PAPER MONEY by Ken Follett

He crossed the kitchen in two big, squelching strides and flung open the

back door.

Then he understood.

His dog lay on her back in the middle of the little concrete yard. The

knife was still in her-the same knife he had sharpened too much this

morning. Tony knelt beside the mutilated corpse. The body looked

shrunken, like a balloon with a leak

A string of soft, blasphemous curses came from Tony’s lips. He stared at

the multiple cuts, and the bits of cloth between the dog’s bared teeth

and whispered: “You put up a fight, girl.”

He went to the garden gate and looked out, as if the killer might still

be there. All he could see was a large pink wad of chewed bubblegum on

the ground, casually thrown away by a child.

Obviously, Ma had been out when it happened, which was a mercy. Tony

decided to clear up before she got back.

He got a spade from the outhouse. Between the yard and the garden gate

was a small patch of poor soil which the old man used to cultivate

intermittently. Now it was overgrown. Tony took off his jacket, marked

out a small square of ground, and began to dig.

The grave did not take him long. He was strong, and angry too. He trod

the spade viciously and thought about what he would do to the killer if

he ever found him. And he would find him. The bastard had done it out of

spite, and when people did things like that they had to boast about it,

either before or afterward, otherwise they would have proved their point

to nobody but themselves, and that was never enough.

He knew the type.

Somebody would hear something, and tell one of the boys in the hope of a

reward.

It crossed his mind that the Old Bill might be behind it. It was

unlikely: this was not their style.

Who, then? He had plenty of enemies, but none of them possessed both the

hatred and the guts to do a number like this. When Tony met somebody

with that much front he usually hired the bloke.

He wrapped the dead dog in his jacket and placed the bundle gently in

the hole. He shoveled the earth back in and made the surface even with

the flat of the spade. You didn’t say prayers for dogs, did you? No.

He went back into the kitchen. The mess was awful. There was no way he

could clean it up alone. Ma would be back any minute it was a bloody

miracle she had stayed out this long. He had to have help. He decided to

ring his sister-in-law.

He went through the kitchen, trying not to spread the blood around. It

seemed an awful lot of blood, even for a boxer dog.

He went into the parlor to use the phone; and there she was.

She must have been trying to reach the phone.

A thin trail of blood led from the door to the body, lying stretched

full length on the carpet.

She had been stabbed only once, but the cut had been fatal.

The look of horror frozen on Tony’s face changed slowly as his features

contorted, like a squeezed cushion, into an expression of despair. He

raised his arms slowly upward and pressed his palms against his cheeks.

His mouth opened.

At last words came, and he roared like a bull.

“Ma!” he cried. “Oh God, Ma!”

He fell to his knees beside the body and cried: huge, loud, racking

sobs, like the cries of a child in total misery.

Outside in the street a crowd gathered around the parlor window, but no

one dared to come in.

THE CITY TENNIS CLUB was an establishment which had nothing to do with

tennis and everything to do with afternoon drinking. Kevin Hart was

often struck with the implausibility of its title. In an alley off Fleet

Street, squeezed in between a church and an office block, there was

hardly room to play table tennis, let alone the real thing. If all they

wanted was an excuse to serve drinks when the pubs were shut, Kevin

thought, they could surely have found something more credible, like

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