Читать книгу Black Widow - Jessie Keane - Страница 16

The first thing Vita Byrne saw when she opened the trap door on the disused hen house was a pair of very angry dark green eyes staring up at her.

Shit!

She slammed the door shut.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said to Danny, her brother, who had just come out from the kitchen and was staring at her. ‘You couldn’t have given her enough of that stuff, she’s awake! You fucking idiot.’

‘Hey, how do I know how much to use on a kid?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t want to give her too much, I didn’t want to kill her, now did I?’

‘I thought she was going to be drugged up. I thought she was going to be out of it. And now she’s seen my fucking face,’ whined Vita.

‘Will you shut up? And will you put your fucking hood on, and why didn’t you have it on in the first place? That way she wouldn’t have seen your stupid face, for God’s sake.’

‘Don’t have a go at me,’ said Vita. ‘You got the dose wrong.’

‘Look, she’s a kid. I gave her what I thought was enough but not too much ’cos that could have killed her, and that wouldn’t be very clever now, would it? She’s no fucking use to us dead. What I’m saying is, she won’t know you anyway, so will you for the love of God calm down?’

‘Yeah, it’s all very well for you to say calm down, but it wasn’t your face she saw, was it?’ yelled Vita, getting good and mad and also a bit panicky.

Because for sure the little girl had seen her face. She didn’t think Danny was taking that point quite seriously enough.

‘She’s a little kid,’ said Danny with a bored tone in his voice. ‘She won’t know your face.’

‘Yeah, but Da—’

‘Shut up.’ Now Danny was getting mad too. His stupid sister had been about to blurt his name out. A kid might forget a face, but a name might stick in her memory; she might repeat it when she got free—if she got free—and then people would come knocking. All of which was a situation Danny Byrne hoped to avoid.

‘Don’t keep telling me to shut up,’ said Vita.

Everything about this was upsetting her. It was all too much. She hadn’t expected that they were actually going to kill people, and she still felt sort of sick to her stomach about that. And most particularly about what Danny had done to the man and the woman in the little villa by the gate. He had seemed to glory in their terror, to get high on it; he had laughed and played in the blood like a kid in a bubble bath. Whenever she thought of it, she felt nauseous and afraid. She’d always known Danny was crazy, but now she thought he was really sick in the head, and dangerous.

‘Look, no names,’ Danny was saying to her. ‘We never say names in the girl’s hearing, remember? Got that?’

‘Yeah, okay,’ said Vita sulkily. ‘Where’s Ph…where’s he gone, anyway?’

‘To hire the boat.’

‘Jesus, hasn’t he done that yet? I thought this was meant to be a smooth operation.’

‘It’s smooth,’ said Danny.

‘Oh sure it’s smooth. No boat, and she’s seen my face.’

‘Will you for fuck’s sake drop that?’ roared Danny.

Vita flinched and fell silent.

‘My daddy’s going to kick your arse,’ said a tearful, furious little voice from inside the hen house.