Read Online Keeping Bad Company by Ann Granger - Free Book Online

nice little club.’
     
    Merv gave his by now familiar growl and went back into the pub.
     
    ‘Well, I didn’t fancy him, anyway,’ said Silver Jacket.
     
    Red Leggings saved dripping mustard from her hot dog by curling her tongue lizard-fashion to catch it. ‘He looked like a bloomin’ nutter to me,’ she said.
     
    Ganesh was climbing down from the rear of the van.
     
    ‘Are you satisfied?’ he asked. ‘Now can we go?’
     

Chapter Four
     
    Somehow I couldn’t get to sleep that night. 1 kept thinking about Merv, his bashed-up motor and Albie and all the rest of it. I had a bruise just below my left shoulder blade from my encounter with the bar and a personal debt to settle with Merv over that. It spurred my resolve but didn’t help me get my ideas in order.
     
    There was another problem. I’d been right to worry about that windowless little bedroom beneath the pavement. Try as I might, I couldn’t relax in it. It was unnatural and there was no way I could come to terms with it. The air was stifling even though I’d left the door open. I also kept the door open because otherwise I was sealed in.
     
    I tossed and turned as I stared into the darkness and juggled the oddly assorted scraps of information at my disposal. Like the kaleidoscope I’d had as a kid, each time I tapped my assembled facts, they reformed to make a different picture. The only thing the pictures had in common was that they were all lurid, all tangled and all vulnerable. There was no scenario that was simple, logical and unshakable. Nothing signposted the way to go with my investigations.
     
    From time to time footsteps passed overhead and echoed eerily around my little room. The sense of being buried alive increased. Tomorrow, I decided, I’d make up a bed on the sofa in the living room. This was definitely the last time I’d sleep in a catacomb. Like a mantra, I began to mutter, over and over:
‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.’

     
     
    That was keeping it simple and dealing with the basics. The words ran round and round inside my throbbing head. The feeling of being trapped and of being in danger increased. My brain was as scrambled as any kaleidoscope. I was afraid to go to sleep in case I dreamed. But despite that, eventually I must have dozed off.
     
    I awoke with a start and a dreadful sense of claustrophobia, even worse than earlier. I didn’t know what time it was but I knew it must be after midnight. Despite it being so late, someone was walking up there, above my head.
     
    I’d heard feet earlier but this was different. These feet didn’t march assertively or patter briskly past. This was a slow, even footfall and every so often, it paused. I wondered for a moment whether it could possibly be a copper on the beat. But coppers don’t pound the beat the way they used to. They drive round, in pairs.
     
    The man above was moving again. I knew it was a man. The footfall was too heavy for a woman and men place their feet differently to the ground. He walked another few steps and stopped again, this time directly overhead, over the thick opaque glass of the skylight.
     
    I knew he couldn’t see me, any more than I could see him. But I knew he was up there and he – I had no doubt of it – knew I was down here, in my cell beneath the ground.
     
    I sat up in bed, swung my feet to the ground and waited. There was a grille set in the door of the room so that I couldn’t suffocate in here but there was no draught, just a still, warm smothering air. And quiet. So quiet I might, if I hadn’t known better, have thought he’d gone away. But I did know better. I knew, because I could hear him thinking.
     
    I saw a telepathy act once at an amateur variety night. I was also part of the night’s programme. I was the drummer in the all-girl band. All right, I don’t play the drums very well, but the others didn’t play