Free A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) by Frank Westworth Page A

little boy? If we have a friend in common, unlikely as it seems, then he or she is someone with a considerable sense of humour. I don’t know many folk like that. Tell me this is all a joke, and we’ll get along much better.’
    Stoner leaned back, relaxed.
    ‘A hand job. That’s really, really good.’
    Gumchew appeared to have chewed a chilli. A hot one. Even under the poor lighting he was starting to puff up purple. Laughter was miles away from him. Stoner saw this and he chuckled more.
    ‘Handy Mandy!’ Gumchew yelled.
    Stoner beamed.
    ‘I heard OK the first time. And I am an unashamed man, but do you really intend to be broadcasting your secret needs so loudly? And in so public a place?’
    ‘Handy Mandy. Mandy Hanwell. You know her; she hangs around the club you play guitar in. She’s always there. She was there tonight. She owes something to the man we work for, her and me; you know where she is, and you will share that knowledge so that I can reclaim what she owes. You tell me how to find the stupid bitch, or you can give me what she owes and I will try to forget this. I will try to let you walk away. I will tryto forgive your stupid insinuation, your stupid attempt at humour.’
    Leatherjacket was bouncing on his toes and flexing his fingers again.
    Stoner was smiling no more.
    ‘I know a lot of people. A lot more people know me. I know no Mandy Hanwell, and I most certainly know no . . . for fuck’s sake . . . Handy Mandy. Let me be, let me by and we can both move on. We have no argument. I’ve told you a simple fact. I have no reason to lie to you, comic though you are.’
    Leatherjacket was a deceptively fit and a deceptively fast man. He leaned his weight onto his left leg and swung his right foot in a well-balanced and well-executed attacking kick. The key to defence is anticipation. As soon as Leatherjacket stopped flexing his fingers, as soon as he stopped bouncing on his toes, as soon as he looked at the guitar case Stoner carried in his right hand, Stoner had understood perfectly what would happen next.
    What happened next was that Stoner strode forward past the upswinging foot and caught the knee behind it. A well-delivered kick is an excellent attack; the excellent defence is to prevent it landing.
    Stoner’s weight was on his left foot; his right foot swung a little outward so that the inside edge of his Caterpillar boot sole met Leatherjacket’s right shin about halfway between knee and ankle. Stoner shifted his weight to the right foot; all fluid motion; all he was doing was walking briskly forward, and the boot sole ground relentlessly down the shin and onward to the foot beneath.
    Fighters who like to fight with their feet face dilemmas when considering their choice of footwear. Heavy shoes are usually loud and usually clumsy; a tricky kicker will often prefer something lighter. As here. Unhappily.
    Stoner’s hefty Caterpillar boot – not a shoe he would have chosen for kick-boxing, to be honest, but a great shoe for walkingin comfort – has a well-defined, heavily cleated sole. Great for grip. One of the ways that tread patterns like these provide better grip than a smooth sole made of the same hard-wearing compound is by concentrating the wearer’s body mass through a small area; the area of the studs. These studs can cut through mud and water to find grip on more solid substrates beneath. They can also exert vast point pressure, for appropriate example, on an instep, should they land hard on an instep and should that instep be unprotected by anything more resistant than a shoelace and a thin layer of soft leather.
    Leatherjacket, completely off balance and in considerable pain, struggled to stay standing. Stoner carried on walking, still carrying the guitar case containing his heroically valuable Fender, and swung it under Leatherjacket’s elevated right knee, catching the case with his left hand and raising both hands and the case as rapidly and as hard as he could. His