Bring it Back Home Read Free Page A

bar. When he returned he told Lewis that he'd just received a text from Manon and showed him the screen:
    Tell lewis meet 2moro noon
at cemetry. Manon xxx
    Lewis nodded and Robat pressed 'delete'. Lewis picked up his fresh pint and drank half of it in one gulp. He was happy. He was home.

Chapter Four
    Cakes got hungry in the early afternoon just outside Swindon, so he left the motorway and pulled into the car park of some ugly brick bunker of a pub called the Traveller's Rest or something like that. A big, brown building with a small playground – seesaw, swing and slide – now empty and drizzled on. An annexe called the Wacky Warehouse, obviously closed now, pool tables and fruit machines dead and unlit inside. 'Two for a fiver' meal offers hung above the door of the pub itself which seemed overlit and garish and loud. And above it all roared the traffic on the motorway, exhaust fumes drifting down from above in a thin rain of grey soot.
    An uninviting place, but Cakes was hungry. Wanted something hot. He parked and went into the pub and approached the bar. The spotty lad behind it made a movement as if he was doffing an invisible hat.
    'What?'
    'Take your cap off please, sir.'
    ' What?'
    â€˜Can you take your cap off, please.'
    'Why?'
    'Company policy. No hats allowed.'
    'Why not?'
    The lad shrugged. 'Don't know. It's just company policy.'
    Cakes sighed and removed his cap and rubbed his palm across the stubble on his skull. It made a rasping noise.
    'Satisfied?'
    Another shrug. 'I don't make the rules, sir. It's company –'
    â€˜Policy, yeah, I know. You've already said. I need to order some food.'
    â€˜Menus are on the table, sir. Order at the bar with your table number.'
    'And I need a pint of lager.'
    The barman poured a pint of Foster's. Cakes took it over to a window seat and sipped at it. Warm and flat. Soapy, almost. Like run-off from a washing machine. He studied the menu, a pointless exercise really because cheeseburger and chips was the only thing he fancied. He gave his order at the bar and paid, then returned to his seat. He sipped again at the lager. Warmer. Flatter. Soapier. Fruit machines whooped and bleeped and coughed out coins, and several TV screens set high up on the walls showed some middle-aged and be-suited men in a studio talking, probably about sport of some kind. Several tables in the pub were occupied by families or couples, but there was very little conversation; the people seemed happy to simply sit in their seats and eat their food and drink their drinks and stare into space or up at the TV screens or at the walls – anywhere but at the person sitting next to them. Signs around the pub exhorted people to have fun. One sign advertised the 'FREAKY FRIDAY!' approaching, when bottles of Breezer would be two-for-one and house vodka fifty pence a shot.
    Cakes scanned the faces in the pub, searching for a pretty one, or one with an unusual scar or birthmark – anything interesting or distracting. There were none – all were bland and expressionless. One blonde woman was mildly diverting until she happened to smile at her overweight child and Cakes saw her teeth, broken and brown and rotten. Not even the TVs offered entertainment since the volume on them all was turned right down – and what pleasure or point is there in watching a few blokes in suits having a bit of a natter? Can't even hear what they're saying, so there's nothing to disagree with. So what's the point in having the television on at all? The soundtrack was the noise of the fruit machines, whoopwhoop and bleepbleep and kachunkakachunka. Cakes couldn't stand it. He'd leave as soon as possible, after he'd eaten his food and drunk his pissy pint.
    The food came. A handful of white chips and a burger in a bun that would be gone in two bites. A limp shred of lettuce and a slice of wrinkled tomato. Cakes looked around for cutlery and condiments and saw none, so he went back up to the bar.
    'Knife and fork?