Bang by Charles Kennedy Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

on.
    ‘I’ve got your number, my little tartlette. You
conspired with the warden here. He’d provide the equipment, the scalpels, the
saws, and whatnot, and in return you promised to save his skin in this
interrogation. Yes?’
    ‘No! How could that be possible?’
    ‘But now you’re welshing. A deal-breaker. You’re
reneging. Whipping Boy, do your stuff.’
    ‘No,’ said Delilah. ‘I’m innocent of all charges.’ The Voltaire went into its back swing. But then the drips came again and she
could take them no more. ‘Okay, I confess. Everything you say is true.’ She
sighed, not just with relief but with the fresh terror she knew she’d just
guaranteed herself. Then she sighed again, that now it was too late.
    ‘I thought so,’ said JJ Jeffrey. ‘I knew it. I had a
hunch and I didn’t let it go, I chased it. I’m a man of my convictions. Then
you came through, just in time to save the Warden, your fellow schemer. Good
for you.’
    ‘Go to sleep,’ cried the warden, and then spluttered,
and sagged, and died.
    ‘Opps,’ said JJ Jeffrey. ‘You were too late. Take the
warden away and recycle him. Untie the prisoner. Or should I say – the murderer .’
    I’m a victim of some kind of conspiracy, thought
Delilah, to do away with the old warden, but at least I’m to be free of those
interminable drips. I’m only nineteen, a hairdresser, this shouldn’t be
happening to me. And if I hadn’t been mugged, it wouldn’t.
    ‘Come on, murderer, we’ve got plans for you.’ For now,
at least, she was strengthless, and she fell into the slippery wet ground. The
useless towel fell away. But she didn’t pass out. Not this time. She heard the
word chamber but pretended to herself that she hadn’t. However, she was
too honest for her own good and could not pretend this, and instead repeated
the word again and again in her taut head, and the word that had preceded it.
    But they didn’t take her to a torture chamber. They
had been using such words to frighten her. It worked. For when she arrived to
meet her lawyer she was a gibbering, but sane, version of the Delilah who had
formerly moved up there on the fast lanes, her Life swinging off her hip,
hoping to pick up boys, or at least keep the salon customers happy. She hoped
now, as her body shook of its own accord, that such no-nonsense talk would
allow her to put the record straight with her lawyer. She relished the legal
opportunity afforded her but regretted that upon introduction to this lawyer,
appointed her by the Authority, that her shaking out-of-control body flung its
wetness all over his smart suit, which had a check too large for his
small-featured face.
    ‘What is your plea?’ he asked. ‘You must have a plea.
What is the point of my attending you if you have no plea. I don’t come cheap,
you know. You’re wasting both the Authority’s money and my time. If you don’t
give me the answers I want soon, I’ll up and out of here. Got it?’
    Delilah mumbled something dejectedly, and shook and
shivered.
    ‘Your lawyer’s name is Mr Poy Yack,’ said JJ Jeffrey.
‘He is a middle-aged man in the prime of his career. He has decided to try his
hand at defence for a change, and for a bet, after many years of incredibly
successful prosecution. He has never lost a case, ever. You are very lucky to
have him. I will be here to hear everything you say to him and to protect him.
Not only are you a recidivist and dangerous criminal but also now by your own
admission a murderer. Not only that but you have hastened the death of the poor
old dormitory warden, who never did anyone any harm. We cannot just ignore
these facts.’
    ‘That was the warden’s crime, was it?’ asked Delilah.
‘That he never did anyone any harm?’
    ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
    ‘I won’t pretend I didn’t say it.’
    ‘Would you like to pay a visit to the place your fear
assumed we were taking you?’
    ‘Let me handle this, JJ,’ interrupted Lawyer Poy