Hellbound Hearts by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane Read Free Book Online

close us down for good. Gravier accepted the pint from Simmonds and for a moment didn’t know what he should do with it. Everything felt as though it should be kicked, punched, smashed; damaged in some way. It was not a good feeling. He was not having a good day. He swallowed half the pint in three savage mouthfuls. Nobody behind the bar or sitting at it would meet his eye. Danger radiated from him.
    What’s that, Simmonds?
Sir, if you’d just take it easy?
Don’t you dare try the arm around the shoulder with me, Simmonds, or I’ll punch you so hard you’ll find you’re suddenly rimming yourself off. Yes, I know the pathologist’s report said there was no internal damage, nothing to write home about in any of the postmortems, but the pathologist isn’t fucking Superman. Brian Mercer? Man’s a sot. And half blind. If he wasn’t wearing those Coke-bottle glasses of his, he’d take his scalpel to a turkey’s twat and think it was a pensioner’s mouth. Now fuck away off with you. Leave me alone.
    Another night’s torture for the brogues. Slapping through the wet, wondering why he never put on a thicker pair of socks, or invested in some of those Gore-Tex boots the younger generation clomp around in. Freezing wind wound itself around his neck and shoulders, reaching deep into his body. Some days he woke up with the core of his limbs giving him gyp, and could imagine his moldering bones turned damp with the cold. He used to walk through miles ofrain when he was courting and never felt the needling of it. He was happy then. The only thing pressing down on his shoulders were the five-inch-thick firecheck doors he had to lug around the warehouse where he used to work summer holidays. Seventeen. Full of cum and muscle. Not a care. When did it all turn bad? When you got a job that held a mirror up to the world and showed it to be some foxed, blighted shithole, that’s when.
    How long till the next one? And there
would
be a next one. There always was, even if the killer was one of those twisted individuals desperate to be stopped. He sensed himself walking faster, as if an increase in speed might hurry a conclusion his way. His fingers worried at the stylized business card in his coat pocket. If he stroked the surface, he could just feel the raised pimples of the typeface outlining her name: Lady Ice. No address. No phone number.
    Why was he moving in this direction?
    Here was a part of town he didn’t know so well. He remembered a few callouts here, many years ago. But not a place he lingered. Somewhere he couldn’t give a name to now, no matter how hard he delved for one. He frowned and checked road names, but none impinged on his memory. He felt a weird slanting in perception, as if he’d had a dizzy spell and felt the world shift away for a second. He put out a hand to steady himself and burned his fingers on the frozen door knocker of a large building, which reminded Gravier of the neoclassical buildings in the town center—the libraries and banks—bought by brewery chains and transformed into spit-and-sawdust pubs selling alcopops and indigestible hunks of beef.
    The door opened as he pushed to lever himself upright. He heard a female voice, strident, calling from farther along a dark hallway. “Get in. Shut out that unwanted.”
    He thought she meant the weather, but once the door was closed behind him, he felt sure she wanted the chill in, and him out. He couldn’t understand why he’d even crossed the threshold, but there was something in her voice that brooked no argument. “Hello?” he called. “I’m a police officer. You should watch that door. I think the lock’s faulty.”
    â€œCome in. Take off your coat. And wipe your feet. I don’t want muddy prints all over my pile.”
    Gravier’s heart was loud in the corridor. He took his hand off the latch and moved deeper into the house. Stairs