Ty Westwood leaned against the wall outside, combing his hair. He made combing into a ritual, even though he swore blind that every time he combed it, his brown hair fell out in clumps. He dreaded going bald like his father.
“Prosper. Jesus, we thought you were dead,” Ty said. “We came round, the guys and me, but your old dear said you didn’t want to see anyone.” He pulled a quizzical, disbelieving expression.
Prosper finished his Mars bar before answering, stuffing the wrapper into his pocket. “I just didn’t feel up to seeing anyone.”
Ty narrowed his eyes and slipped the comb into the back pocket of his jeans. “Well, you’re here now. Come on, the guys’ll be glad to see you.”
Inside the hall, the music sounded louder and more discordant, but it went quiet as Prosper entered, the last few notes fading into the rafters overhead.
“Jesus, Prosper, good to see you’re still alive,” Paris said. The Fender guitar in his hands looked too big for him as he swung it aside.
“Yes, Ty told me you all thought I was dead.” Prosper grinned, well aware of Ty’s penchant for elaborating on the truth.
“We all came,” Jerel Jones said. At thirteen, he was the youngest member of the gang. His wiry hair was always cut short, and although he wasn’t very tall, it was evident he would be muscular when he grew up – he already had bigger biceps than anyone else in the gang, which would probably deter his abusive mother from knocking him around when he got older. Prosper hated it when Jerel showed him the bruises she’d bestowed upon him.
“What do you expect,” Wolfe Weaver said, his black hair spiked up like a peacock’s plumage. “If we couldn’t see you, how were we supposed to know you weren’t dead?” He walked across to Prosper and feigned a punch to his abdomen before shaking his hand.
Prosper shrugged. He hated the way Wolfe always greeted him, afraid that one day he might misjudge it and actually land a punch. Too dark to fathom, he could never discern the true colour of Wolfe's eyes, the two sockets like inkwells.
Wolfe picked up his bass guitar. “Or were you worried that we’d know about Gary Smith? Is that why you didn’t want to see us?” he asked, plucking the strings of his instrument, composing a musical counterpoint to his question.
Prosper hesitated, felt himself blush.
“Is it true?” Ty asked. “Did Gary Smith stab you with a chisel?”
Prosper swallowed and wiped a tear from his eye. He nodded his head. He couldn’t lie. Not to his best friends. They were all he had.
“That bastard,” Jerel spat. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?” He looked around at the others as though challenging them to disagree.
“How do you know?” Prosper asked.
“Everyone knows.”
“So how bad is it?” Paris asked.
Unashamed, Prosper dropped his trousers, wincing at the resultant sharp intakes of breath his revelation produced.
“How many stitches did you have?” Jerel asked.
“Eighteen.”
“Jeez, Smith needs to be taught a lesson,” Ty said.
Prosper shrugged. “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Maybe not, but he’s scarred you for life.” Wolfe clucked his tongue and narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll live.”
“That’s not the point. Him and his cronies are wankers. We can’t let him get away with this.”
“We?” Prosper pulled his trousers back up and fastened them, latching the buckle on the leather belt through the second to last hole, an indication of his increasing girth.
“Yes, we,” Wolfe said. “We didn’t believe it when we heard, you know, that he’d bloody stabbed you. But we talked about it, and we all agreed that if it was true, we’d get Gary Smith back.”
“How? If you do anything, it’ll only make matters worse. He’ll kill me.” Prosper’s voice rose an octave or two.
Wolfe winked. “He won’t know you had anything to do with it.”
“Of course he’ll know.”
“No, Wolfe’s right,” Paris said, coming and putting an arm around Prosper’s broad shoulder. “We’ve got a plan.”
“Plan? What plan?” Prosper asked, looking at his friends as they all stood around grinning like idiots.
Paris squeezed Prosper’s shoulder. “We’ve decided to take a pledge.”
Prosper frowned.
“Yes,” Ty agreed, his brown eyes twinkling as though he’d seen the Holy Grail.
