Read Online Thorn In My Side by Sheila Quigley - Free Book Online

in
yellow T-shirts, caught his eye. The kids were reasonably well
behaved so far, occupied as they were with drawing paper and
colouring pens. He wondered how far up the line they would get
before pandemonium broke out. The mother had piqued his interest
because she reminded him of Kristina Clancy, same short dark bob
and large brown eyes. He’d worked with Kristina on a few cases.
They’d even had something going once. It had petered out though,
probably due to the pressures of the job. They were still friends,
although she had moved further north and married someone called
Timothy Mears, or Myers, he couldn’t remember. He’d never met the
bloke anyhow. The last he’d heard Kristina was somewhere on the
edge of Scotland.
    Relegating
Kristina to the back of his mind he opened his newspaper. The first
thing he saw was a full page advert for perfume, the girl with the
red hair and red dress smiling out at him. He’d also noticed her on
just about every billboard in the city on his way over to Kings
Cross.
    Well, that
just about explains that , he thought with a slight smile. Of
course, the other business that was just Smiler’s mind hyper acting
again.
    He knew he
would miss the kid, and didn’t even want to admit to himself how
disappointed he was about Smiler not turning up at the station to
see him off.
    Although in all
fairness he may not have got the message, in which case he might
phone. Though it had struck him at the time that Rita was so
grateful, she would scour the earth to pass the message on. The
main thing was that Smiler had promised that he would never again
under any circumstances attempt to take his own life, and that
drugs were a thing of the past. Whether these were promises he
could keep or not remained to be seen, but Mike believed that
Smiler would try. All he’d ever wanted or needed was someone to
give him a chance. At least he’d managed to keep off the drugs for
the longest time in nine years, the poor bugger had been smoking
dope and dipping into his mother's other habits before he was even
eight years old . Yesterday must just have been a flash back, and I certainly handled that all wrong.
    He sighed
inwardly. If there was some way that he could go back and find the
creeps who had used Smiler, Mike would see that they would be
behind bars for life, each one of them with a severe chronic
complaint, after he’d dealt with them himself, of course. But with
Smiler’s mother dead there was no way of knowing who or where they
were, nor even just how many of them there had been. No one to even
ask, as most of those years were blocked to Smiler, his mind doing
him a great kindness by closing over the worst of it. But
sometimes, mostly when it was least expected, Smiler’s eyes would
cloud over. Mike would know that a breeze had lifted the curtain at
the edges and Smiler was peering into the abyss.
    Looking up as
the train pulled into York, he heaved a sigh of relief. Good,
not long for home now. He patted Tiny, whose behaviour had been
brilliant. Obligingly, the big dog had let anyone who cared to pat
him, and revelled in it.
    The yellow
T-shirt family got off the train, the two smallest having fallen
asleep as they were closing in on Peterborough. Thank God, Mike had thought, as he’d watched their lids start to droop. Their
chattering had begun to get on his nerves.
    Out of habit he
scanned the train again, his eyes flitting back to a passenger who
had held the newspaper up to his or her face for the whole journey.
Mike frowned as the train pulled away.
    His curiosity
piquing as they neared Darlington, Mike got up and headed for the
toilet, his feet poised and his left hand clenched just in case an
undesirable hid behind the print. He managed as he came next to the
seat to take a look over the top of the newspaper.
    'I knew it.' He
yanked the paper out of Smiler’s hands. 'What the hell do you think
you’re playing at?'
    Smiler grinned
at him. 'Time for a change?'
    Hiding his
pleasure at