Touched by Angels by Alan Watts Read Free Book Online Page A

change. The last thing she needed was Bob to wake up. There was so much, she wondered how the lining had not worn through with the weight. Then, as she frisked him further, his gold fob watch slid out of the little pocket on his waistcoat and swung back and forth on his belly.
    She gulped, as she looked at the scrolled engraving on its face. Fully aware of its probable worth, her heart began to thud, as temptation gnawed at her.
    She unbuttoned the waistcoat, threaded the watch’s chain out of the button hole and flicked it open, just as she heard Sergeant Sharp saying to Robert, beyond the door, “… fer the ’igh jump lad, any mischief!”
    Shaking, she snapped the watch shut, and after briefly fumbling to thread the chain back, and failing, she hid it in her knitting on the mantelpiece.
    She was stepping away from it, guiltily, as the door opened and in strode Sharp, who was so big and beefy, he blotted out most of the sunlight.
    He was, without doubt, a damn good cop, and known by his superiors and peers as a ‘steady man’. He wasn’t overburdened with brains though, which was precisely why Lil had summoned him.
    ***
     
    Sharp seemed to be surveying the scene with a knowing look in his eyes, while his nose wrinkled against the reek of the house. He looked at Bob too, remembering what the boy had told him. Then Sharp’s gaze fixed once more upon the reason for his presence, the body of Mr King. Sharp knew he was despised, though it was a flimsy defence, unlikely to save a man like Fighting Bob a one-way trip to prison, or maybe even the gallows.
    Without any further ado, Sharp marched up to him and wakened him in the only way he knew how; with several truncheon pokes in the ribs. At first Bob made grunting noises. Then he batted the truncheon away, growling, “Gerraway from me, yer bitch. Piss off!”
    Then, when he opened his eyes and saw who his true tormentor was, he turned paper white with shock.
    He sat up gingerly, his bulging eyes on the varnished stick, blinking away the effects of the drink, and scratching some lice in his hair. He still didn’t fully come to his sense, until Sharp said to Robert, “Off you go now, lad. Go and play wi’ yer mates,” and then, to his father, “Bob Smiff, I’m arrestin’ you for the murder of…”
    “Eh? But I done nuffing.”
    “… Mr ’Orace King.”
    He produced a set of handcuffs.
    “What… what you talking about? I ain’t done…”
    He glanced at his wife, as he opened his mouth to voice further denial, but she averted her gaze.
    “She did it,” he whispered, struggling up, shocked. He reeled and fell back down, his head pulsing painfully.
    “I suppose she did them cuts and bruises on ’er face too,” Sharp replied, snapping on the cuffs, and yanking him upright, “you’re a bad un, Smiff, and you ain’t gonna winkle out this time. Wiv any luck, Mr Ellis’ll do for you.”
    “I didn’t do it, I tell yer. She did it!” he shrieked.
    He turned to Lil, as Sharp was dragging him to the door, and growled, “Go on, tell ’im the truf, you lyin’ cah! You keep on about ’ow you’re a soddin’ Christian. Go on! Tell ’im.”
    By now, a small crowd, among them grinning regulars from the Dog and Duck, and Mrs O’Brien and Molly, were gathering in the street.
    Benny O’Driscoll, whose nose now pointed permanently to the left, asked, “’oo’s Mr Ellis?”
    “The ’angman, lad,” replied the elderly gentleman who had told Bob to take the farthings back from whence they’d come. He puffed contentedly on his pipe, grinning, as his medals glinted in the sun.
    A scrawny woman near the back, in a shawl, said, shaking her head, “Gawd ’elp us! ’ee must ’ave done ’er in, the poor mite.”
    “Bastard!” muttered somebody else.
    “He’ll dangle,” said another, “’an I ’ope it bleedin’ well ’urts!”
    And yet another, “That poor little lad. It’ll be the poor ’ouse fer ’im, you mark my words. Skin an’ bone