“What sort of pledge?” Prosper asked sceptically.
“Well,” Paris continued. “You’re not the only one that gets picked on.”
“I’m not?” The sweat coating his body now felt uncomfortable and he puffed and panted, the journey having exerted him more than he realised. As he waited for a response, he nervously picked at his fingernails.
“We all get it now and again. Jerel because of his drunken mum, Wolfe because of his name, Ty because he’s, well, Ty.”
“What’s that mean?” Ty asked, scowling.
“Nothing,” Paris said, shaking his head and laughing.
“And what about you?”
“Me? Yes. Me too. Just because my parents split, everyone thinks I’m a freak.”
Prosper knew Paris had been through a hard time when his parents divorced. Paris never used the word ‘divorce’ himself, but since then, he had a cynical view of relationships.
“So what is it then, this pledge?”
“Well we haven’t taken it yet. We were waiting for you,” Paris said.
Prosper raised his hands in a questioning manner. “Well?”
Wolfe grinned and pulled a penknife from his pocket. “We’re going to take a blood pledge.” Without hesitating, he sliced the blade across his thumb, the cut welling with blood, before passing the knife to Ty. “We’ve all decided that from now on, if any of us gets picked on, then the others will get revenge.”
“Get revenge? How?” Prosper asked, watching as the knife made its way round to his hand. He held the sharp point over his thumb, his cheeks tingling in anticipation of the pain of the cut.
“Well, you give the word, tell us who’s done what, and we kick the shit out of them.”
“Great, that’ll make the bullying stop for sure,” Prosper said as he lowered the knife.
“No, you don’t get it,” Paris said. Blood trickled down his finger. “It might not stop the bullying, but think how you’ll feel when you see the bully’s been beaten up. Just think of the warm glow it’ll give you to know that you have the power to get us to kick the shit out of someone.”
“Yes, but they’ll know who’s done it, and then they’ll get their gang, and—”
“They won’t know, because they won’t see us coming. We’ll take them by surprise, and we’ll wear hoods. It’s perfect. No one would expect it to be us. And the person who wants the job doing doesn’t have to be anywhere near the scene of the crime. They can have a perfect alibi.”
The beads of blood on his friends’ thumbs made Prosper feel a little queasy. He worked his tongue around the roof of his mouth, trying to moisten it. Their idea was crazy. Stupid. But when he thought about it, he realised Paris was right. If he had the power to get someone beaten to a pulp because they’d bullied him, it would feel good. It would feel very good indeed. He felt a momentary twinge of pain from the scar on his thigh and then he grinned. Revenge would be very sweet.
He raised the knife and pressed the tip into his thumb, felt it puncture his flesh, and then he pulled it back to slice through the skin, making him wince and his cheeks to prickle.
“We make this pact,” Paris said, holding his thumb out, “that from this day on, when any of us needs the assistance of his blood brothers, they shall answer the call or suffer the same punishment as those who committed the initial act of humiliation.”
One by one, Prosper and his friends all pressed their thumbs together, smearing the warm, sticky blood.
“We should have a name,” Prosper said, caught up
in the sublime mood of the moment.
“That’s easy,” Ty said, pointing to the band name stencilled on the skin of Prosper’s bass drum. “The Kult.”
Although their band eventually disbanded, their name lived on, albeit with darker connotations.
CHAPTER 11
An approaching car brought Prosper out of his reverie, and he watched an old Ford Escort bouncing down the lane with Ty Westwood at the wheel. The vehicle came to a stop next to the Range Rover, throwing up a cloud of dust. Prosper noticed Ty admiring himself in the rear-view mirror as he combed his thinning brown hair before exiting the car, his brown eyes scanning the surrounding area.
“Prosper. Paris,” Ty said, nodding his head in greeting. Dressed in a red T-shirt bearing a picture of Che Guevara, a pair of Hawaiian shorts that covered his knees, and Jesus sandals, he looked the furthest thing from cool as possible.
“What’s wrong?” Prosper asked.
