Free Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper by Alan Early Page A

I’d done wrong.’
    She stopped, suddenly caught up with emotion and surprised that the story still had such an effect on her.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve never told this story to anyone before. Anyway, about a year after that, Clare moved away. Then I ran into her out of the blue last summer in town. She seemed really pleased to see me and even said sorry for how she’d been before. She regretted it, she said.’ Ash looked at Arthur’s confused expression. ‘I don’t really know why I’m telling you this. I guess what I’m trying to say – probably not very well – is that there are two sides to most people. And, eventually, most of them make the right choice. I’m sure your mom will too.’
    â€˜Thanks, Ash,’ Arthur replied, squeezing her hand back. ‘I just keep thinking about when I was young and how amazing my mum was, like there wasn’t a bad bone in her body. When I was about six, I fell off my bike at my house. I grazed my knee. It wasn’t that bad but at the time I thought it was. I just kept screaming for my mammy. She ran out. And she started crying herself when she saw how upset I was. She picked me up, held me close and carried me inside. Then she cleaned my knee, put a Band Aid on it and wrapped me up in a big hug.’
    He looked Ash straight in the eyes. ‘She told me she would always be there for me, always keep me safe. I just can’t imagine how she could be like that and have something like Hel inside her.’
    Ash squeezed his hand again, unsure of what to say. At that moment her phone rang. They all looked at her with wide, worried eyes – even Eirik and Ex in the front – as she pulled it out of her pocket.
    â€˜It’s Mom,’ she said, reading the display. She hesitated, her finger hovering over the touchscreen.
    â€˜Answer it,’ said Ellie.
    â€˜I can’t.’ She pushed it into Ellie’s hands. ‘You do it.’
    â€˜What? What am I supposed to say?’ She gave it back quickly. The ringtone seemed to get louder with each second. ‘You answer it.’
    Ash looked down at the phone again.
    â€˜No,’ she said. ‘She must know by now that we mitched school. She’ll want to know where I am.’
    â€˜Make something up,’ Arthur told her. ‘Say you’re at Ellie and Ex’s.’
    Ash shook her head. ‘She’ll hear the car engine. It’s not exactly subtle.’
    â€˜It doesn’t look like she’s going to give up,’ Ex said, as the sound continued. ‘Just answer the phone.’
    â€˜I can’t … I don’t know what to …’ She looked around at them uncertainly. ‘What am I supposed to tell her … I–’
    Before she knew what he was doing, Eirik reached back, plucked the phone from her grasp, screwed down his window and threw it out. The ringing sound was cut off the instant it hit the ground.
    â€˜Well …’ said Ellie after a moment of silence. ‘That was one way of dealing with it.’

    Garda Eddie McKean was on traffic duty but Garda Eddie McKean hated traffic duty. It meant sitting in a squad car that either got too cold or too hot, parked in a lonely lay-by and aiming a speedometer gun at the vehicles whizzing past on the motorway. His wrist muscles invariably grew weary of holding up the gun and his eyesight started to blur from staring at the read-out monitor for so long. Every time a car or bus or truck went by within the speed limit, the gun would beep once. But the rare times that something was going too fast, his squad car would be filled with an irritating chirping sound that lasted ten or twelve seconds.
    He was just starting to believe that this afternoon was a bust when something drew his attention to the motorway. A small, dark shape flew through the air and landed right on the grassy verge. Whatever it was, it was thrown from the window