Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online Page A

scene…”
    Killian sighed and scratched his neck.
    Marcetti was on board. “What happened?”
    “They’re in kitchen and I go back in through the French windows and get the jump on them. They’d given me a silenced Smith and Wesson .38, but what good is that if she’s screaming her head off, you know? I tell him to shut her up. He’s crying, begging, flipped. She’s hysterical. Gorgeous too and only about nineteen. I can’t kill her. Just can’t. Wouldn’t be right. Now, I know a bit of Spanish from jobs in the Costa del Sol so I tell her straight: she can stay here and die or leave and forget about this. She’s a good girl, she wipes her face and walks out. He’s begging her not to go. She doesn’t look back. He’s really bawling now, but it doesn’t matter – our boy’s wearing his funeral suit – nothing he can say can change the judgement. But you never know though, do you? So I let him talk a little. He tells me he’s got money. Millions, he says. We open his safe. It’s not millions. It’s about twenty grand in euros.”
    Killian paused, finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wooden window sill.
    Marcetti was pointing the shotgun at the floor now. Killian let the seconds crawl.
    “What happened next?” Marcetti asked.
    “While he’s spinning some scheme about gold bullion I sidle next to him and shoot him in the head behind the ear, easy, bullet expands in his brain case, exits through his face, kills him instantly. But I have to work fast now. The client demanded torture, a lesson, you know, all that East End cockney geezer bullshit.”
    “You killed him?”
    “Yeah, but listen, that’s not the story. The story’s coming up. So I’m cutting off his penis—”
    “You were what?”
    “They wanted me to cut off his penis and make him eat it before I killed him. Not my scene but easy to replicate. Anyway I’m doing that and not really paying attention and guess what happens?”
    “He wakes up,” Luke said, horrified.
    Killian laughed. “Man you’ve some imagination. No, the girlfriend comes back. And she’s got a pair of heavies with her. One of them has a fucking AK-47, another has an Uzi. I’m minding my own business, sawing at this guy’s dick with my Swiss Army knife and before I know what’s happening – World War Three.”
    Killian chuckled, shook his head and looked down. He was talking conversationally but he knew he had them now. He was good at this. He was a minstrel. A salesman. A preacher.
    “That was a scene, but lucky for me they didn’t know what they were doing – jazzing each other, shooting for the rafters. I dive for the sofa, roll behind a wall where they can’t see me and then it’s tea and crumpets at the Palace. I run to the bathroom, out through the window, back in through the front door behind them.”
    “What happened next?” Luke asked.
    Killian gave him a shut the fuck up look.
    “I shot both the hoods in the back and checked them in the skull, neat checks, two rounds a piece and I ran over and smacked the girlfriend hardin the face, broke her nose, knocked her clean out. Ran back over to our boy, cut off his dick, put it in his mouth. Then back to the girlfriend. She’s the problem.”
    Marcetti nodded. His lips were purple from holding his breath. Killian blew smoke at him and Marcetti finally sucked in air through his open mouth. “What did you do?” he asked.
    “What would you do?” Killian asked.
    “I – I don’t know.”
    “I can’t kill her, not in the contract. But you can’t let her go, not after all this.”
    Killian nodded at Luke, now was the time for him to speak. Kid caught on quick.
    “What did you do?” Luke asked.
    “I went to the kitchen and found a steak knife and cut her throat,” Killian said. “Her blood came out crimson. She was young, her heart was beating fast. Frothed out all over the floor and all the way to that wooden patio deck.”
    He nodded at Luke and then turned his attention on