Killing Ground by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online Page A

specimen muskie.'
    Dwight Smythe said hoarsely, 'That's rough on the little fish.'
    'If she goes, then we'd try and wind her in when we get the shout, like when the float starts to charge we'd reel in the tackle,' Axel said softly.
    'You can live with that?'
    'I just do a job.'
    There was a heavy lorry coming towards them, big, high lights, and Axel saw the driver's face and saw the gleam of sweat on Dwight Smythe's forehead, as if it were him that was being asked to travel to Palermo, live the lie, have the treble hook in his backbone.
    'She'll go?'
    'I should reckon so. Didn't seem to be much to keep her here. Yes, I reckon she'll go.
    She'll jump when she's pushed. If you don't mind, I'm kind of tired.'

Chapter Two
    Tracy was fighting Vanessa. Darren was sticking a pencil point into Vaughan's forearm. Lee was drawing with a felt-tip pen over Joshua's writing pad. Dawn was tugging at Nicky's hair. A crash as Ron's chair tipped over backwards, a scream from Ron as Ian dived back to his own chair and table . . .
    And class 2B was regarded by the headmistress as the best- disciplined and happiest class in the school, and class 2B had been singled out by the Inspectors three weeks before as a model.
    Tracy kicked Vanessa. Darren gouged the pencil point hard enough for it to draw Vaughan's blood. Lee had destroyed Joshua's careful work. Dawn had a fistful of Nicky's hair. Ian sat innocent as Ron bawled . . .
    She could have belted each one of them, and lost her job. She could have smacked Tracy's hand, whacked Darren, twisted Lee's ear, thumped Ian, and that would have been the fast route to an Education Authority Sub-Committee (Disciplinary) Hearing.
    She imagined in the other classrooms, the other prefabricated blocks that sieved the draughts and leaked the rain, the teachers of classes IA and IB and 2A and 3A and 3B, and the headmistress on her rounds, and their surprise that class 2B was audibly and publicly

    in chaos. It was her second term at the school, her nineteenth week, and the first time that she had lost control of the thirty-eight children. She clapped her hands, and maybe there was rare anger in her voice, and maybe there was total contempt on her face, but the clapping and the anger and the contempt won her a short respite. It had been a rotten, desperate night for Charley Parsons. No sleep, no rest. The kids knew her mind was far away. Kids always knew and exploited weakness. Five more minutes on her watch before the bell would go, before a quite bloody day was finished.
    She had come in from outside the evening before and heard the front door close quietly after him. She had stood in the hall and heard the big engine of the four-wheel-drive pull away. She had gone back into the kitchen. Her mother, accusing: did she know that her tea was ruined? Her father, furtive: would she have time for the work to be done that night on class preparation?
    Her mother: what was that about? Her father: who was he? 'I can't tell you, so don't question me.'
    Her father: hadn't her own parents the right to know? Her mother: shouldn't her own parents be given an explanation when a total stranger barges into the house? 'He said that if I talked about him, what he said to me, then I might be responsible for hurting people.'
    Her mother: didn't she know how offensive she sounded? Her father: had they scrimped and saved and sent her to college merely to learn rudeness? 'He's a sort of policeman, a sort of detective. He works for something called the Drug Enforcement Adminstration.'
    Drugs? The shock spreading across her mother's face. What had she to do with drugs? The incredulity at her father's mouth, and she had seen the shake of his hands. 'I have nothing to do with drugs. I just can't talk about it. I have no connection with drugs.
    I can't tell you.'
    She had run out of the kitchen and across the hall and into her bedroom. She had flung herself down onto the duvet cover. She had held the bear that had been hers for twenty