by Tony Black
He seemed to be whispering, timid. ‘Oh, you got my message.’
‘Yes … sorry, my phone was switched off. Just got to it. What’s up?’
There was a pause on the line. It unsettled me.
‘Gus … I-I, er, saw Paul.’
I didn’t like the sound of this already – what the fuck was Paul doing racing from Gillian’s gaff to see Stevo? ‘Oh, yes?’
‘He seems to think that …’ I heard a noise, a clatter of tins.
‘What was that?’
Stevo held schtum. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Is everything okay there?’
His voice dropped even lower. ‘I think there might be someone outside.’
‘Stevo … what did Paul say?’
‘He asked me what I had told you … and some other stuff. He was very … animated.’ He sounded pensive, on edge. His voice was choked with emotion.
‘I bet he was.’ This wasn’t good. ‘Stevo, get the fuck out of there … You hear me? Go home – now!’
His voice trembled; I could hear the fear in it. ‘I think you might be right.’
‘Look, Stevo, if you get any bother, call me right away, okay.’
Silence.
I’d missed the line going dead.
‘Shit!’
I tried to call him back but it went straight to voicemail.
‘Fucking hellfire!’ I yelled. I grabbed up my jacket. ‘C’mon … move yer arse. Things are kicking off.’
‘Y’wha’?’
‘Don’t fucking ask. We need to get to Stevo.’
I made for the door with Hod following. In the stairwell I heard Amy’s heels clacking on the stairs. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I asked.
‘With you.’
‘That’ll be shining bright.’ I pointed back to the door. ‘Get up those stairs.’
She made a moue of her mouth, pushed past me. ‘Fucking watch me.’
Hod shrugged. ‘No telling her.’
I knew he was right. We fired down the stairs. My heart was pounding already. A hundred scenarios flashed in my mind, none of them good. Stevo was the last person I wanted to get mixed up in this. Thing was, I knew he had more information than he had let on. He had done a good job of keeping it to himself … so far; I hoped he kept it that way. Dreaded to think how Paul and his mates would react to finding themselves up against someone else at this point.
For the first time, I wished I hadn’t pressed so hard on Paul. The lad was unstable. There was no predicting how he would react to the threats I had put on him. I had the dread feeling I’d fucked up. Badly.
Chapter 36
HOD PUT THE PEDAL TO the metal. For the first time in living memory Amy didn’t fiddle with the CD player. We all sat, eyes front, cursing the traffic.
‘This is fucked,’ said Amy.
I looked at her. She was pumped, raring to go. This was the last thing I wanted. She shouldn’t have been with us at all – it was no place for her. I didn’t want to see her get hurt. I leaned forward. ‘Hod, you need to go and see Gillian.’
‘Y’wha’? … Thought we were going to this Stevo guy.’
‘No. Drop me off, I’ll sort Stevo … you and Amy go and see Gillian.’
Amy pointed a painted fingernail at me. ‘Now hold on a minute …’
I put my hand around hers, clasped it. ‘Look, Amy, you need to go there and suss what has changed her mind. I can’t be in two places at once.’
She wasn’t buying it; she was an action junkie like Hod. ‘Can’t we do that after?’
I shook my head, knew she’d need some persuasion. ‘No. I need to know now … what’s changed her mind in the last hour? Press her hard, push all her buttons and watch that fucking Tina one … she’s up to her china blue lids in this shite!’
That seemed to appeal more to Amy. Thought maybe she saw herself slapping Tina about. She said, ‘I can do that.’
Hod spun the wheel, looked focused as he burned up the road. ‘What you thinking, Gus?’
I played it cautious: ‘I don’t know …’
A Punto driver blasted a horn at us; Hod gave him the finger. ‘You must have some idea.’
I stuck to what he needed to know. ‘Well, Gillian’s either found out something she doesn’t want to know … and wants to keep it from us, and plod … or Tina’s found some leverage.’
Hod looked thoughtful. It didn’t affect his driving though – that was still shit. He swerved left to right, near took out a lamp post. The traffic lights turned red but Hod fired through them. A wail of protest went up as we sped over the box junction; a VW skidded into the kerb. Some lanky crusty in a beanie found himself sprinting out of our way, raised a fist as we passed. We made it into top gear, powered up the street. All the while my mind focused on Stevo; I didn’t have a good feeling about his situation. I replayed our phone call again: he’d sounded nervous, frightened. Jesus above … he had good cause to. The thought slayed me.
