Living in Fear
 |
| Image: All Rights Reserved |
| London: Walker |
| 2011 |
I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. My hands were still shaking; the sights and sounds were burnt into my mind.
I felt vulnerable and paranoid, as if someone was going to knock on the door at any moment and take me away. The police, or one of the Kelly lot. The bogeyman. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know. Except I knew the bogeyman was real.
A warning, Donnie had said. A warning to whom? To others muscling in on Kelly business? I wondered why Tommy had insisted that I helped Donnie. Was he trying to warn me? Or was he trying to get me involved to a point where there could definitely be no turning back? Implicating me in a murder? I kept looking out at the street from behind the curtains, chewing my nails down till they bled. I decided that I’d feel better at the safe house, so I let myself out and ducked through the back streets down towards the river.
I didn’t feel much better once I was inside. I sat and stared out of the window, across the river to where people were going about their normal lives, in proper jobs in conventional offices. I wished I was one of them, making an honest crust, having a nice ordinary life where I could sleep at night. If I could get out of this, I might be poor with no girlfriend, but at least I’d be back in normal society, honest and poor with no girlfriend. Doing normal stuff blokes of my age do.
But now I was beyond the point of no return.
I thought of calling Tony, or even Baylis, but in my state of shock I didn’t know how I could begin to explain what I’d got myself into. I felt that I had been stained by the night’s events to a level where I was beyond their help or understanding.
I went and found my notebook, hoping that if I wrote some of it down it would calm my nerves. Would help explain how I’d been involved in the disposing of another body at Long Reach.
Extract from the book Long Reach
By Peter Cocks
All Rights Reseved.
London : Walker, 2011
Call Number: Y English COC
Extract contributed by Janice Ow
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Have you ever been in a state of shock, or have you seen other people in such a state? How did you or the others cope with it?
