The Horse at the Gates by D C Alden Read Free Book Online Page A

in the summer. He’d even brought his dad along once, the change of scenery and bracing sea air doing the old man a world of good. And then, a few short months after he joined, they passed the Hate Crime legislation and the ban was imposed, declaring the English Freedom Movement an illegal organisation. Meetings were cancelled, its members scattered to the four winds under threat of prosecution and imprisonment. Danny was absolutely gutted.
    Still, he enjoyed flashing his tattoo to anyone who showed the slightest interest, revelling in its notoriety. But what exactly had he got out of it? At its height the Movement was an impressive network of patriots who didn’t want foreigners cutting their grass or painting their houses. For new members like Danny, jobs were supposed to come flooding in, all cash, never a penny going to Whitehall or Brussels. The Movement was better than the Masons he’d been told, guaranteed to find work for their own. But now it was gone, over, and Danny was once again on his own, left to fend for himself. Typical.
    Not like that lucky bastard Sully. Danny glanced towards the toilets. He was still in there, doing his business. He glanced at the paper with the phone number, the ticket to an easy thousand quid pinned beneath the ashtray where Sully had stupidly left it. Who was this Sully anyway? He wasn’t a local, just a jailbird with a friend in the right place. Danny used to be in the Movement; where were his friends? Where were his connections?
    Danny’s fingers hovered over the scrap of paper, his eyes flicking toward the toilet door. He gulped hard. What if Sully caught him nicking it? He was a big bloke, with rough hands and lumpy knuckles, a fighter’s hands. His face was chiselled, the sinews in his neck like rope, the cold eyes black and piercing. He looked like a mafia henchman, would probably batter Danny without breaking sweat. If he caught him. Worst way, Sully would just call his mate at the agency, cancel the job. Or not. A thousand quid – even Danny would risk a kicking for that.
    He shot another look at the toilets, scooped up the scrap of paper and headed quickly for the pub door.

    Sully could barely breathe. Locked inside the toilet stall, it was all he could do to stop from gagging. He’d tried to flush the toilet clean but the pathetic trickle of water from the cistern barely touched the sides. He couldn’t even look at it. He’d seen worse things: bodies blown apart, corpses riddled with bullet holes and stab wounds, frozen cadavers high in the mountains of Kurdistan, but this was different. This was supposed to be a civilised nation. How could people socialise in such filth? It beggared belief.
    He glanced at his watch. Finally. Ten minutes had passed, surely enough for Whelan to have taken the bait. He exited the stall with some relief, washing his hands vigorously under the tap. He took a moment to compose himself, counted silently to ten, then walked out of the door. He crossed to the bar, glancing over his shoulder. Whelan was nowhere to be seen. He ordered a bag of peanuts and went back to the table, taking his time to leaf through the Racing Post . When he was certain Whelan was long gone he stood up and made his way outside, blinking in the daylight as he left the King’s Head in his wake.
    He walked briskly through the rubbish-strewn alleyways and headed toward the small park that bordered the estate. He gave a wide berth to a gang of hooded youths baiting two vicious-looking dogs and cut through a stand of trees towards the main road. He headed north towards Wembley, dumping the combat jacket into a rubbish bin along the pavement. This wasn’t a typical operation; the people he’d met today were locked into a depressing cycle of poverty and violence, critical of the state yet dependant on it for their meaningless existence. Whelan was different, a man who sought to bite the very hand that fed him. Despite the hateful rhetoric and the bitterness, there was a