Pariah by Donald Hounam

Author:Donald Hounam
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448173686
Publisher: RHCP

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mouse

IT’S HALF-PAST ONE and we’re halfway up the hill towards Saint Martin’s church. I’m clutching the bottle in one hand and the photograph in the other. I’ve given up on thinking. It’s turned into a bad habit.

All I want to do is ditch Dinny. Unfortunately, he has a different priority: he’s got his hook in my collar and he’s reminding me, very forcibly, about the fifty quid I still owe him—

When we find ourselves surrounded by jacks, all waving guns.

Five minutes later nobody’s buying my suggestion that Preston is an Abyssinian truffle hound. Not that they care. They grab Dinny and handcuff him.

Marvo jumps down from a van. She’s got her shoulders up around her ears, and she’s doing her angry face. ‘You knew we wanted to talk to Dinny. Why didn’t you tell me—’

‘Because he’s got nothing to do with any of this.’

Dinny’s screaming over his shoulder, ‘I get you for this, Fronk!’

‘Not my fault,’ I yell as the jacks toss him into the van.

‘Are you pissed?’ Marvo grabs the bottle. She’s clever: she can read. ‘Châteauneuf du pape?’

‘Yeah, but look—’

She tosses the bottle back to me. I fumble and it smashes on the ground.

‘Prat.’ Marvo jumps into the van, which rattles off round the corner with Dinny still screaming threats at me.

Ever since I spotted Charlie’s Gift object, I’ve been worrying about my own. It’s not very deeply buried, so an animal could dig it up. Maybe the lid isn’t completely watertight . . .

It’s too far to walk, so I pull my woolly hat down hard over my ears, to hide my shaved head, and jump on an omnibus. I kick Preston into the luggage compartment under the stairs and get bounced along the lower deck as the driver whips up the horses.

Dinny took all the cash I had on me, so when the conductor looms over me I close my hand tight – and when I open it again, a white mouse is scurrying around my palm. The conductor pockets it happily.

I look around the deck. Nobody has noticed . . .

. . . except this little girl, five or six I guess. She’s pulling her mother’s sleeve. ‘Mummy, he gave him a mouse.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

The mother glances round at me. Does she suspect? Does she even want to think about it? The kid does—

‘But it was a mouse.’

‘Be quiet, Evadne.’

What sort of sadist calls a child Evadne?

‘But Mummy—’

‘That’s enough!’

The child’s mother glares at me. I smile and try to look like someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly or produce a white mouse from up his sleeve.

The bus rattles out along the Grandpont and turns into the Kennington Road. I’d feel more comfortable if I could draw a pentagram on the window, but a big bloke with cropped grey hair is staring at me over what looks like a book of poetry.

We did one poem when I was at Saint Cyprian’s, only it wasn’t really a poem. Just an incantation to summon an army of angels, written in rhyming couplets.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.