Bad Men

by Allan Guthrie

  Memory.

  No, nothing.

  "You with us, Jesus?"

  The guy – Wallace, that was it – face in his face.

  And there he was, tied down on two planks of wood. He knew that. Felt okay so far. What was all the fuss about?

  The end. This was. For him.

  B-bam, b-bam, b-bam. Heartbeat, or was he on a train?

  B-bam, b-bam, b-bam.

  Heartbeat. No train.

  More crying. Louder. Wailing, that was the word. And then, "No."

  Then: whack.

  Took a moment to register and then the pain shot through him. Came from the centre of his palm. An intense ache like a giant wasp had stung him. And the heat. His hand was burning.

  Whack.

  Gonna lose it, gonna fade out. The drugs wouldn't let him.

  Whack.

  And it huuuuuurt like a fucking bitch.

  He yelled.

  Wallace said, "That's one hand."

  Whack.

  No time to get used to it. The other hand, yeah, done. He looked up, saw the nailhead embedded in his palm and spewed.

  "You dirty fucker. Got some of that over my shoes."

  Jesus roared, as much in rage as in pain.

  "You got nothing else to say?"

  Whack.

  Gasps, "Ah, ah, ah," didn't help but they were necessary.

  Whack.

  When pain gets this bad it's almost funny.

  Whack, whack.

  He screamed.

  "Oh, shut up, Jesus. That's the easy part. Now here's where we might have a bit of a struggle. Got to reload the fucker with some big fuck-off nails. Look at the size of these beauties."

  Jesus didn't want to look, but somehow his head turned to face Wallace.

  The nail gun was black and yellow, wasp black, wasp yellow. Wallace was fiddling with the nail magazine, which slotted at an angle underneath. Jesus caught a glimpse of one of the nails and it was fucking massive. He yelled again at the pain in his hands. Struggled, but stopped cause it hurt too much. And then he yelled at the thought of the pain he was yet to experience.

  Wallace said, "Nail's got to be big enough to get through both your feet."

  Jesus yelled again, didn't stop, his mouth wide open, so that when Wallace finished loading the gun he had to shout to be heard. "Take a deep breath, you dirty little prick," Wallace said. "This is gonna hurt."

  Pearce tried not to watch, tried not to listen. Seeing Jesus being murdered destroyed any credibility Wallace's claim that he hadn't killed Hilda might otherwise have had. Of course Wallace had killed Hilda. He was clearly a sadistic fucker. And, anyway, if Wallace hadn't killed him, then who the fuck had?

  Pearce had to back off. He was getting emotional about this. He had to detach himself, had to keep thinking straight for as long as he could. Detach. Come on.

  Jesus meant nothing to him. Okay, Pearce didn't particularly like to see another human being crucified, but that was ultimately between Wallace and the law. But Wallace had made Pearce sip some drugged tea and Pearce hated drugs. And Wallace had killed Pearce's dog. And that's the main reason Pearce was raging.

  But this too. He couldn't deny it. He didn't want to hear it. There it was again. Another nail thumping into Jesus's foot. And that fucking infernal screaming.

  De-fucking-tach.

  Cat & Dog Home.

  "Kind of breed is it?"

  "A terrier. Dandie Dinmont. You don't see too many of them about."

  "Why's that?"

  "Dunno. They're expensive."

  "Yeah?"

  "Show dogs."

  "You'd have thought people would have been scrabbling to get their hands on a little runt like this."

  "He'd have gone in a flash if it wasn't for the ... leg."

  Yeah, so he had a missing leg. So fucking what? "He can get around okay, though? He's not in pain?"

  "The leg was amputated a long time ago. An old war wound. He arrived here like that. Seems to be perfectly at home on just the three."

  Pearce reached down, stroked the little bastard's head. The dog was predominantly white with brown patches running down his spine. Had a barrel-shaped chest like a Dachshund. A feisty-looking little fucker.

  "I think he likes you," the girl said.

  "You think so?"

  There was something going on, now. Wallace was heaving the cross off the floor, lifting it onto his shoulder, dragging it towards the wall. Jesus was yelling louder.

  "You'll be okay for a while yet," Wallace shouted. "I did my homework. I'm going to lean the cross against the wall. That way your chest won't cave in, and you won't die of suffocation. Cause that would be a shame. I want this to be as prolonged as possible."

