Dead or Alive by Ken McCoy Read Free Book Online Page B

loaded another two cartridges into his now empty shotgun. ‘What d’yer think? Maybe we should we waste another one?’
    The Irishman took his time looking from one to the other, as if making up his mind which one Sharky should kill. The woman fainted again.
    â€˜Nah,’ decided Spud, after a long moment, ‘two’s plenty. Like yer said, we’re civilized people, not fuckin’ animals. I tink they get the message.’
    The room was heavily spattered with blood from floor to ceiling. There were two naked bodies on the floor, one man weeping, another man vomiting, and a woman in a dead faint beside the dead bodies. Satisfied with their work, Spud and Sharky strolled from the house in the manner of a couple of insurance salesmen who had just sold the occupant a lucrative life policy. Neighbours, alerted by the shooting, were coming to doors and windows to watch the car being driven sedately away. But they weren’t neighbours who would ever be much help to the police. Talking to the coppers had never done any of them any good. They watched but they wouldn’t see anything. Half a mile away the two men swapped cars in a large, lock-up garage out of sight of prying street cameras. They took off their boiler suits and stuffed them into plastic bags.
    â€˜Why d’yer shoot the whore?’ said Sharky, looking in the driver’s mirror and wiping blood from his face with a wet wipe.
    â€˜I thought we agreed I could do Dench. It was my turn,’ Spud told him.
    â€˜Jesus, man! Yer’ve got some sort of crap memory you have. It was my turn. You shot the Italian last month. So, you wasted her because you thought I went out of turn? That’s just fuckin’ childish, that is.’
    â€˜Dench might have been telling the truth,’ Spud pointed out. ‘It might have been her what grassed.’
    Sharky gave this a second’s thought and shook his head. ‘Nah. You were just pissed off because you thought I went out of turn. I thought she looked quite tasty. Big girl. I thought we might bring her with us and have some fun before we wasted her.’
    â€˜Agh, we gotta stay professional. She was a fuckin’ gypsy anyway. They all were.’
    â€˜Professional? You were making fuckin’ jokes about my legs in there.’
    â€˜Yeah, but we showed ’em that we’re ruthless bastards as well as comedians. People find that very scary.’
    â€˜You think so? Man, that lot were high on skunk.’
    â€˜High, but not out of it,’ said Spud, turning the mirror his way and wiping his own face. ‘Dope’ll distort and magnify their memories of what went on, as if it needs any magnifyin’.’
    â€˜Jesus Christ!’ said Sharky, impressed, ‘where’d yer read that?’
    â€˜I make it my business ter know stuff about drugs.’
    â€˜Could be they don’t remember much at all,’ said Sharky, ‘but I still think we should have worn masks.’
    â€˜Why?’ said Spud. ‘We ain’t gonna be around no more after this job.’
    Sharky grinned. ‘True man. We’s on our Fiji island livin’ like kings. Anyways, I doubt if any of ’em’ll be able to describe us to the polis. It’s hard to take notice when ye doped up and shittin’ yerself. Plus nobody who hears about dis’ll want to be on the wrong side of mad bastard comedians like us. They’ll tell the cops I was a Frenchman and you was an Eskimo.’
    â€˜Good point, man. We’re real ruthless dudes.’ Sharky looked down at his shoes. ‘Do I really need to burn these shoes? They’ve got blood on ’em but they’re Guccis, which are not cheap. I should just give ’em a real good clean.’
    Spud looked at his own blood-spattered work boots. ‘We burn everything as usual. Yer a fucking eejit fer comin’ ter work in dem shoes. What man in his right mind goes to work in his best