Rule of Night Read Free Page A

he wouldn’t mind tackling the older one, taking her on Rochdale market after the pubs shut and giving her a good grope in the shadows; she has a big firm pair.
    â€˜You don’t get many of them to a pound,’ he says to Crabby.
    â€˜You wouldn’t get within sniffing distance.’
    â€˜Who’s bothered anyway; they’re a load of old slags.’
    â€˜What about the Pendulum?’ Crabby whines. His face has a debauched pallor under the fluorescent lights. Not a single thought worth preserving has ever passed through that shaven skull. He left Holborn Street School in Brimrod when he was fifteen and started work in the stockroom at Asda Queens, which is an old defunct cotton mill in Castleton that’s been converted into a giant supermarket. He was fired when they caught him with eleven packets ofLyons Quick-Brew Tea and four bars (one partly eaten) of Galaxy chocolate stuffed into various pockets and down the inside of his boots. Whether it was because he had a passion for tea and chocolate was never satisfactorily explained. His next job was in the dispatch department of the Dexine Rubber Company, sending out parcels of ebonite washers to firms manufacturing washing-machines and refrigerators. He stuck it for three months and then didn’t bother to come in one Monday morning. Since then he’s worked intermittently in a garage, as a coalman, and on a building-site. At present he fixes television aerials to people’s chimneys. Kenny knew him at school and their friendship was cemented when they played hookey and went on a joint shoplifting expedition to Woolworth’s.
    Kenny’s heavy eyelids are drooping – partly the beer and partly the dull sluggish excitement rising in his throat. He stares insolently at the older woman and she wrinkles her nose as though at an unpleasant smell, sending the girls into fits of giggles.
    â€˜Past your bedtime, innit?’ the woman says, the receptive captive audience making her rash and confident.
    For a moment Kenny’s face is contorted, and then he smiles slowly. The woman’s handbag is underneath her chair, and accidentally on purpose he places the heel of his boot on the shiny black plastic and puts his full weight on it. There is a splintering crunch of plastic and glass.
    â€˜You bloody moron,’ the woman says. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
    â€˜What’s the matter with you?’ Kenny says, looking mildly surprised.
    â€˜You and your great clodhoppers.’
    â€˜Is that your handbag? Daft place to leave it, under a chair.’
    â€˜Paddy,’ the woman says, ‘throw this yobbo out.’
    â€˜I’d like to see him fucking try.’
    â€˜You bloody hooligan.’
    â€˜Get stuffed.’
    â€˜Paddy!’
    Kenny suddenly wearies of this confrontation. Everybody in the pub is watching, but because he doesn’t give a damn his hands are perfectly steady as he offers a packet of Number 6 to the other three. ‘Come on, let’s drift.’ The four of them drink up and wander casually to the door, not meeting a single pair of eyes all the way.
    On the corner of Drake Street by the Wellington Hotel they buy hamburgers from a young boy in a soiled apron who stands in the gutter with a strange contraption that resembles the mutation of a washing-machine on bicycle wheels. At this hour people are drifting aimlessly about from pub to pub. The town centre is awash with streetlight, everything pale yellow and slightly sickly-looking. Like being inside a fish tank filled with urine.
    â€˜What did your old lady say?’ Arthur inquires of Kenny.
    â€˜What about?’
    â€˜Taking that bird home.’
    â€˜What could she say?’
    Skush laughs under his breath, embarrassed and envious.
    Crabby brandishes his fist. ‘I bet you didn’t have it away.’
    â€˜I bet she’s still a virgin.’
    â€˜I bet my boot would fit into your