Free King Rich by Joe Bennett

drags the dressing gown belt from the handle of the door. ‘Good boy.’ Richard stubs out the cigarette on the window sill, takes the belt from the dog and with a little gasp heaves himself onto his feet. And down the corridor they go, man and dog.
    Crossing the foyer troubles Richard. The plate-glass frontage gives onto the street. He is sure that a cordon has been set around the inner city, but he has seen police and soldiers patrolling within it and men and women in hard hats and bright vests. There would need to be only one of these on Cashel as he and Friday crossed the foyer and that would be that. They’d be found. They’d be chivvied from the place like vermin. So he keeps the dog on the lead and to the extent that he is capable of scuttling he scuttles across the foyer, and through the bistro restaurant and into the dark kitchen beyond. Where, for the first time, Richard is aware of a background hint of a smell, a suspicion of sweet rot.
    Unleashed, the dog goes straight to the stainless steel double doors of the wardrobe-like fridge. Richard opens them, inhales and closes them immediately. ‘Shit.’
    The dog sits. Richard notices and three seconds later he laughs, laughs loud and the dog’s tail wags and, still laughing, Richard pats the dog’s head but his laugh becomes a cough and he bends, still coughing, and lays his head against the cool of the stainless steel workbench. ‘Jesus,’ he mutters as the cough finally subsides and a wave of weakness runs through his arms and back and legs, so strong a wave that he almost falls to the ground. ‘Jesus.’
    He stays there until the dog’s head pushes against his thigh and he reaches down to stroke it.
    â€˜Oh Friday,’ he says, ‘you’ll be the death of me,’ and he smiles to himself, but is careful not to succumb again to laughter. While he waits for a little strength to return, he runs the dog’s ear between finger and thumb as if assessing its silkiness.
    He scours through drawers till he finds a long carving fork and he clamps a tea towel over his mouth and nose and opens the fridge and with the fork he flicks out one, two, three, four steaks. Even as he prongs them he can sense that they have become slimy and the sound of them slapping onto the floor makes his gorge rise. But the dog is undismayed, ingesting them with greedy gulps, its back arched with the urgency of the effort.
    Richard goes to the back door with a cigarette, sucking at the cauterising, throat-catching, smell-masking bitterness of smoke. Late afternoon and beneath a scatter of birdsong he can hear, he thinks, the distant sound of traffic. The dog licks the last traces of flesh from the floor, then looks up at Richard,searching for a hint of further food or play, gathers nothing, is unconcerned and goes rootling around the yard in search of smells of interloper dogs or cats or anything that breathes. The evening is thick with summer insects. Swallows dance and weave between and around and over the deserted buildings, silhouetted like distant fighter planes, carving the air to commit a thousand insect murders.
    Dust and soil and crud have collected in a corner of the yard to one side of the door. And already it is tinged with green, with the all but unstoppable will to life. Richard props the door open with a stool and searches for dinner. There’s the cupboard of eggs, and the bags of onions. The spuds have begun to sprout. The pans and plates he’s used for previous meals still lie on the benches. Such mess he’s made in so few days.
    He pulls a fresh frying pan from the wall hook and fills it with an inch of olive oil and sets it on the gas. He snaps the fleshy sproutings off two potatoes and cuts them into chip-sized pieces. As he works he becomes aware of the smell of rotting meat and he ties a tea towel round his mouth and nose like an old-style bank robber, but he soon finds himself defying the cloth,