by Kevin Brooks
‘Do you enjoy it?’
He just shrugged again. ‘It’s what I do.’
I looked at him, sick of talking now. I just wanted this to be over. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be at home, sitting in my armchair beneath the high window, drinking whisky in the darkness, listening to the whisper of ghosts …
A bell sounded downstairs.
‘That’ll be them,’ Bishop said, getting to his feet and heading for the door.
‘I want the gun back,’ I told him.
He stopped. ‘The gun?’
‘I want it back.’
‘Why?’
‘Does it matter?’
He took the pistol from his pocket, studied it for a moment, then looked at me. ‘It was your father’s, wasn’t it? It was the gun he used to kill himself.’
‘How do you know that?’
He carried on looking at me for a second or two, then he took the magazine out of the pistol, emptied the bullets into his hand, put the magazine back, and passed the gun to me.
‘How do you know it was my father’s?’ I asked him again.
He dropped the bullets into his pocket, turned round, and left the room without saying anything.
Bridget was finally beginning to come round as I went over and sat down beside her. Her eyelids were twitching, her lips were fluttering, and she was making faint little whimpering sounds.
I took hold of her hand.
It was cold.
‘It’s OK, Bridget,’ I said softly. ‘You’re going to be fine now. Everything’s going to be all right …’
But I knew I was probably lying.
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Copyright © Kevin Brooks 2011
Kevin Brooks has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
‘An Autumn Chant’ is reproduced by kind permission of the author, Karen Bergquist Dezoma
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
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First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
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ISBN 9780099553816