  He swung the cross back against the wall and it hit with a dull thwack against the egg cartons, which must have absorbed some of the jarring at least. Wallace straightened it up, looked at Pearce. "I'll leave the light on," he said, "so you can watch. I'm away to fetch someone else who needs to see this. I'm sure you could use a bit of company, right? She might even fuck you if you ask nicely."

  The door squeaked open. Slammed shut. Then Pearce heard the scrape of a bolt being drawn on the other side.

  Wallace was off to fetch May. Made sense now. Pearce's bench, the mattress, the restraints, they were here already. Pearce hadn't stopped to think about that. Wallace had been right, Pearce was a fucking fool. It had all been planned. But not for Pearce. If Pearce hadn't shown up, May would have been lying here instead. Maybe the one thing he'd done was buy her some time.

  Pearce looked towards Jesus and wished Wallace had turned the lights off. The only good thing was that maybe the adrenaline caused by Jesus's fear and pain might be stopping his head from being scrambled by the mushrooms. But that was probably wishful thinking. He looked pretty fucking scrambled.

  CRASH

  "You think I need this?" May said, eyeing her brother. She could totally do without all this crap right now. She fell out with her best friend, Joanne, last week. Fat tart always thought she was in the right. Reckoned May should own up, tell the truth. No chance of that, not now, especially after what Flash had just told her. So this would have been crap, anyway, with everything that had happened. But it was May's bad week on top of everything else and she just wanted to lie down with a hot water bottle over her belly and cry. Well, she was part of the way there. She was lying down. But she couldn't use a hot water bottle for obvious reasons. And she wasn't going to cry in front of her brother. Anyway, it was all a genuine mistake.

  Flash sat down on the bed next to her, sliding the knife back in its leather sheath. Cutey-pie growled at him and when May told Cutey-pie to behave he laid his head back down across her lap.

  "Better to be safe than sorry," Flash said.

  "What's going on, Flash? You all think I'm stupid or something but I know there's some serious shit going down. Tell me the truth."

  Flash said, "Just a precaution. First there was Louis, then Rodge." He shrugged. "So who knows?"

  "What do you mean, Louis?"

  Flash couldn't hold her gaze. He said, "Oh, well. You know."

  "I don't fucking know. Stop trying to cover up and tell me. What's going on? Why wouldn't you let me see Louis? It wasn't cause he'd been run over, was it? And you know who shot Rodge, don't you?"

  Flash told her the truth.

  She wasn't surprised. Wallace was a mean bastard, even though he'd always been pretty good to her. He'd got a bit frightening sometimes, right enough. Told her she couldn't leave him cause he didn't know what he'd do. Well, that was part of the reason she hadn't left him, wasn't it? She didn't leave him. He threw her out. But it wasn't a shock to find out he was still angry. She'd been entirely to blame. She knew that. "You think it was Wallace?" she said.

  "Well, everything points to him."

  "I fucking know it was him." She took the knife from Flash, slipped it in her handbag. "Why haven't you done anything?"

  "What do you mean?"
>
  "You know what I mean. Why haven't you gone round to Wallace's and killed the fucker?"

  "Well, he has a gun, doesn't he?"

  May said, "He never used to. When we were together he was more than happy with just his fists."

  Flash told her about Rodge's visit to Wallace's. Explained exactly what Rodge had intended. That it hadn't gone according to plan.

  "Rodge was going to do that for me?"

  Flash nodded. After a minute he said, "You okay?"

  "Leave me alone," she said.

  "I'm sorry about all this, May. It'll be fine."

  "I said, leave me the fuck alone." She paused. "Please, Flash."

  Flash got off the bed, shuffled towards the door, shoulders slumped.

  May really wished Brian hadn't done a runner. The very night she told him Wallace had found out about them shagging, that was him. Offski. Didn't even say goodbye. Claimed he was a hard man, but when push came to shove, he had no bottle at all. She could have used the cowardly poetry-writing bastard's help right now. That'd teach her to let a Jambo shag her. You couldn't trust Hearts fans.

