~o~
Suzanne was relaxing at home when, quite unexpectedly, she heard her front door open. She twisted her head nervously even though she really knew who it must have been; only Tony had a front door key apart from her own.
"Tony, darling." She hugged him close, smelled the faintly sour odour of someone who had let themselves go. She looked at his dishevelled and forlorn state with the eyes of a concerned mother. Tony had lost weight and seemed grey and drawn, face unshaven, clothing scruffy.
"Hi Mum... can we talk?"
"Of course we can talk, how have you been, and where have you been? Are you hungry? Let me get you something. "
"It's not food I need Mum, I need some real help... I told you before that I was in debt and there were people after me, well things have got worse since then. I think I'm in serious danger now."
"Oh Tony no..."
"Look Mum I have to confess I got in a bit deep with, you know... drugs and stuff. My life has fallen apart."
"We guessed about the drug thing darling, you can't really keep that sort of problem from the ones who love you. But Emily and I kept on hoping that you would see the error of your ways and, what do they say, get yourself straight."
"I've not taken anything for weeks now Mum, mostly I admit because I don't have the cash. But now that I'm off that stuff I think I can make a new start... I need to get away though... a long way away."
"Why go away Tony? You could come back here until you get sorted. This is still your home."
"No it's too late for that. I told you I'm wanted and the man who wants me takes no prisoners."
"Oh Tony, are you saying that your life's in danger?"
Tony put his head in his hands and sat down, suddenly exhausted. "You have no Idea what these people will do." He sobbed "Taking a life is just in a day's work for them." Suzanne felt the blood drain from her face.
"What can I do for you?"
"Mum I hate to ask, but I need money. I need a plane ticket and enough to give me a new start."
Suzanne looked worried, not sure how much of this she could believe. But like nearly all mothers she would do anything for her children. She would fight like a tiger or give her all to protect her children. But she could only give what she had.
"Tony I don't have much left, my savings seem to have evaporated over the past few months. I've got a retirement fund but that money's locked up until I'm sixty. You can have what I've got, I think there's about two thousand pounds left. Now don't worry, I'll make up your bed and cook you something, you look half starved."
"No I can't stay Mum, this house is known to the man who's after me, I need to get straight back."
Suzanne wrote her son another cheque exhausting almost all she had and with his words of affection and gratitude ringing in her ears she watched Tony slink away into the night. She was not the only one who watched Tony slink away. John Mason had found his man but he was in no hurry to act. This contract was different; he had promised Jimmy and he could not betray a dying man's wishes. But Tony was not a stranger, he may even have thought of him as a friend. Turning his feelings off would not be so easy this time.
Tony caught the late train back to Glasgow and as he was rocked by the hypnotic rhythm of the train on the rails, he looked at his reflection in the carriage window. He was shocked by the image he saw staring back at him, it looked like a that of a lost soul and he wondered what he had done to deserve the twists of fate had brought him so low. It was the early hours of the morning when he arrived at Glasgow Central. He hoped beyond hope, that he had not been followed but his paranoia was now as strong a pull on him as his need for a narcotic release. He fingered his mother's cheque, He was not ungrateful, it was better than nothing. It might buy him a ticket to the other side of the world but little else, Tony felt he needed more... quite a bit more He had no cocaine but he did have an unopened bottle of vodka and began on a systematic demolition of its contents. As his thought processes became increasingly disinhibited his demon seemed to grow in strength, settling on his shoulder and whispering dark thoughts into his ear. As the level in his bottle dropped so did his resistance to the compelling words.
In the room, lit only by the yellow glow from a low powered bulb swinging from the ceiling, his moral compass sinking under the anaesthetic haze of cheep vodka, Tony conjured up a malevolent plan to remove the obstacle that prevented him from benefiting from the cottage. He would go and see his sister, maybe take her a bottle of wine, yes... a bottle of wine doped with sleeping pills. As Emily slept, it would be an easy thing to set the cottage on fire. He could conjure up an inferno and his sister would be gone. The insurance pay out would go to himself and he would have the money for a new start in the New World. This way he would get the money without the trouble of having to sell the cottage. It would be a quick, clean and fast resolution to his problems. In his alcohol soaked brain his synapses fired in a chaotic state and it all made a macabre sense to him. His view of reality had switched, like an optical illusion might switch you from seeing the face of a beautiful woman to seeing an ugly hag. He laughed aloud, gulping from his glass, as the dark monster that he had held down for so long at last surfaced and took over his mind.
Tony finished the bottle and finally sank into a deep sleep. A disturbing and ugly grin had transformed his once innocent face as the sun rose on a new day.
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