Free To Die For by Phillip Hunter Page A

wanted some alcohol now, just to take the edge off, just to escape for a while from the dullness.
    I saw her turn and look around the casino. She froze for an instant and turned back round. The glint had gone from her eyes.
    ‘So why don’t you talk?’ she was saying. She sounded a little drunk and I wondered how many other rum and Cokes she’d earned that night.
    ‘I got nothing to say, so I don’t say it.’
    ‘I just thought maybe you were kinda punchy or something.’
    Another one who thought I was dumb. I’d been getting that all my life, and now I was getting it from some over-the-hill drunk prostitute. The thing was, this time it bothered me. I didn’t know why.
    ‘I’m not punchy,’ I said.
    ‘I didn’t say you were, I just said I thought maybe you were.’
    We sat there in silence for a while. Brenda had become tense, awkward. And yet when she’d sat down and started talking to me, she’d seemed relaxed. Cheerful even. I wasn’t used to that from people.
    ‘Well, maybe it’s because you don’t like me. Huh?’ she said quietly.
    ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
    ‘It’s just you don’t talk so much. I thought maybe you didn’t like me.’
    ‘I don’t care about you one way or the other. I’m just not in the market.’
    I heard her swallow hard. It sounded like a sob. She got up from the seat and walked quickly away. Matheson came over.
    ‘Know her, Joe?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Tart,’ Matheson said. ‘We get lots of them. Me, I don’t like ’em. Lower the tone.’
    Everyone wanted to talk tonight.
    A man took a seat at the bar, two stools up. I glanced over and saw that the man was Kenny Paget. Back then, Paget was the rising star. He’d started out as a bouncer in one of the Soho clubs. He was small for a bouncer, but he’d had a run-in one night with a couple of drunken loudmouths and he’d put them both in hospital. One had a knife wound from one side of his gut to the other. Paget was nicked for that, faced an attempted murder charge, but other bouncers testified that the knife had belonged to the drunk and Paget got off on self-defence. The bloke who owned the club was Frank Marriot. He recognized talent when he saw it and pushed Paget up until he was pretty much running the whole outfit, acting as Marriot’s enforcer. It was a hard, dirty business and Paget fitted right in.
    When Matheson saw him, he unglued himself from the wall sharpish and tried to look like a barman. He smiled and walked over and said, ‘Usual, Mr Paget?’
    Matheson selected a clean glass, polished it up some more and measured out vodka and tomato juice. He threw in a few other things to make it look fancy and put it on the bar counter, on top of a paper coaster thing, and slid it an inch towards Paget. Paget looked at it. Matheson waited just long enough to see he wasn’t going to get thanked, then floated off.
    ‘It’s Joe, right?’ I turned back to my beer. ‘I’ve heard about you.’
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘Heard you’re one of Dave Kendall’s boys.’
    I downed some more beer. He didn’t say anything for a while, but I knew he was looking at me. I was too tired to play that game. He finished his drink and slid the glass along towards Matheson.
    ‘Get me another,’ he said.
    Matheson did as ordered, not bothering with the chit-chat this time. Paget slid off his stool and slid on to the one next to me. He was like that. He slid.
    ‘You don’t want to talk to me?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You know who I am, though. Am I right?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And yet you don’t want to talk to me. I consider that rude. Or stupid.’
    He leaned forward. Matheson was edging away down the bar.
    ‘They say you’re a bit stupid. That right? A bit lacking in brain matter? Maybe I’d better explain something to you. Drinks are free. The whores aren’t. Got it?’
    I downed some more beer. The man was beginning to annoy me. His voice was buzzing in my head.
    ‘That bird you were talking to, for example. She’s