Dust and Desire by Conrad Williams Read Free Book Online

lacking its wheel.
    I stared down at the pieces of china in my hand. Spotlessly clean. Maybe the guy had dropped it in shock at how spick it was. But what was he doing running around in the dark with a dish in his hands, for God’s sake? I was about to answer my own question, one of those questions that has an answer so simple that you smack your head with frustration, when you realise it. Too much to drink, Joel, far too much to drink. You’re slowing down. I actually thought that: You’re slowing down, you sitting duck, you no-mark wanker , in the moment that he surged up behind me, wrapped his gloved hand around my throat, and started hammering open my skull.

5
    M aybe it was a warning. A friendly warning.’
    I looked at Neville, really gave him one of my best Paddington Bear stares, but he wouldn’t let it go. I was lying in a hospital bed in a ward with five other pyjama cases. I had been ‘very lucky’ according to the nurse who swept by about half a dozen times every hour, her nylons shushing like a cineaste with hearing difficulties. Everyone who survives a murder attempt seems to be ‘very lucky’, but I begged to differ. I would have been ‘very lucky’ if I’d decided to wear my Kevlar bobble hat before I’d gone out. I would have been ‘very lucky’ if my assailant had developed a fatal allergy to coshes a second or so before he stuck it on to me. Or decided that he didn’t want to hit me after all, but shower me with kittens instead.
    ‘I mean,’ Neville was continuing, ‘if he meant to kill you, I’m sure he would have done a better job on you. Used a knife, a gun.’
    ‘Nev,’ I said, ‘he smacked me twice on the braincase with what felt like a steel bat. Surely, if it was a warning, he’d have just shown me the cosh, said something a bit sinister like, ooh, I don’t know, “This is a warning”.’
    But I knew he was right. He would have finished the job off if Neville hadn’t reappeared. He’d had a change of heart about the crusties and hurried after me to ask if I wanted to go and join in the fun. The guy then ran off and Nev found me dragging myself back on to the pavement, calling out for someone called Melanie, while painting the pathway with my own blood.
    ‘Who’s Melanie?’ he’d asked me, soon after arriving for his hospital visit. I didn’t say.
    Nobody brought me grapes or chocolate or disappointing flowers from a petrol-station forecourt. Nev very kindly agreed to feed Mengele for me while I was out of it.
    When the police came to question me I didn’t mention anything about Kara Geenan or her brother. I recognised the prick who sat at the end of my bed. We’d been at training college together, up in Bruche, and his name was Mawker. When he’d made it to plain clothes, he took it literally: you’ve never seen a more depressingly grey individual. He could wear blinding red with acid-lime polka dots, and after a while the pattern would disappear and slowly turn into something the colour of porridge. He wore a side parting that looked as if it had been applied with a set square. His moustache had a bit of previous and was to be found in the mugshot folders. His eyes were so close together that they probably swapped tears whenever he looked in the mirror.
    ‘ I think,’ Mawker said, rotating his pencil between his fingers, ‘that you know who attacked you. I think that you’re protecting someone.’
    ‘Interesting methods I deploy, losing all that blood to protect someone. Your hunches aren’t fit to sit on Quasimodo’s back.’
    ‘Gary Cullen,’ he said.
    ‘Or his,’ I said, thinking Who?
    ‘It was his flat you broke into.’
    ‘I didn’t break into any flat, Mawker. The fucking door was open.’
    ‘What’s the story with you and Cullen? Why did you want to see him?’
    ‘I didn’t want to see him. I don’t know who he is. It was a mistake. It was just bad luck.’
    ‘As liars go,’ Mawker leaned forward, giving me a kipper whiff of what