Beyond Good and Evil (2015) by Steve Attridge

Author:Steve Attridge [Attridge, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-01-04T11:00:00+00:00

I got to my feet and stumbled back against the wall. I was pinioned between another wall and a metal desk. The only way was forward. Marty kept coming, a feverish determination about him. The knife was viciously thin, with a serrated edge, about six inches long, the kind used for gutting fish.

“Marty! Wait!” I said.

He kept coming and when he was about a metre away he stopped and looked at me. A stale smell emanated from him, as if his life was poisoned and seeping from his pores, an infinitely painful weariness in his expression, beyond appeal, beyond regret. His life in the raw moment was a pitiful thing, even as he was about to take mine. He pulled his right arm back to stab me. My legs seemed to have turned to mush. I put out my right hand in a feeble effort at defence, and foolishly had a flash of guilt that I hadn’t been to see my mother for months, followed by an exhausted and bitter sense of failure. I’d neglected her, even though after a lifetime of silence she had recently scrawled my father’s name for me: Pete James. And I hadn’t even bothered to try and trace him, after a lifetime of whining that I didn’t know who he was. Nearly everything had been a shameful waste of time. I hoped Cass and Mrs. Simpson would keep Alfred and Kierkegaard safe from the clutches of Audrey. I wished Lizzie would kiss me one last time. I wish I’d written my book on Nietzsche. Marty was looking at me curiously, as if he wanted permission to kill me.

“You have no idea what a complete idiot I am,” I said.

Marty breathed out heavily, a dire tobacco stained rasp from some dark cave of the soul. Time seemed like a bell waiting to clang the end of everything. Suddenly he swapped the knife into his left hand, blade first, and held the handle out to me. I stared at it stupidly and he waved it, annoyed. I took the knife, amazed, as he stood looking at me. He breathed heavily, his face waxy and unshaven, sleep a mere memory to those ruby-rimmed eyes. He whispered something I couldn’t hear properly. Then he focussed.

“Go on. Do it. Stick me,” he said. “I’m so bloody tired.”

I turned the knife and a sliver of light danced on the blade.

“How about a cup of tea first?” I said. “I’m sure I saw a kettle around here.”

Fifteen minutes later we were sitting on the floor with mugs of tea, two haggard refugees from some ordeal that neither of us understood properly. Marty took back the knife and dug bits of pile from the carpet with it while we talked. He explained that his addiction to gambling had led to heavy borrowing from Brissot, about which his brother knew nothing. Brissot had taken the half million and paintings on account and told Marty that to properly clear his debt he’d have to kill his brother too, because Andy wanted to sever the business connection with Brissot.

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