Read Online The Catch by Tom Bale - Free Book Online Page A

out of bed to answer the call from his bladder, his mood lifted by a glimpse of sunshine through the blinds: the first morning in ages which hadn’t begun with mist or rain. Maybe it was an omen.
     
    ****
     
    In the bathroom Robbie made a snap decision not to shave. Two days’ growth: it made him look a little more wild and dangerous. And if it scratched Bree’s baby-soft skin and left incriminating burns on her inner thighs, well, so be it.
    He knew she was crazy for him, which he thought was entirely appropriate. His wariness stemmed from the fact that she was probably also a bit crazy, full stop.
    Still, there was no denying that nature had been kind to Robbie. He was a shade below six feet, weighed twelve stone, could wear his dark hair either swept back or artistically mussed up – each to fairly devastating effect. He had clear blue eyes and good cheekbones and teeth that were small and neat and brilliantly white. Add to that a quick wit and an easy line in charm and you had a package that had undoubtedly smoothed his path through life.
    He didn’t feel gratitude, particularly, or guilt. If he was lucky, so be it. Some people were lucky. Some weren’t.
    And we’re back to Dan , he thought. Poor sod, losing his parents, lumbered with a kid brother and an ageing aunt. Not to mention that mouthy bitch of a girlfriend ...
     
    ****
     
    Breakfast was coffee and a fistful of Frosties: without milk, because the last carton was sitting empty on the counter. Jed had finished it and neglected to buy more. The absence festered while Robbie crunched the dry, sugary cereal and brushed the crumbs from his hands.
    He waited till he was ready to leave – suited and booted because he’d have to go to work after he’d seen Bree – and knocked sharply on the door to the flat’s second bedroom.
    ‘Wha’?’ came a voice from within.
    Robbie gripped the handle, hesitated a moment, then thrust the door open. He never quite knew what he would find when he ventured into Jed’s room – it made him feel like he was the parent of a wayward teenage boy.
    The sight that greeted him today was about average: lots of empty cans and bottles, discarded fast-food cartons, several screwed-up balls of aluminium foil and the bottom section of a plastic lemonade bottle that still held what appeared to be a little dirty liquid.
    Jed Armstrong was submerged in a pile of clothes and tatty old blankets which he’d brought with him when he moved in, and which for no obvious reason he favoured over Robbie’s Siberian Goosedown duvets. Jed was a Geordie of indeterminate age and background. Robbie put him in his thirties, or maybe forties, but he could just as easily have been a twenty-something who’d lived a very hard life.
    He was a friend of a friend of a guy Robbie sometimes drank with: another of those haphazard social collisions that, as with the location manager, had led to an unexpected and not entirely positive outcome. In this case Jed had been in need of a place to crash, Robbie had plenty of space, and it transpired that Jed could pay his keep in cash or in kind: herbs or pills or powders, in a seemingly inexhaustible supply.
    At first it had seemed like the perfect arrangement, but four months in and Robbie was having his doubts. For one thing, Jed wasn’t supposed to keep his stash on the premises – or at least no more than could be deemed for personal use. Robbie was far from confident that Jed had adhered to this rule. Adhering to rules wasn’t Jed’s thing.
    ‘Time is it?’ he growled.
    ‘Uh, ten to eight.’
    ‘Is there a fucking fire, Robert?’
    Robbie chuckled, but it didn’t come out right. ‘Nah, it’s just we’re out of milk, and you were gonna—’
    ‘You woke us up for that? Jeezus Christ, man, you want me to bang on your fucking door at four in the morning to tell you I’ve wiped my arse on the last sheet of bog roll?’
    Jed twisted round, squinting out from the covers like some kind of nocturnal