To Fight For by Phillip Hunter Read Free Book Online

don’t.’
    Don’t destroy yourself for me, Joe.
    Destroy myself? Of course I fucking would. I’d destroy myself and everything else for her. She was gone. I hadn’t saved her. But I could give her justice. I was her justice. My vengeance was justice. I’d destroy the world. What else could I do?
    I don’t know if I said anything out loud, but Browne looked at me with an odd expression and said, ‘You know what I think? I think you want to destroy yourself. I think you don’t know anything else but destruction, violence, rage. I used to think you’d destroy yourself in the process of destroying everything else, that when there was nothing left for you to wreak your vengeance upon, you’d turn it on yourself.’
    He might’ve been right. I’d thought about it myself. He was getting close to the mark, and I didn’t like it. But then he said, ‘Now, I think differently. Now I think you were the target from the word go and all these others out there, all the ones you think you need to kill are just an excuse, just a means for you to kill yourself. They’re your weapon, Joe. That’s all.’
    We sat in silence for a while, then I drank the rest of my tea and reached over and lifted his mug. I took them over to the sink, washed them up.
    â€˜Brenda,’ I said.
    â€˜What, son?’
    â€˜Her name was Brenda.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘Brenda.’
    There was a knock at the door. In that quiet it sounded like gunshots. Browne jumped out of his seat. Christ, he was jittery. I wasn’t much better. I felt coldness crawl over my skin. Browne’s fear was infecting me.
    â€˜Don’t panic,’ I said. ‘They’re not likely to knock.’
    â€˜Who is it?’
    That was a dumb question.
    â€˜Go see.’
    â€˜You go.’
    â€˜It’s your house. It’d look strange if I went.’
    Neither of us moved. We waited for the silence to come back. It was easier in the silence. We didn’t have to do any-thing except listen to it as it sunk through us and hollowed us with our own thoughts.
    But the knocking came back. In a way, it was the fact that it was now louder that set us both at ease. Maybe silence would’ve been worse after all. Then we would’ve turned to the back door and waited for someone to start smashing down our defences.
    Browne stood unwillingly and doddered out of the room and up the hallway. He opened the front door. I moved out of sight and heard a posh bloke’s voice.
    â€˜What’s going on here?’
    â€˜William,’ Browne said, in a loud, friendly way. Too loud, I thought. Too friendly. ‘How nice of you to visit.’
    â€˜I don’t like what’s happening here,’ the posh voice said. ‘It’s bloody funny.’
    â€˜Funny?’ I could hear the slyness in Browne’s voice. The old bastard was enjoying himself, relieved, probably, that it was just some old wanker, relieved that he wasn’t going to get a round in the head.
    â€˜Boarding up the windows, throwing rocks around. What the bloody hell are you doing?’
    â€˜We,’ Browne said, ‘are preparing for an invasion.’
    â€˜What are you talking about? Are you drunk?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I might’ve known. And who is that ape living here? He looks like a criminal. Is he a criminal?’
    â€˜Joe? Oh, yes, he is a criminal. He’s alright, though. He’s a one-man war, to be sure, but he’s alright.’
    I cursed his fucking tongue. I wanted to go and haul him off by his neck, but that would’ve made it all worse. Browne hated these posh tossers who wanted England to look like something from a Wodehouse novel, as if there’d once been a time without poverty and suffering and hate. I didn’t blame him for that, but I didn’t need any grief. And now, because Browne was drunk, he was baiting the bloke, telling him my