Post Mortem by Gary Bell (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

‘Which is?’

She pointed ahead. ‘There isn’t a pub on this corner.’

Like an ocean liner beached, I came to a slow, deflating halt.

On the corner was the same Victorian brewery I’d first known as the Tap, which had boasted new ownership almost every time I’d sought Patch out here over the years. Now, though, the windows were lined with sweaty clients straddling treadmills and cross-trainers. A gym.

Zara sighed an I-told-you-so sort of sigh and took out her phone. ‘Facebook then?’

I was turning in useless circles, as embarrassed as I was annoyed. How long had it been since I’d last drunk with him here? Five years? Ten? Habitual character or not, this was London, one of the ficklest cities in the world. On the opposite side of St James Street was the NHS Health Centre. Two doors back we’d passed a small family business for horse-drawn funerals. And beside the pub that was now a gym was a small, pale, nondescript building with no sign other than a discreet green poster tacked to the exterior: Cue Club Snooker and Pool.

‘Hang on a minute.’ I said. ‘I know where he’ll be.’

I paid a couple of pounds to a surly attendant to get us each into the building, which consisted of one long, gloomy room filled with green tables under trios of low-hanging lamps.

There were as many as thirty men scattered around the place in pairs or quartets, half of them bent over felt, the others standing off in the side-shadows waiting for a turn. Almost every table had coins amassed on one of its mahogany rails. The only noises were clacking sounds of various strengths; the place smelled chalk-dry with a history of stale cigarette smoke.

I found Mark Patchett bent almost parallel to the surface of a pool table in the back corner, staring down the length of a custom-made cue with lamplight glaring off his balding head. He was a huge man, corpulence now smothering a body that had once been a formidable weapon. He was dressed in a black Thin Lizzy T-shirt that had washed to watery grey. A rabbit’s foot hung from the zip of his shapeless cream coat, which had many pockets – pockets being infinitely useful to a man like Patch.

His right eyeball was a dull prosthetic made of acrylic. His left flicked up briefly, dropped back to the ball at the end of the cue, then did a double take in my direction. He was in his fifties, but those strangely dilated years behind bars had been enormously cruel.

‘Rook.’ He gave the white a neat click, sinking a red. ‘No representation needed today, thank you very much. Been on my best behaviour.’

His bearded opponent and those on the nearest tables glanced up, slightly interested. The room was altogether too quiet for my liking.

‘I haven’t represented you in years,’ I replied, coming to a stop in the warm glow of his table. ‘I’d never make that mistake again.’

Patch guffawed and struck the white again. While his challenger was still focused on me, I spotted Patch’s hand move swiftly and almost imperceptibly over the very edge of the felt, nudging another red into the corner pocket, leaving only a scatter of yellows and the black on the table.

‘Hey, fellas!’ Patch called out to nobody and everybody at once, expertly twirling his cue. ‘I ever tell you about the barrister that got me off after I was filmed pasting that copper when I was working the doors in Brixton? I was going to plead guilty until this ugly bastard argued that the pig had no right to enter the nightclub, whereas I had the right to batter him if he tried!’

‘The copper at the door,’ Zara marvelled, remembering the riddle I’d set every pupil I’d ever interviewed. She was still the only one who’d got it right. ‘That was a real case?’

I nodded.

Patch’s opponent had turned back to the game and was scratching a fine powder of dandruff from his beard, counting the balls with a muddled expression.

‘You got a couple of minutes to talk, Patch?’ I asked, keeping my voice low. ‘After your game, of course.’

‘What, this game?’ He lined up carefully and made his final strike.

The bearded man stormed off without even waiting to see the black ball finish its inevitable course into the side pocket. ‘Cheap hustler …’

‘Lucky for you that I am cheap, John!’ Patch chuckled, shovelling the coins into one of his many pockets. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Old times,’ I said, and then quieter still, ‘time served.’

Once more, this briefly caught the attention of the closest tables.

‘One of those talks, is it?’ Patch said, indifferently potting the remaining yellows for target practice. ‘Tell you what, I’ll play you for it. Might as well be earning something for my time.’ With the table clear he stuck a hand into his coat and produced not the coins he’d won, but a grubby, scrunched-up twenty and waggled it like bait on a hook.

I sighed, taking my wallet out and checking the folds. I laid my own twenty onto the side rail and flicked a fifty-pence piece across the green. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You never know, I might actually beat you one of these days.’

He laughed hard. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said and tossed me the diamond. ‘You break.’

Zara moved silently to the thinning plush beside the cues on the wall and took a seat in the shadows that bordered our table’s radiance, watching closely. She didn’t seem uncomfortable, despite being the only young woman in the room, although she was holding on to her bag with both hands.

I set up, broke and potted nothing.

‘Tough break,’ Patch tutted, twirling his cue once more as he advanced on the white.

‘Well, you must’ve had a lot of time on your hands to practise,’ I remarked, ‘what with you spending most of your life on remand.’

Zara, who Patch only now seemed to notice, spoke up, a