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

the city hears Elliot Rook’s gone soft? Once it gets around that you can’t be trusted to keep a client’s affairs to yourself no more, and all because you’re crying over some lousy animals?’ His gaze danced over my face, evaluating the impact of this gambit, and whatever he saw there satisfied him enough for a bloated smirk. ‘If ever the day comes when you do feel like showing up again, Counsel, then I suggest you stop and think about that first.’

The bulbs overhead made him look even pastier than he had last week in court. The dogs were panting now, desperate for the flesh in his shopping bag, and their collective sound was monstrous.

‘Well,’ I said, trying to sound regretful, ‘if that’s the case, then it appears we’re stuck at this status quo. Pity. I thought I might be able to talk some sense into you.’

I turned for the exit. The rush of adrenaline pulled at my knees, giving me all the good grace of a drunkard as I retrieved the pipe I’d found in the skip outside. Werner followed, cagey enough to maintain a constant distance of six feet or so now that I was armed.

I was almost out when my attention turned back to the quivering little bait dog with the tattered ear and missing lip. I stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to go any further.

‘Ah, fuck it,’ I sighed, and with one huge turn I launched the lead pipe double-handed like a hammer throw into Werner’s gut. He was airborne for about three feet before he went down hard, clutching his vitals and gasping for wind.

I stepped over him, freed the trembling terrier from the pipe as gently as I could, wrapped her into the woollen folds of my overcoat and carried her out in both arms.

Dusk had dropped to full dark outside. I paused in the opening of the broken fire escape and spoke without looking back over my shoulder. ‘Might I suggest that, in future, you seek alternative representation for your defence? I think this puts an end to our business relationship, Mr Werner.’

He managed nothing better than a long, strained groan.

By the time I’d made it back to my car, I could hear the rest of the dogs baying again, but the sound travelled no further than the factories that slumped and crumbled all around this forgotten pocket of the capital.

And that was the last time I saw Jacob Werner alive.

2

The following morning, I was still feeling strangely exhilarated. I decided on a whim to forgo the usual options of Tube or car and instead chose to walk the two miles into work.

The pavement was hardly any quieter than the Underground or roads might’ve been – this was Monday in central London, after all – but there was an upbeat ambience noticeable from the very moment I stepped out of my front door onto Gloucester Place, as tangible as the first valiant daffodil to push up from dirt into sunlight. Last week had ended below freezing point, the tabloids relishing headlines like KILLER FREEZE, THE BEAST FROM THE EAST and ICE AGE BRITAIN, but this morning the mercury was already up to double figures. The date was 5 March, and spring was finally returning to our great city.

It took me ten minutes to walk the length of my road, then a left turn at the bottom took me onto Oxford Street. All I had to do from there was amble eastward through that straight commercial pantheon for another thirty minutes. I got myself a warm pain au chocolat for the journey, my diet forsaken at the first hurdle for yet another week, and then wended my way between the hundreds of workers dressed in suits or various retail uniforms. The gigantic window displays were already flaunting red-and-white bunting, despite the World Cup being three months away, and I was momentarily overcome with nostalgia for Spain 1982: the simplicity of being seventeen years old and caped in a St George’s cross, all gathered around the colour screen in the Miners’ Welfare for every match. Simple times.

It wasn’t until I glanced down to brush the flakes of pastry from my coat that I saw the dog hairs caught up like wires in the black wool there, and all at once it made me feel giddy and arrogant, like a teenager carrying the dirty, thrilling secret of losing his virginity the night before.

I wanted to feel bad for demeaning the legal system I’d upheld for so many years, but the guilt wouldn’t surface. Somewhere over the course of this long, dark winter a part of me had changed, and I couldn’t tell if it was ever going to change back. Compulsions, such as the one that had sent me out to that launderette last night, had been coming upon me like coughing fits in a silent courtroom. The more I’d tried to suppress them, the more suffocating they’d become. I hadn’t found exactly what I needed to appeal against Isaac Reid’s conviction, but it was obvious that the Dogo Argentinos were being bred for some seriously unpleasant people.

I’d driven the Staffy to an emergency vet, who had agreed to take her on to the Blue Cross in Victoria once it opened this morning. I gave the vet cash for his troubles and hoped that the dog would be all right. There was nothing more I could do. I swept the hairs away and they disappeared like dandelion seeds into the sluggish rush-hour swell of black cabs and crowded double-deckers.

Soon, a short, dumpy figure dressed in a shabby deerstalker and red sleeveless jacket shuffled into my path. ‘Big Issue?’ she called indifferently, and then looked over the stack of laminated magazines and into the shadow beneath the brim of my hat. ‘Oh, hey, Rook.’

‘Morning, Margaret. Hope you kept out of the snow last week.’

‘Who, me?’ She beamed proudly, showing brown teeth, and lifted a copy to show me the headline: UNDEFEATED: OUR VENDORS WHO WRESTLED