East of Innocence by David Thorne Read Free Book Online Page B

man; my words have hit home and I have no interest in punishing Billy unnecessarily. I stop, watch him process what I have told him.
    ‘Halliday?’
    ‘Remember those stereos you stole? They were his.’ Of course, this isn’t entirely accurate; but Halliday did stealthem first, which, in the criminal world I have more than a passing acquaintance with, does confer some extra-legal rights. ‘He had you taken out, Billy. I’m sorry.’
    Billy may be simple, but he too has an instinctive knowledge of the rules his world is governed by and he immediately knows, with a sudden clarity he is unused to, that by crossing a man like Halliday his life is now forfeit; that this temporary sanctuary in a hospital ward is as transient as a summer’s day. Quietly he begins to weep. Again, oh, Billy. He looks up at me like a baby looks up at a bottle of milk.
    ‘Danny? You can sort this, right?’ A small tear rolls down his thin, unloved and unshaved cheek. ‘Right?’

 
     
     
     
     
    8

    GABE’S VOLLEY HAS never been as reliable as his baseline game but, now that he is playing off one leg and a prosthetic limb, a cup on one end attached to his knee and a Nike Air trainer on the other, he has no choice but to stay up at the net; he lacks the speed to chase a wide, deep ball down a tramline. Perhaps I am being harsh on his volley; since his accident he has worked on his net game and right now is putting away angled balls with a casual contempt. Our opponents, two lean investment bankers who sauntered on to court and dumped their expensive tennis bags with a complacent authority, are now running with sweat and wondering how these two men, one with a false leg and the other a meaty thug as wide as he is tall, can be beating them quite so viciously.
    I am serving, thirty–love up in the third game of the second set, one set and two games up in the match. These men are not used to losing, either in tennis or, I suspect, judging by their top-line equipment and the Porsche they arrived in, life; they do not appear to be enjoying the experience. My serve has seventeen stone of well-drilled bulkbehind it and the man I am serving to, his once-immaculate blond hair plastered to his scalp and eyes dark with exhaustion, can only watch the ball hiss past him down the T and thud into the green screens hanging on the fence behind. He takes a deep ragged breath and goes for his towel. Gabe turns around, looks at me, winks.
    ‘Serve.’
    I nod, grin, bounce the ball, toss it up and cream a flat serve wide to my opponent’s backhand. He doesn’t get within two metres of it, flailing flat-footed, his racket waving clumsily like a drunk wielding a broken bottle. He is absolutely finished. If it had not been for the graceless air of privilege they arrived with, I might feel pity for our opponents.
    Gabe has been given, by the local tennis authority, special dispensation to remain exclusively a net player except on his serve, not swapping after every point as the rules stipulate. It is an allowance that he did not ask for and argued strenuously against, until the pain I felt watching him forlornly chase passing shots caused me to deliver an ultimatum: stay at the net or I would no longer play with him. As a war hero, there has been little muttering; besides, Gabe is a popular and well-liked man. Of course, there will always be exceptions.
    ‘This is bullshit,’ says the man who has just watched my serve go by, tanned with close-shaved black hair and a razor-sharp goatee. ‘I stayed at the net all game I’d have energy to burn.’
    ‘Return a serve. Wear him out,’ I suggest. ‘Not his fault he’s a spectator.’
    ‘It speaks,’ says the blond-haired man.
    ‘What did you say?’ asks Gabe.
    ‘Nobody told us we’d be playing care in the community.’
    ‘That why you’re losing? Out of charity?’ I ask coolly.
    ‘Let’s just fucking play, can we?’ says the close-shaved man. He can’t get off court fast enough.
    It is the