiny. After all your hopes and dreams and wishes, this is where they end up. Cross out scientist, put down prostitute. Slag. Whore.
    ‘Feller cuts up a hooker and the bouncer beats him up bad, then has to go on the run from the local crime boss.’
    Only it wasn’t her, was it? She hadn’t chosen this path. She’d had it thrust on her.
    ‘I think it was Denzel Washington.’
    I’d had it thrust on me .
    ‘Playing the bouncer, not the crime boss. The crime boss was Joe Pesci, I’m sure of it. You know him? He’s brilliant in Goodfellas . Hey, d’you like pizza?’
    Kelly. Sapphires in the desert. Blue crystals, glinting in the sand. You’re paying for my sins. You’re paying because I fucked up. He’s making you pay.
    Graven.
    ‘No? I could murder one meself. Anchovies, I likes. Hate pineapples on a pizza, though. What’s all that about?’
    Graven.
    ‘Anyway, look, it’s in there. Number 33 - the blue door there. See it?’
    I’m walking.
    Lights on upstairs but none down. That’s because the windows are boarded up. Front door’s out of commission too - no way I’m getting in there. I slip round the side. Got to be an entry somewhere. How do the punters come and go? But there’s nothing in the back yard. Windows boarded up here too and the back door’s made of breezeblock.
    A sound behind me.
    I slip behind a shed and peek out.
    Just some twat, a kid like Sid and Gnash. There’s chipboard where the kitchen window should be and he knocks on it, waits, stepping trainer to trainer. He turns - I swear he’s seen me. But he couldn’t have.
    Anyone who saw me right then would have shit.
    Seconds later the board lifts outwards from the bottom. There’s hinges at the top - nicely done. The lad climbs in and it comes down.
    I wait a few minutes. Thinking.
    About Kelly.
    Rubbing her eyes, sleepy.
    Trying to save that teddy from a burning house.
    I step up to the window and knock. Not too hard, not too soft. I’m looking at my watch: forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine... Chipboard goes up. Glazed eyes looking out at me. Another ned, too stoned to react and save himself.
    I point the gun at him and blow his head off.
    All of him seems to disappear. There’s a big area of red slop on the wall behind him and a bit of smoke, like he’s exploded. I climb in. There’s a sink you have to clamber over but they’ve filled it with bricks to help people like me. I can hear voices now, upstairs. Shouting and screaming. Female screaming.
    I hit the lino, finding where the stoned lad went. No time to check what state he’s in - sidestep around the destruction and into the dining room. That’s what we called that type of room in our old house, between the kitchen and the living room.
    ‘Where’s your Daddy?’ Jane would say.
    ‘Daddy ’mokin’ in dinie room!’
    I loved the way she used to say that. ’Mokin’.
    ‘Kelly!’ I’m at the foot of the stairs, booming that name. Front door’s open and a nice breeze is coming in, bringing a whiff of distant bonfires. A noise in the front room and I stick my head round the door. There’s a lad behind the couch, plain as the white sock on his ankle, which is sticking out the far side.
    ‘Come out now and I might spare you,’ I say, calm.
    He does it, hands up. It’s Sid’s other pal, the one from the abbey. Dux. I never really took to him. He’s staring back at me, trying to smile. I don’t think I return that smile. Whatever is on my face, he knows it’s not good.
    ‘Booker!’ he yells. ‘Booker! Help!’
    He’s got one of them really irritating voices.
    I put a bullet in his leg, aiming to both shut him up and give him a permanent limp