Flesh Wounds Read Free Page A

figure levelling a silenced handgun and pulling its trigger three more times.
    He had a skull for a face: death incarnate.
    It was the last thing Stevie saw.

Waves
    Jasmine slipped her phone back into her pocket and climbed out of the Civic. People had been streaming out of the car park as she drove in, making her worry whether she would find a space so close to the theatre, but there were plenty in sight once she crested the hill.
    She had just read a text from her friend Monica, apologising that she wasn’t going to make it. The message had arrived while Jasmine was driving along the M8 half an hour back, but she hadn’t heard the alert over the sound of the Honda’s stereo, nor felt a vibration as her leather jacket had been draped over the passenger seat. Monica’s own car had broken down somewhere around Cramond, and with the AA bloke telling her the alternator was gone, it wasn’t going to be a quick fix.
    This meant Jasmine was going to be on her own, which made her stop for a moment and consider her options. She felt perfectly comfortable going to the cinema by herself, or even, at a push, seeing a play, but this was a gig. Nobody went to a gig alone, did they? This was daft, though. There was no explicit social convention that she was about to violate; just the threat of her own self-consciousness, which in this case would be a mixture of insecurity and delusion. Why should she be conspicuous? Nobody was going there to look at her.
    Besides, she had paid for the tickets and been looking forward to it: posted as much on Twitter and Facebook like an excitable wee lassie and had luxuriated in the prospect of
being
an excitable wee lassie for a couple of hours. So despite the doubting voice that was whispering how sad she would look to be sitting there like Nelly No-Mates at a rock concert, she decided it was profoundly sadder still to even contemplate driving home again.
    I’m not sad, she thought to herself.
I’m okay.
    She walked down the slope towards the Alhambra, the road in front of which was teeming with excited people. That was when she deduced that she shouldn’t have been surprised to find a parking space, due to the demographic. Only a very small proportion of this crowd would have turned up in a car as they were predominantly too young to be in the position to own one, or even to learn to drive. The fact that it struck her as unusual to be surrounded by so many people her own age or younger – and a clear majority of them girls – warned her she was becoming too accustomed to spending her time around middle-aged men.
    She needed to get out more, even if it was on her own.
    The support act was already on stage when she made her way into the stalls. She guessed they were local, or had a lot of pals who had made the trip, as they were being cheered with conspicuous enthusiasm by a portion of the crowd close to the front. The band were lively and enthusiastic, loving their time on a stage that was itself probably bigger than any of the dives they had played before.
    Jasmine glanced around the place, taking in the venue. She had never been inside the Dunfermline Alhambra, and had assumed it would be a nightclub. Instead it turned out to be a grand old 1920s theatre-cum-cinema, a doughty survivor of the great bingo-hall attrition.
    Whilst taking in her surroundings, her professional abilities also noted that somebody nearby was taking an interest in
her
, and thus she was reminded of another reason why she had her reservations about going to a gig alone. There was a guy leaning against a pillar about ten feet away, and she clocked him staring at her on two separate passes. Suffice to say, she was the better skilled at keeping her scrutiny undetected.
    He looked like he might more usually be occupied outside the venue at this point, breaking into vehicles in the car park, but even if he’d looked like Sam McTrusty, she wasn’t interested tonight. Okay, maybe if he actually
was
Sam McTrusty, but this