Read The Backs (2013) for Free Online

balcony, looking down on the entrance, and for almost half an hour he watched people arrive. They were mainly tourists taking a break in the sightseeing for some refreshment, and then leaving their bags at the table and walking across to photograph the Michael-house chapel and its famous east window.
    At 11.10 he spotted her. She barely glanced around the room but headed straight towards the stairs, as if the upper level was the only place he could possibly be. The man accompanying her looked about forty years her junior, and he dropped behind to follow her up the narrow spiral staircase. They had the same slim build, but he was several inches taller and, despite his casual appearance, Jimmy couldn’t dispel the feeling that he was looking at a man who was constantly on the alert.
    Jimmy stood up as they approached his table, and he could see his own hand trembling as he offered it. He wanted to smile and ask how they were, but it felt wrong to start with a lie. He’d gone past the point of being able to even pretend to empathize with anyone else’s well-being, or to share even the tiniest of pleasantries without his internal voice screaming at him that it didn’t matter.
It really didn’t matter.
    This was a state of emergency now, the throwing of everything over the side just to try and stay afloat. Social niceties had gone overboard several months ago. And there were days when he wanted to stop, to wait until he hit the bottom, to then have the stern hand of responsibility send out doctors and bailiffs, and maybe a removal van or two, making the decision to change the route of his life anyone else’s but his own.
    That’s why his hand shook. Hers, of course, didn’t. ‘Good to see you again,’ she said and stepped aside to introduce her companion. ‘This is Gary Goodhew.’
    There are places to meet, places to avoid and a multitude of shades between the two. It appeared to Goodhew that his grandmother divided her time between the high-end and the very shady. She also seemed to be pretty much an expert at matching location, companion and agenda. Michaelhouse Café struck him as an unusual choice.
‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’
she’d texted. He hadn’t bothered to ask more; if she wanted him to know beforehand then she would have told him in the first place. He knew from experience that on the rare occasions his grandmother introduced him to someone, it usually involved a suggestion of extra-curricular investigation work. Without exception he had refused. However, that thought didn’t gel with a meeting held in such a busy and public place.
    She had met him at the entrance. ‘His name is James Barnes, always known as Jimmy, though. Name ring a bell?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ He shook his head, though somewhere he felt a recollection stir.
    ‘All I ask is that you listen to him.’
    ‘Why do you do this to me?’
    ‘He’s a friend of a friend.’
    Great. Since there seemed to be a maximum of two degrees of separation between his grandmother and most of the residents of Cambridge, it wasn’t much of a reason. ‘I warn you I’m going to say no.’
    ‘That’s fine,’ she said, leading the way into the café. ‘But listen first, then say no.’
    He followed her up the stairs and although there were no free tables, and several of them were occupied by lone men, it was still easy to spot Jimmy Barnes. He was a big man, early forties, broad-shouldered and, judging by the way he made the café furniture look like it had come from a primary school, stood at least three inches over six feet tall. He had the pallor of someone who’d woken hung-over and had been struggling with an uncooperative head and stomach ever since. He probably realized he wouldn’t start to recover until he’d got the crap out of his system. Goodhew doubted, however, that alcohol was Jimmy Barnes’s problem. The man had spotted Goodhew’s grandmother from the first moment she’d walked towards the stairs, and