“Don’t know ... think someone might have been following me.” He glanced back along the lane.
Prosper and Paris looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“So who was it? FBI, KGB, Mafia, Triads, Yakuza?” Prosper asked, trying not to smile.
“Don’t take the piss. There was someone, I swear.” He pulled his comb out and ran it through his hair, now more a nervous reaction than any attempt at rescuing his crowning glory.
The years had been cruel to Ty. He still maintained a slim build, but his skin looked sallow, eyes haunted. Far from looking fashionable, his goatee beard looked as though he hadn’t shaved properly and his fingernails were bitten to the quick. Prosper knew Ty never married, and when they were young, no one ever saw him with a girl. Public opinion said he was gay, which no one minded, but no one ever mentioned it in case they were wrong.
“So what are you up to nowadays?” Paris asked, looking at Ty as though he felt sorry for him.
“Oh, you know, I work in finance.” He tugged on his earlobe. “You guys ever want any financial tips, you know where to come.” He rubbed his cheeks and looked away.
Prosper and Paris looked at Ty’s battered old car. Prosper knew Ty really worked in a bakery, but he wasn’t going to shatter the man’s pretence. He wasn’t hurting anyone, so what did it matter?
“Finance.” Paris nodded his head, lips pursed.
Prosper shot him a warning look and Paris turned away and coughed.
A moment later, another vehicle arrived. Jerel Jones in his Ford Puma gave a thumbs up as he parked.
Jerel exited his vehicle with a natural spring in his step. Although only just tall enough, he joined the army straight out of school. His stocky frame stretched the seams of his grey T-shirt, his calves the size of most people’s thighs. The sun glinted off his baldpate. Thick eyebrows shaded his dark eyes and his large lips looked pensive.
When he reached Prosper, he shook his hand with a grip that could crush coconuts, maintaining the hold for a few seconds. “Good to see you, man. How long has it been?”
Prosper frowned as he thought. “It was years ago, before I got married anyway.”
“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t make it to the wedding, but I was stationed in Germany at the time I think. So how is the wife? You’ll have to introduce me now I’m back. We’ll all have to arrange a night out, catch up, you know?”
“So you’ve left the army now then?” Prosper asked as Jerel moved to greet the others.
“Yeah, decided to move back to the hometown.”
He shook Paris’ hand and then Ty's. “Good to see all of you.”
“Ty thinks he might have been followed,” Paris said.
Jerel sucked his lips in. “Got to be careful, Ty. You never know who’s out there.”
“Too right,” Ty replied. He nodded his head like a sycophant and looked at Prosper and Paris as though Jerel vindicated him.
When Ty wasn’t looking, Jerel grinned at Prosper and Paris and raised his eyebrows in disbelief as if to say ‘some things never change.’
As they made idle chitchat, a black, Jeep Grand Cherokee with tinted windows arrived and parked. Wolfe Weaver stepped out of the vehicle, his long black hair a curtain in front of his face. Bare to the waist, he displayed corrugated abdominal muscles. A black ethnic tattoo on his shoulder looked like a dark claw grabbing him from behind.
When they were young, Wolfe had been the one to suggest they form a band, searching for the right outlet for his creative talents – even the hearts he used to gouge into trees with his trusty penknife were stylised – and he eventually found his niche in the world of sculpture and art. He was always the wildcard in the pack, the one willing to go that little bit further, that little bit higher, that little bit deeper than anyone else.
Prosper had been to a couple of Wolfe’s art exhibitions, and he had to admit his sculptures were fantastic, the figures almost lifelike. However, during the exhibit, Wolfe took a photograph of each of his pieces, and then smashed the originals with a sledgehammer like someone possessed. People would then buy one of the fragments – an arm, a leg, or a head – along with a signed photograph of the original piece. And strangely enough, they sold well.
