Read Online The Dead Boy by Craig Saunders - Free Book Online Page A

until someone rapped on her window.
                A
man stood calmly by her BMW, the side of his face lit by the distant fire. He
didn't smile. He looked, if anything, a little bored.
                She
opened her window just wide enough so they could speak.
                'Ma'am,
I'm going to have to ask you to step from the car.'
                'Who
the fuck are you?' said Eleanor. Sure she was afraid, but she was good and
angry, too. Terrified, heart-broken, sore, tired, yes, but above all that she
was fucking incandescent. She'd just witness the death of her family. Mass
murder, too, but right then she couldn't grasp that. It was just too big a
thought to hold to.
                The
man at the window nodded in response, perfectly calm in the face of her anger. A
good looking, confident man, with a straight stance, his shoulders back. He
looked fit. He didn't have the tired, broken look of a policeman. If he wasn't
a soldier, he had to be RMP - the military police - something like that.
                He
reached into his jacket - dark, almost black, but in firelight they could have
been green fatigues. He pulled out a wallet and took out an ID card from inside.
On it, his picture, and his name and rank within some branch of the military
she didn't recognise, and Ministry of Defence , which she understood just
fine.
                Give
yourself a round of applause, Eleanor. Now you're really fucked.
                Eleanor
didn't care either way. Her husband and son had been blown apart by missiles
named after snakes or big cats or something like that. Predatory names given to
deadly toys by idiot men.
                'Now,
step from the car, please.'
                'You
just... you killed all those people .'
                'Ma'am,
you're in so much trouble right now. I could put you in a cell with a bucket
and no fucking posters for the rest of your life and not even your family would
remember your name. I'm trying to be reasonable. Step from the car .'
                He
didn't raise his voice. Not once.
                Eleanor
felt like she'd just been slapped, and damn hard, but that was good. She needed
it.
                'My
family won't remember me, you fucking prick, because you just killed them .'
                He
didn't even have the grace to change his expression.
                'Out.'
                You
couldn't just get away with murdering three buses full of terrified people. You
just couldn't. Humans. Her family.
                But
she had no choice.
                'Thank
you, ma'am,' said the soldier as Eleanor stepped out. Her legs shook and on the
uneven surface she leaned sideways and held onto the car door to stop herself
falling down. A woman came from the other side of the X3. Eleanor was so
shocked she hadn't even noticed the woman.
                In
case I tried to get out on the passenger side , she thought. She was
relieved to know she could still think something, even though she felt cold as
death inside.
                'Easy
or hard,' said the man with a smile that showed no teeth.
                'Easy,'
said Eleanor. No point in fighting it, not right now. There was a time for fighting,
and her way of fighting would involve every newspaper she could get to listen,
or the court, or fuck it, if it came to it, she'd...
                You'll
what? It's the God-damned army.
                'Good
choice,' said the man.
                He
stepped back and the woman in fatigues from the other side of the car stepped
forward, raised a pistol and shot Eleanor Farnham in the head.
                The
blood didn't hit the car or the man.
                'Easy
always best, isn't it?' said the man.
                'Suits
me fine,' said the woman.