To Kill For by Phillip Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

had six years more life, for one thing. We might still be together. Who knows, she might’ve got her beauty parlour.
    Anyway, I should have listened to her. I should have understood what she was telling me. I should have done lots of things. I should have killed Marriot and Paget back then, before they’d killed her, before they’d used Kid, before anything.
    I should have done those things.
    But I didn’t, and people were going to pay for that.

CHAPTER NINE
    When I found the place, it was starting to get light, if you could call it light. The sky was heavy and grey, and the dawn was no more than a strip of lighter grey against the black horizon.
    It was a post-war terraced house. The roof made of some kind of corrugated concrete. It must’ve seemed a good idea to someone once, someone who didn’t have to live here. There was a high hedge at the front of the small garden, and an overgrown lawn with children’s toys littered about. The toys must’ve been there for years. The plastics had weathered, the bright yellows and reds now weak and faded. Thick grass had grown around them so that it was like a graveyard, a monument to dead childhood.
    I pressed the doorbell and waited. After a while, a middle-aged woman opened up and looked out at me. She was wearing an apron and her sleeves were rolled up.
    â€˜Are you the police?’ she said.
    They’d called the law, then. I didn’t want to be around when they came. I said, ‘No.’
    This baffled her. If I wasn’t law, what could I be? It didn’t make sense.
    â€˜Who are you, then?’
    â€˜Are you Paget’s old girlfriend?’
    â€˜Who’s Paget?’
    We were going round in circles.
    â€˜I want to speak to the woman who lives here.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    She closed the door. A few seconds later, it was opened again by a younger woman, thin and pale and with long lank blonde hair. The woman’s lip was split, the blood dried. Her right eye was swollen and had closed some.
    â€˜Please,’ she said, murmuring the word feebly.
    â€˜I want to talk to you.’
    â€˜Please.’
    It was all she would say. We were back to the circles.
    â€˜I’m not with the men who came earlier.’
    From inside the house, a woman’s voice called out.
    â€˜Shut the door, Tina. Let the police sort it out.’
    The thin woman started to close the door and I had to put my hand on it and push it back.
    â€˜You’re Kenny Paget’s ex-girlfriend?’ She head bobbed up and down a bit. ‘Your name’s Tina?’
    She had no energy, like she’d just woken up. It was shock, I thought. I wondered if she was concussed. Nobody had said anything about calling an ambulance.
    She had a long thin face and high cheekbones and large eyes, and her long lashes gave her eyes a soft look. I guessed her age to be around the mid-forties, but she might’ve been a used-up mid-thirties. She wore a beige dressing gown and blue nightgown.
    â€˜The men who were here earlier, they wanted to know where Paget was. Is that right?’
    Another woman appeared then. This Tina must have called on a friend for help after Cole’s men had been, and that friend had called on another and they’d come over like a relief column. This one was short and stocky. She had a defiant look, but her mouth was closed tightly and I could see fear in her eyes. I guessed she’d been the one who’d called out just now. She took one look at me and said, ‘Fuck off.’
    I didn’t want to get heavy. I wanted information, and if I had to deal with a lot of hysterical women, I’d never get anywhere. At the same time, the law was on its way and I didn’t have time to piss about. I pushed my way into the house and closed the door. The hall was narrow, the ceiling low. I barely fit. Tina moved back a few paces, looking straight into my chest. She didn’t try to run, she didn’t reach for the