As he approached the group, Wolfe tossed his head back, his curtain of hair parting to reveal eyes that looked darker than ever. With cheeks as sculpted as his art, even the cleft in his chin resembled a chiselled out chunk. He maintained a wild, abandoned, devil-may-care look about him, but he was probably the richest of the group, and undoubtedly the most successful.
When he reached the group, he faked a punch to Prosper’s abdomen, then grinned and shook his hand, his other hand on Prosper’s shoulder. “Looking good,” he said before greeting the rest of the party.
They always greeted Prosper first. He wasn’t sure whether it was out of some perverse form of respect or pity.
Perhaps they still saw him as the fat teenage kid and felt sorry for him. It had taken Prosper a year to shed the weight – following a regimented diet and exercise program. Cigarettes replaced his usual chocolate snacks – but he still bore the stigma his weight had carried, and he still snacked on junk food when stressed; the exercise regime dropping from three days a week to the occasional once a week.
As he looked at his friends, Prosper recalled the times the Kult had been employed. No one had had any reason to request their help lately, but in the past, he had found the beatings strangely therapeutic, stress relieving, even exciting. He knew it was wrong, and he hadn’t called upon their services since school, but the others had, and he hadn’t refused. He owed them and was in too deep to back out. On those occasions, Prosper put aside his role of law enforcement officer.
In the Kult’s heyday, about six years ago, two men had been beaten up at Ty’s request when he worked in an engineering factory, although he claimed he had a senior position. They assaulted another man because he’d annoyed Paris by repeatedly throwing rubbish into his garden. Even Wolfe had requested their help, although he never divulged why.
But even though he had been away for a long time, this was the first time Prosper recalled Jerel ever asking for their help.
“So what is it you need? Who do you want beaten up?” Prosper asked.
Jerel swallowed and stared at each of them in turn, nodding his head, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t want anyone beaten up. I want someone killed.”
CHAPTER 12
A protracted silence ensued. Prosper waited for Jerel to laugh, to say he was joking, but his expression remained serious. Despite the heat, Prosper shivered.
Paris shook his head. “No way.”
“Way,” Jerel said.
Ty turned a pale shade of white and looked about ready to keel over and die. “Are you serious?”
Jerel nodded, his expression sombre.
“Kill someone,” Wolfe said. “That’s different.”
“Different.” Prosper raised his eyebrows, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly,” Jerel said, kicking a stone and sending it skimmi
ng into the ferns.
“We can’t go around bloody killing people.” Prosper’s head spun. He didn’t know if it was the heat or the proposal. He held his hand up. “Stop me if I’m stating the obvious, but you get sent to prison for things like that. Now tell me you’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m bloody joking?” Jerel looked around the group, his eyes narrowed. “We made a pact to help each other out, right?”
Everyone nodded, albeit Prosper more slowly than the others.
“Well, I need your help.”
“But not to kill someone,” Prosper said.
Jerel spat on the ground. “This is the first time I’ve ever asked you to do anything like this for me. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Carry on,” Wolfe prompted.
“Look, stop it now,” Prosper said. I can’t believe they are even contemplating this.
Wolfe shook his head. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“No. I don’t want to hear anymore. I’m a police officer, for Christ sake.”
“Prosper’s right,” Ty said, his eyes studying the trees as if he expected someone to jump out and arrest them.
“And what do you say, Paris?” Wolfe asked. “Yours is the deciding vote. Do we listen to what Jerel has to say, or do we abandon our pact?”
Paris looked around the group, holding eye contact with Prosper the longest. “It must be important or he wouldn’t ask. Let’s hear it then, Jez.”
Prosper held his hands up. “Hold on, you’re talking about goddamn murder, this isn’t a voting matter.”
“It is,” Wolfe snapped back. “We’ve done a lot together that’s not legal. I didn’t hear you complaining when we put Gary Smith in the hospital.”
“That was different. You didn’t kill him.”
“As good as.”
Prosper heard a plane flying high overhead, birdsong in the trees, the distant hum of traffic, common, recognisable sounds. Jerel’s request left him feeling far removed from the real world.
Prosper Snow Series Page 5