To Kill For by Phillip Hunter Page A

hadn’t been surprised.
    â€˜Didn’t want them involved.’
    â€˜Well, I’m going to call them right now,’ said Apron.
    â€˜No,’ Tina said. ‘Don’t. It’s okay. I’m alright.’
    The short one put a hand on Apron and gave her a meaningful look. Apron got the message. There wasn’t much more the women could do. It was early morning and they looked tired.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ the woman said to them. ‘I’m sorry.’
    They went home soon after that. They were glad, in the end, to get out of there. Friendship will only stretch so far. People are usually the same; they start off showing how much they care because they know it makes them look kind and decent. After that, they get impatient and start thinking about their own problems and, finally, they don’t give a shit about their beaten, drugged-up friend, they just want to get home to bed. Nobody gives a shit, when it comes down to it. Except, maybe, people like Browne. And Brenda. And look what happened to them.
    Browne was asleep. I could hear him snoring. He must’ve had a skinful last night and now it had caught up with him. He’d popped a couple of pills from his bag and was crashed out on the woman’s bed.
    â€˜She won’t need her bed anyway,’ he’d said. ‘She has to stay awake for a while.’
    I sat and drank a mug of tea and watched the woman as she gradually came back to life. She sat opposite me, curled up on the sofa, one hand holding the coffee, the other hand on her lap. She watched me calmly and didn’t say anything. She didn’t know who I was or what I wanted, but she took it all in her stride. She didn’t seem to care.
    She didn’t look too bad, now that she was more alive. She looked pale and worn-out, fragile, I suppose they call it, but there was something there, some depth. Her eyes, I saw, were a pale blue. She was younger than I’d first thought, maybe late thirties.
    â€˜Do you know what’s going on?’ I said.
    She nodded.
    â€˜I know Kenny’s mixed up in something,’ she said. ‘I know he worked for that man who was killed, what was his name?’
    â€˜Marriot.’
    â€˜Yeah. Marriot. Frank Marriot.’
    The hand in her lap started pulling at the dressing gown, turning it around, twisting it. She looked at the photos of the children. Her eyes flickered, flashing with some emotion I couldn’t read. Anger, maybe.
    â€˜He won’t come back,’ she said quietly.
    Her hand was still twisting that nightgown. I didn’t think she knew what she was doing. I realized then that it was fear I saw in her. But it wasn’t fear of me or Cole or the police. She feared Paget.
    â€˜What are you going to do to him?’ she said.
    â€˜Does it matter?’
    She looked back at me, and drank her coffee, eyeing me over the rim of the mug. When she’d finished drinking, she leaned forward and put the coffee on the floor. Her actions were slow and deliberate. She looked like a drunk who was trying to appear sober. She leaned back in the sofa. She pulled the dressing gown tightly about her, and wrapped her arms around her, as if she’d felt a cold chill. She gazed down, at the floor, and her eyelids dropped a little. I thought she was falling asleep, but then she spoke.
    â€˜They kept asking me, again and again, where is he? I kept telling them, I don’t know. For a while, every time I said that, they hit me. Then they started… doing other stuff. There was this small blond one, he kept smiling every time I told them I didn’t know where Kenny was. I don’t think he wanted to know. I think he wanted to keep on… well, you know.’
    That sounded like Carl.
    â€˜Who were they?’ she said softly.
    â€˜They were dogs, belonged to a man called Bobby Cole.’
    She nodded slightly. She knew the name.
    â€˜What’s it all about?’
    â€˜Paget tried