The van mounted the kerb, two wheels on the flags as we skidded into view of the uni. ‘Just out there … that’s fine,’ I said, banging the dashboard.
I let Hod pull up. As the brakes screeched Amy grabbed my arm. ‘You sure this is okay?’
‘Yeah, deffo. Go with Hod … you know what to do.’
Amy crossed her brows, sucked in her cheeks. I saw she wasn’t sure about what I was suggesting; I needed to seal the deal. I found the energy to move fast, got out of the van, slammed the door behind me. Amy stared at me through the window. I raised a hand and waved them on. Hod didn’t hang about, lifted the revs and sped off.
The uni was dead. Precious few students had hung about over the summer months, save the really keen ones and the ones with nothing better to do. The old buildings looked abandoned, only one or two lights burning as black clouds brewed up a storm. I crossed under the main archway into the courtyard. The front door seemed to be locked up for the day. I checked the handle to be sure – no give in it. The bolt was in place – would need a mortar launcher to budge it.
I schlepped round to the side entrance and let myself in with the janny’s keys. There were no lights on here and the corridor lay in semi-darkness. I listened out for anyone, but the place was quiet as the grave. Stevo usually put the lights on when he knocked off. Seemed, if not strange, irregular. I closed the door behind me and paced towards the doocot. Something stopped me halfway there – instinct or whatever – and I made a detour to the main hall.
The sound of my footfalls on the old boards unnerved me; they echoed off the walls and the high ceiling and repeated like I was being followed. It was all just nerves, I knew it, my imagination was running away with itself. I hauled it in, gave myself a shake.
‘Get yer shit together, Gus,’ I told myself.
As I got to the hall, I creaked open the door and flicked the light switches – nothing.
‘Shit!’
It was just like the night I’d found Calder; the thought jarred me. A cold bar of sweat formed between my shoulder blades, ran the length of my spine in one slow trail.
I edged back through the noisy door, made my way into the corridor and headed for the doocot. The usual disinfectant smell was strong in my nostrils, mixing with the musty, damp odour of aged buildings. There was another smell I couldn’t quite put my finger on, seemed familiar enough, though. I sniffed the air a bit more and then I sussed it – Stevo’s ganja. The boy had obviously been having a fair old toke. He usually kept that kind of thing in the doocot, though, didn’t seem like him to be smoking out in the main corridor. Maybe he’d left the door open by mistake, I thought. But that didn’t sound like Stevo either. My palate started to dry over. I pressed my tongue into the roof of my mouth, felt the gap in my teeth where the bridgework had been destroyed. My nerves were playing up – they were getting out of control.
As the doocot came into sight, my pulse quickened. There was no sign of life. The place was in darkness and the door closed. I kept my eye on the handle of the door as I w
alked, thoughts mashing with every step. I don’t know what I expected to see: Stevo, armed with a crowbar, cowering inside … maybe a tale of more threats taken from Paul and his crew. He was a smart lad, Stevo, maybe he’d legged it at the first whiff of trouble. Then again, maybe he hadn’t been able to … maybe they did get to him. Paul had been fairly ropeable when I’d seen him at Gillian’s earlier; there was no telling what he would do. He was clearly off the scale; he’d some form for fronting up to Stevo – I just hoped that our recent chat hadn’t prompted him to go any further.
I reached the door and I grasped the handle. It felt cold. I turned it anticlockwise. It clicked hard; The door was locked. I went back to my keychain – the red-topped key for the door was an easy find – and slipped it in the lock, turned once. The door opened up to a quarter of a foot from the jamb, then seemed to stick. Something was blocking the entrance, pressing against the other side. I pushed harder and it gave a little, but not enough. I pushed again, gained another few inches, which revealed a pool of dark liquid spilled on the floor. I reached for the light switch – this one worked. As I lowered my gaze to the floor again, I saw the liquid was red and sticky. I was standing in what looked like blood. Lots of it.
‘Stevo … Stevo …’ I yelled.