  She opened her handbag, took out the knife Flash had just given her. Removed the sheath. The thin blade gleamed. The black plastic handle had a price sticker attached. Scottish Dirk, it said. Stainless-steel blade. £39.99. Fuck, that was a lot of money. And Flash had gone out and bought it specially for her. That was nice. She had a pair of brothers to die for, really. It had been a while since she'd had a present even if he'd no doubt bought it from a souvenir shop on the Royal Mile. She made a stabbing motion into the space in front of her. Felt good.

  "Hello, Dirk," she said to the knife.

  Brian. Shit. She missed him, especially now that Joanne wasnae speaking to her. She'd love to have shown him Dirk. She opened her handbag and took out the poem he had written for her when she told him she was pregnant. She'd found out that he'd written lots of poems, but this was the first one he'd ever shown anyone. She read it for the hundredth time. He may have done a runner like a total wanker once Wallace found out about them, but he was good at spelling and could make things rhyme. And it was sweet that he was so sure she was going to have a boy. She wondered where Brian had pissed off to. She was mad at him, of course, but she couldn't help hoping he was happy, wherever he was. The fucker.

  Wallace ran his fingers over his chest, then peeled back the corner of the final wax strip. Quickly. Aaaah.

  Inevitably, most people would view him as a head case. Wallace knew that and he didn't care. In fact, he liked it. Lots of hard cases were also head cases. Always helped your rep if people thought you were a psycho. He wore glasses, and hard men didn't wear glasses, so he had to work twice as hard to maintain his rep. Anyway, rep aside, he had reasons for what he did. Reasons which lay outside the grasp of the ordinary intellect. Okay, that was unfair. The ordinary intellect may well grasp the reasons, but it took a special sort of person to understand and an even more special one to sympathise. He'd thought May had understood. He thought they'd clicked. Soulmates. All that shite.

  Anyway, it was all May's fault, all this. Shagging that wee fuck he'd just crucified. And then getting fucking pregnant with that arsehole's kid. For Christ's sake. Wallace didn't want to dwell on that, cause it just made him angry and he didn't want to get so angry he killed her before she'd had a chance to see what he'd done to her boyfriend. And Pearce. What was Wallace going to do with him? Not much choice but to dispose of him as well. Couldn't very well let him go now. So that was May's fault too, in a round-about way. He hoped the bitch was proud of herself.

  Wallace dumped the wax strip in the bin, confident he was looking good. Well, sure, he looked beaten-up, Pearce having got in a couple of lucky blows, but the bruising made him more attractive, if anything. He wondered if he should call May. Just to find out where she was. But he knew she'd be at home. That crazy-arsed family of hers wouldn't let her out of their sight.

  Wallace started to button up his shirt. Stopped. Stared at the wedge-shaped white patch on his stomach. So big it had to be a birthmark. But it wasn't. That, folks, was a scar. And mighty proud he was of it, too. Proving a point to a friend of his.

  Held a scalding-hot steam iron there for thirty seconds without flinching.

  Only downside, these days hair didn't grow there, so he had to wax the surrounding area and he always did his chest too. Right. Splash on some aftershave and then off to get May.

  Jacob returned from the toilet. When he stepped over the kitchen threshold, he saw a vivid image of Rodge screaming in agony. No, it wasn't so much a picture. It had been dark that night when he heard the scream and his visual memory had thrown him the outline of a blurred figure, but that's not how it was. He didn't so much see Rodge as hear him. The scream. Deafening. Stunning. Even from the bedroom. But maybe it was the sound of the gunshots. Whatever it was, it was painfully loud. The combination. He could hear it now. Or was that the sound of blood rushing into his eardrums? Jacob felt as if someone was scrubbing his eardrums with a tiny cheese grater. He felt faint.

  He must have looked it too, cause Norrie asked him, "You okay, boss?"

  Cold sweat down his back now. Clammy forehead. The stale smell of scones from yesterday suddenly turning sickly. Felt like he'd eaten a dozen and he was faced with the prospect of having to eat the same again. Or what? Eh? What was he asking himself – what was – the sound of each shot blocking out Rodge's screams, there, and again, there, and he was waiting to hear the next one to cut off that demonic yelling once and for all, a final shot to the head, and there it came and Rodge was silent. Aye, that's how Jacob found him.

  Switched on the kitchen light and there was his son, unconscious in a pool of blood. But Jacob could still hear him, that yell gushing out of him.

