Only the Thunder Knows_East End Girls by Rena Mason Gord Rollo Page B

tried to come up
with a believable excuse for why he’d be here digging on a dismal night such as
this.
    “Hello
pops. I work for the cemetery, you see, so relax. Been way behind lately so I
just thought I’d try and get caught up on—”
    “Don’t
you ‘ello pops me. I know exactly what you’re up to, mister, so shut it. I told Mr. Farris I’d catch the rotter stealing a’ the bodies and now I’ve
gone and done it. You’ll rot in prison for this, you will. Just wait and see.”
    “Easy
now, old-timer,” Billy said, stalling for time. “This isn’t what it looks
like…I can promise you that.”
    “Save
yer lies for the police. Now drop that shovel and slowly put—”
    CLANG!
    William’s
shovel rang off the cemetery guard’s skull, forcibly driving the old man head
first into the frozen ground and shutting him up in a hurry. The potentially dangerous
confrontation was over as easily as that.
    “Take
your time, why don’t ya?” Billy said, rushing over to toss away the fallen
man’s handgun and make sure he didn’t try to get back up. “The old bugger could
have shot me dead!”
    “Aye,
and done the world a favor. Stop your whining and let’s tie him up.”
    “Umm…don’t
think that’s gonna be needed. I think he’s snuffed it!”
    “What?”
    “He’s
dead. Check ‘im yourself if you don’t believe me.”
    William
did just that, but sure enough the old guard was no longer breathing. Whether
it had been the vicious blow to the back of his head that had killed him, or
the way he’d been pile-driven face first into the hard earth, it really didn’t
matter. The long and short of it was that Burke and Hare were suddenly in a
heap of trouble. Getting caught and brought to justice for grave robbing was
bad enough, but getting charged with murder was a whole lot worse.
    As
in swinging from the gallows worse!
    “What
did you wallop him so hard for?” Billy said, a touch of panic in his voice.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
    William
was way ahead of his less imaginative friend, already calculating the odds of their
next move in his head. “We’ve got two choices, Billy. Either we finish digging
that hole and bury the old bugger alongside whoever we find there or…we go pay
Dr. Knox a visit and turn this little setback into a win-win for everyone.”
    “What?
You mean sell him? We can’t do that?”
    “Why
not? Knox likes his bodies fresh, right? You don’t get much fresher than this.
We’ll smear a little dirt on his face and clothes and the doc will think we
just dug him up, same as always. Who’s to ever know?”
    Burke
thought hard about that for a few seconds but then a big smile spread across
his face. “I like the way you think, mate. Makes me wonder why we’ve been
busting our hump for a’ those other bodies though? Why bother going to a’ that
trouble, right? Especially this time of the year. I mean, I know we still have
to dig the old graves for Black and Da Vine, but why do we need to keep
freezing our arses off and risking getting caught digging up the fresh ones?”
    Hare
was smiling now too, patting his friend on the back.
    “It’s
a good question, Billy. A good question indeed!”
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter
    13
     
     
     
    The transition
from clueless bodysnatching to ruthless cold-blooded murder was seamless and relatively
easy for the two Irish freeloaders. Killing a man or woman in an alleyway or
dark doorway was much quicker and cleaner than dragging a stiff corpse out of
some smelly hole in the ground. It required a whole lot less effort too. They
needed to refine their methods of course; bashing someone in the head with a
shovel inflicted considerable damage to the body and left incriminating
evidence behind that a heinous crime had been committed.
    To
remedy that problem, the fledgling killers soon learned to suffocate their targets
so it would appear to anyone who might examine the bodies that they’d somehow
died of natural causes. Hare would