There was no reply.
I put my shoulder to the door, pushed harder. The blockage eased some; the more of the floor I brought into view, though, the greater the amount of blood I saw.
‘Stevo … fucking hell … You in there?’
I pushed enough of a gap for me to squeeze through. My Docs slipped on the blood as I wedged myself between the jamb and the door. I had no purchase and skidded onto my arse. As I did so, the door jerked out of my hand and the pressure of the weight pushing against it forced it to slam shut.
For a moment I lay with my back on the blood-covered floor. I felt the freshness of it, it was still warm on my fingertips. I jerked up my hands, wiped them rapidly on my jeans.
‘Christ! … Holy Jesus.’ I was covered in the stuff. ‘Fucking hell!’
I got up quickly and looked about the room; saw a bale of barbed wire pushed against the door. It had been untangled: a solitary, jagged strand had been fed up to the rafters and wrapped around one of the beams. As my eyes followed the line of the wire my hand shot up to my mouth. My stomach heaved as I caught the smell of blood again. But the real shock was the sight of Stevo, a barbed-wire noose around his neck, dangling from the roof beams.
I looked away. ‘Oh, no … Stevo, Christ, no.’
The barbed wire had dug deep into the flesh around his neck. When he had been hoisted up the points had cut in, ripping open his jugular. Both front and back of his dustcoat were soaked in blood; it dripped from his chest to the tips of his shoes, where it fell with minute splashes into the pool beneath him. I turned away, but felt compelled to look back at him. Stevo’s eyes were dark and ruptured. His tongue, black and bloated to twice its normal size, hung from his mouth.
I felt my insides settle – the fear and shock were replaced by anger. I looked about the small room. The place was in disarray. Paint cans had been knocked over, chairs pushed to the floor. Even the coffee cups Stevo and I had drank from were smashed. I tried to find focus, think what I needed to do, but all my thoughts ran into finding Paul and tearing him limb from limb.
‘You fucker …’ I yelled. I fired my fist into the wall. It stung like a bastard but seemed to calm me a bit. I turned back to Stevo. His face was a horrific mess: he’d been soundly beaten before they’d hanged him. I needed to get the police, but I didn’t know how to play it.
‘Think, Gus … think!’
Surely there could be no way of covering this up; the Craft couldn’t get away with calling this suicide. Fitz would know how to handle it; I prayed he would, he was my only hope. I dialled his number.
‘Hello, this is DI Fitzsimmons, I can’t take your call right now but if you …’
‘Oh, fucking voicemail.’ I let the preamble end, ranted, ‘Fitz, Fitz, there’s been another death … another fucking murder. It’s Stevo … he’s swinging from the roof beams and dripping fucking claret—’
I didn’t get any further – the phone was snatched from behind me. I hadn’t heard anyone come into the doocot. They must have moved stealthily; didn’t want to give themselves away. As I turned to see the mobi being casually switched off by a stooped figure, a hand grabbed at my arm, then another latched onto my wrist, turned it up my back. I was immobile, fully bound up as the figure raised its head.
‘I don’t think you’ll be needing this,’ said Paul.
At the sight of his watery eyes and his pale, freckled skin, I wanted to kill him. I lunged for him, but was held back by arms stronger than mine. I tried again, aiming my head at his face, but I couldn’t reach. ‘You fucking piece of shit,’ I yelled.
He stepped back, put the phone in his pocket as he watched me struggling before him like a fitting lunatic, said, ‘I don’t think anyone’s coming to save you, Mr Dury.’
I spat out – didn’t faze him. Knew he was right, though: I hadn’t given Fitz my location before he’d taken the phone off me. I was dead meat now. I looked up, caught sight of Stevo, bloated and beaten, his wounds still bleeding onto the floor. I knew I was next. The thought brought a vivid image of Amy in tears once more and it felled me. ‘You’ll get yours, y’cunt,’ I yelled out. ‘Fucking sure you will.’
Paul leaned in, grabbed me by the hair, twisted it like a deadbolt. ‘You really haven’t a clue, have you? … You’ve no idea about any of this. You’re just lurching from one disastrous gamble to the next, and you still think that somehow it’ll all come right.’