  Of course, that final shot never came.

  "Stop it!" Jacob said. "Stop."

  But Rodge wasn't listening. Or maybe he couldn't hear because of the noise he was making.

  "Stop."

  No, this wasn't the way it had happened. Rodge had lost consciousness. The pain. His screaming. Not much pain. Liar. Okay. Lots of pain. Enough to – not for long, then. He'd lost consciousness. He'd lost consciousness. He'd lost. He'd. Lost. Lost. Oh, God.

  Norrie said, "You having a turn, Jake?"

  "I'm not," Jacob said, fighting to get the words out of his mouth, "having a turn." Whatever a turn was. "I'm fine." Said that easier. And Rodge's cries were fainter. "Just need to sit down a minute." Aye. Couldn't hear Rodge screaming now. He'd gone. Passed out.

  Rodge was in hospital, for goodness' sake. Safe in hospital. And Flash had just gone to visit him. His boys were safe.

  Where was May?

  Jacob sat down heavily at the table.

  Norrie stared at Jacob and said, "You sure you're okay?"

  Jacob breathed through his nose. Once. Twice. "Don't worry about me." Heart attack. Couldn't help but think it. The older you got, the more susceptible you were, and the more aware you were of your susceptibility. And he'd already had a scare. But there was no pain. Not in his chest. Not in his arm. He was okay. He wasn't going to die today.

  He was able to observe Norrie frowning, then saying, "You're really pale. You been this bad before?"

  Jacob raised his voice, or at least he tried to, but it didn't come out as loud as he'd intended. "Stop worrying about me." A bit of a whisper, in fact. He reached for his fags.

  "What did you say?"

  Jacob tried to speak again, but the effort was too much. He shook his head instead, lit a cigarette.

  "You should lie down. Shouldn't be smoking."

  "I'm alright." And, come to think of it, he was pretty near okay. A quick draw on his tab and he was even better. Couldn't hear a thing from Rodge. Just a roaring in the ears. No gunshots. No screaming. The light-headedness was disappearing. "Don't need to lie down. Probably just too hot. It's warm in here." The roaring was fading to a pleasant murmur. He'd just needed a smoke, probably.

  Norrie go
t to his feet and opened the window. "I'll run a cloth

  under the cold tap."

  Norrie's mobile phone started to ring. A trendy tune. Norrie liked to keep up with the kids, but it was all lost on Jacob. Norrie's hand dipped into his pocket and he took out his mobile and said, "Hi, May."

  May? Where was she? She shouldn't be out of their sight. Jacob asked Norrie.

  "In her room," Norrie said.

  Jacob couldn't believe kids these days. May was phoning Norrie from her room. Couldn't be bothered to walk to the kitchen.

  Norrie said, "Okay," and hung up. He looked at Jacob. "She found out about Wallace. Flash told her."

  That's why Flash had left in such a hurry. Something hard lodged in Jacob's throat. He didn't want May to get involved in this. On the other hand, she might be safer now she knew she was in danger. "I suppose it was bound to happen," Jacob said. "How did she take it?"

  "She says Wallace is a dead man."

  They sat in silence for a minute. Then Norrie said, "So, no word from Pearce?"

  Jacob shook his head. "Flash called him. His phone's off. Tried him at home. Answering machine. Something's happened. Flash called Wallace's work to speak to him. He wasn't there. Tried him at home and he picked up."

  Repeating this really forced it home: one way or another, Wallace had taken Pearce out.

  "You think Wallace killed him?" Norrie asked.

  "From what I know of Wallace," Jacob said, "that's a distinct possibility."

  A slight breeze tickled the back of Wallace's neck as he stood at the Baxters' front door wondering whether he should knock or go right ahead and kick the door in. Did it matter? Bunch of fuckwits inside wouldn't know what had hit them either way.

  He didn't know for sure who was inside, but he was prepared for May, her dad (Wallace's father-in-fucking-law), maybe that old retarded arsehole, Norrie, he hung around with, and probably Flash.

  Wallace took a deep breath, feeling the gun press against his spine.

  Okay, he'd made a decision. He'd knock. Break the door down and maybe a nosey neighbour would call the police. And whoever was inside didn't know he was here. He'd parked in a space a few doors down, which could be to his advantage.