Read Online Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway - Free Book Online

all smiles. Now they were stuck in traffic on the Hampstead Heath back road.
    – You have a girl?
    He blushed. It was the first time Mishazzo had asked. He had a plan. He had the whole thing worked out and ready. But still he blushed.
    – A boy?
    – No. I have a girlfriend.
    – It’s a serious thing? A love thing?
    – No, not really. We get on well. But it’s … it’s not very serious.
    – You live with her?
    – We share, yes. It’s more convenient that way. Financially. Makes sense.
    – You love her?
    – It’s more like a friendship.
    – You love your friends though.
    – I suppose. But it’s a different sort of love.
    He nodded in the mirror, his face behind smoke.
    They sat still for a while. Mishazzo rarely liked the radio. Sometimes he requested a CD. He liked world music. African. Middle Eastern. He would tap his hand on his knee, or bounce his leg up or down. He liked joyful music.
    – I’ll see. Maybe you can do more driving. And maybe some other things too. You are very young, and you have no face. So. More money for you. And your girlfriend.
    When they got into Highgate Mishazzo told him to pull in to the side of the road and to turn around and look at him.
    – You should be careful who you make your friend. And who you take into your bed. They are different things. If you mix them up you lose … perspective on both of them. Do not mix them up. That is my advice to you, my friend. The dick has no loyalty. Only the heart. But your head manages them both. So be clever. Be happy. Have fun. Have money. Have beautiful girls. Have a good life. Do not fuck your friends. Only your lovers. Never fuck your friends.
     
    He met Hawthorn in some coffee shop on Stroud Green Road, full of people with laptops. He looked at screens and bags and people’s faces. He didn’t know if they were students or what. They took a table outside. It was hot. Hawthorn was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was less like a cop. But his leg jigged up and down all the time and his hair was cut.
    – Are you off duty?
    – Not really.
    Hawthorn asked him where he’d been on Thursday and Friday. He got him to go through the times, the route he’d taken. How many phone calls had Mishazzo made? What had he said? What names did he use? Had he opened his briefcase? What was in it? What sort of mood was Mishazzo in? He bought the coffees. After he’d asked his questions and written some stuff down in his notebook he sat back in his chair and smiled.
    – Now I’m off duty.
    The way he’d said it, it sounded like a sort of come-on. They looked at each other. Hawthorn half blushed, up near the tops of his cheeks, like some invisible thing had just flicked fingernails against his face. He looked away.
    Nothing happened for a while. Then Hawthorn looked back at him. Held his eyes. For exactly the amount of time it takes for a look like that to become a look like that.
     
    They met sometimes in the coffee shop on Stroud Green Road, sometimes in a pub in Holloway. Or near Hawthorn’s flat, so that they could go there, if they wanted to. Sometimes he met Child as well, and then they usually just sat in Child’s car, or they drove around. Hawthorn wrote in his notebook. He got the feeling that they knew everything already. That he was just confirming stuff. Maybe they were testing him. He made a few things up. He told them about a route he hadn’t taken. Said they’d gone out to Hackney when they hadn’t. Nothing seemed to surprise them. He didn’t understand why any of it was important – the roads and the times – unless they were trying to trip him up. He knew the names were important. The phone calls, the buildings and houses and cafés he waited outside. The bits of conversations.
    He thought that it was all probably bullshit. That he wasn’t telling them anything they needed to know. They would spend six months getting him used to them, and then they would start to press. See if you can find out this or that. Or maybe they