I kept the bead on him, said, ‘It’ll be you swinging soon, Paul.’
His face tightened along the jawline; moisture glistened on his brow. One of the lads at my back spoke up: ‘Come on … let’s get going to the hall.’
Paul stepped aside. He dabbed at his face with the cuff of his shirt as I was forced past him. ‘We’ll see who’s swinging next.’
Chapter 37
THERE WERE ABOUT FIVE OF them, forcing me down the corridor, towards the hall where Ben and Calder had been killed. Images of Stevo’s blood followed me with every step. The thick darkness spreading over the floor, oozing from his ripped jugular. His face, beaten and bruised, returned too. Those black eyes of his, staring out from the unknown, they had seen more than he dare tell of; now he never would.
I was walking too slowly, got a shove in the back, a ‘Hurry the fuck up’. I felt like a condemned man taking his final steps. Chances were that I was. Had I ballsed up? Oh, yeah. Ben had lost his life, for what I didn’t know, or much care if truth be told. If this was the class of company he kept, they could all swing. Sure, his mother would go without answers, and I felt for her. But Stevo, he was different. He had just been caught in the crossfire. It burned me to know that I’d been part of that.
What had I done? I thought of Amy and my mother, all those who knew me, Hod, Mac … by Christ, I’d let them all down. Always had. But this kind of pain, the kind I’d be bringing them, was too much. None of them deserved it – I’d put them through too much already. Fucking hell, Dury … going out in some style, eh?
‘Get going, janny man.’ Another prod in the back, a kick. Got me moving.
‘You in a hurry?’ I snapped.
Paul spun; flecks of white spittle came as he spoke: ‘We should have done you first.’
‘Would that have saved Stevo?’
The fucker actually smiled at that. ‘Who’s to say?’
I pulled back from my restraints, tried to front up to him, but got tugged back, snapped, ‘You really get something out of this … playing God.’
Paul ran white fingers through his mop of red hair, then quickly slapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘I said, get going.’
He pushed the back of my head forward as I passed him. I collected another jab between the shoulder blades. Near dropped me on the floor – my knee
s caved, I coughed my guts up. There was some blood in there; I watched it drool down my front. I’d seen too much blood lately. The image of Stevo soaked head to toe in his own claret wasn’t ever going to leave me. But something told me I wasn’t going to have too long to be haunted by the image. The pack of boys was growing excited, they sensed another kill; they paced harder, faster.
Paul grabbed me again as we walked down the corridor to the main hall.
‘You have no idea, Dury … no clue what we’re about.’ He sounded as though he wanted to explain, to defend himself. Like I gave a shit what was contained in his messed-up head.
I spat more blood, trying to rile him. ‘You hear that, lads? … He’s trying to implicate you all.’
Got nothing but laughs. They were all well gone, high on themselves. To a one they felt protected, beyond censure. They had got away with too much already; no wonder they felt invincible. I wanted to know how those in the Craft might respond to this latest turn of events – there was only so much the filth could sweep under the carpet. Another two deaths in similar fashion to the others, and on the same night, were going to set some big alarm bells ringing. I watched as two of them ran to the door – pushed it open and stood there flagging us through. They looked enthusiastic, eager even. I remembered an old movie, Lord of the Flies, one about the boys stranded on an island, slowly turning into savages. I felt like the lad they called Piggy, the one who’d managed to get on the wrong side of everyone.
‘Nice try,’ said Paul, ‘but you’re not going to save your sorry arse, Dury.’ His face was flushed red, I could see the veins in his neck standing out like tensed rods: he was pumped for this. This sick freak was getting high on his own power to kill; it made me want to spit. As I looked at his face I knew I was staring into the last pair of eyes Stevo ever saw. I felt a heavy urge to gouge them out, stamp on them. I wanted to see Paul buried, and to dance on his grave.
An image of Ben hanging on a rope flashed before me. He had been Paul’s best friend, for Chrissake – what kind of human being could kill so coldly someone they knew, and for what? For nothing, it seemed. Another life wasted for nothing. To satisfy the ego of some twisted fuck. I didn’t want to count the lives this guy had wrecked; the Gillians of this world would be walking wounded for the rest of their days. He’d as well as killed them too.
