Free KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) by Frank Lean Page B

being unjustly locked up and finding every man’s hand against me but sometimes a touch of it pays off. But for the clattering cans rousing me and the creaking gate alerting Jan we’d be incinerated corpses now and our children with us.
    Yes, the killings would be headline news for a day. Some people would be shocked but incendiary attacks are everyday occurrences. I could easily imagine the snide briefings some coppers would give the press … ‘ bears all the hallmarks of a gangland killing’ . That’s what they’d say before making backhanded references to my many alleged scrapes with the law.
    Gangland was just what it wasn’t. The way the tall guy had rescued the shorter one at risk of his own neck was completely untypical. A local villain would have saved himself first. Hell, a local villain would have been out of there the instant he spotted me poking the shotgun towards him.  Those two were ex-military or ex-police: trained men who knew exactly what they were going to do and came with back-up in the shape of extra fire bombs in case their first try failed.
    Clint could supply muscle but was that going to be any use against professional killers?
    Accepting Clint’s services and taking care of him while he provided them was the normal price of asking Bob Lane for a favour and I was about to ask him for a biggie. I wanted the use of his current safe house.
    The bond between Bob, Clint and me goes back a long way. Bob saved my neck when I was starting out as a PI. He had no particular need to help me then but he did. Why I don’t know. Maybe he figured he might need a friend one day or just liked the colour of my bonny blue eyes but help me he did and since then we’ve exchanged favours more times than I can count.
    If Clint has a menacing appearance so does Bob. The man’s almost as wide as he’s tall and there’s very little fat on his solid frame. If his brother’s built like the fabled brick shit-house Bob gives the impression that he could walk through the wall of one. He used to be called ‘Popeye’ by people stupid or brave enough to risk a broken limb. That was back when he ran one of the hardest crews in Manchester. His crew was never openly criminal. Bob made his money fending off the real criminals who were battening on the city’s flourishing club scene with little opposition from the police. He was always willing to trade blow for blow with the lowlifes in ways which the likes of Uncle Lew and the top coppers looked down their noses at.
    Though he worked on the borderline of legality and may have strayed across it (and who was I to judge him), there’s one reason which has kept Bob Lane on the side of the angels.
    That reason is the memory of his mother, a tiny little woman, the complete old fashioned ‘mum’ with her grey hair in a granny bun and a pinafore over her dress. If Clint and Bob could terrify any number of local nuisances and would-be ‘hard men’ the pair of them lived in equal fear of Mrs Lane. To this day a reminder that his sainted and long dead mother wouldn’t approve is enough to quell Clint when he gets above himself and it keeps Bob on the straight and narrow too.
    Yeah, I know … get the violin section out. It’s corny but true. But for his mother and her memory, Bob and Clint Lane could have been the worst criminals to hit Britain since the Krays.
    Bob owns several clubs and is always awake in the wee small hours. It’s hard to keep up with what his clubs are called at any particular time but the changes in the drinking regulations have been a godsend to Bob. He’s coining it. He’s also gone into student haunts in a big way; fancy places with loads of plate glass, abstract art and ‘all the lager you can drink for ten quid’ nights.
    ‘Mr Lane’s executive assistant,’ the female voice answered.
    ‘Tammy it’s Dave, put Bob on will you?’
    Tammy Marsden is Bob’s squeeze. She’s been with him for some time. A luxuriantly upholstered former lap