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He ate a couple of chips to start his appetite, and was about to cut a piece of the steak when the light above him darkened slightly. Robbie still cut the steak and sampled it before glancing upwards.
“You Robbie Carter?”
“Who wants to know?”
The figure leaned in a little closer. He was bald with a wizened face and a pockmarked complexion. His eyes, nose, mouth and two bucked teeth were so close together that Robbie had trouble working out where one started and the other finished. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine since he’d bought them. His arms and legs were covered in tattoos of all descriptions but you couldn’t miss the pentagram on his head.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was rude to answer a question with another one?”
“Yes,” said Robbie, smiling. “Just before I killed her.”
The man laughed and took a seat without being offered.
“You must be Wilson,” said Robbie.
The man sitting opposite didn’t answer Robbie’s
question but stared at his plate of food. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.”
Robbie was dying to laugh at the man who obviously thought of himself as hard. Word around town, however, was that if you wanted to know anything, Wilson was your man. He knew everything that went down and, according to rumour, everything meant everything: who’d been turned over; who’d been beaten up; who’d been killed, even.
“I hear you’re looking for someone,” said Wilson, leaning over and pinching one of Robbie’s chips.
“That’s right,” replied Robbie, rather put out. That would have been the next chip for his fork.
“What’s he taken from you?”
Robbie put down his cutlery and wiped his mouth with his napkin, taking a sip of wine.
Wilson obviously saw it as a sign because he grabbed another chip.
“My wife.”
Wilson laughed. “What, and you want her back?”
Robbie smirked. “Are you kidding?”
A bigger laugh from Wilson brought about more mirth from Robbie until he silenced the man with his next comment.
“I can’t. She’s dead.”
Wilson stopped laughing. “What do you mean, dead?”
“What do you think I mean?” asked Robbie, picking up his cutlery, resuming his eating. “Someone killed her.”
Wilson took an onion ring next.
Robbie really couldn’t remember inviting him to do that. Nor did he expect Wilson would pay for half the meal, which was what he would end up eating soon.
“The burglar killed your wife?”
“Word has obviously travelled because I don’t remember telling you I was burgled.”
Wilson ignored the comment. “Why don’t you let the police deal with it?”
“I have. They think it was me.”
Wilson grinned. “Was it?”
