“The bastard’s around here somewhere. I know it.”
“What are you going to do to him, Brad?”
“I’m gonna crush his head. Do you hear me, hero man? Steel toecaps all over your face.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. They were fools. They’d seen films. Romper Stomper. Scum. Maybe some specialist stuff on the internet just for sick shaven headed bastards like them. But all that was crap, reality was where the shit flew high and hard or it counted for nothing. Dan waited another few seconds as the boys pressed in closer. He felt the tension in their breathing. He knew they were terrified. And they were right to be. Dan smiled, but no one could see it.
They drew level with the cupboard which hid him. Dan’s smile grew wider. He remembered the pain inflicted on him by the evil bastards who sliced his face in intricate detail, like it was a craft, like they were going to photograph their handiwork and stick it on Pinterest. Then he remembered, they had photographed his wounds. Half a breath. The skinheads came close.
Dan span on one heel and pivoted round into their faces, he was there, they knew it, but still they couldn’t see him. They could smell him, hear him, but he was the darkness. He thudded his other heel down onto the knee of one of the youths, a silhouette, and he heard the crunch as the knee gave way backwards. The scream was about to issue. Dan followed quickly with a straightforward punch, a right cross which drove straight through the young man’s jaw. It could have been enough to kill him. Dan hoped it wasn’t. The young man fell back unconscious with the scream stopped before it started. The other boy was beside Dan now, at his shoulder. He made a ham-fisted attempt to head butt Dan whilst he worked out how to cope with Dan’s brute force. But the head butt was a waste of time and effort. Dan was inside his arms now, the skinhead still turning to get another attempt in. Dan hammered his guts a few times, smacked his chin with a half-powered uppercut, and sent him sprawling. Grunts, the sounds of pain, stifled by the wind. Dan jumped on him. He guessed he had a minute at best. Dan was pure determination. He sprawled over the boy’s chest, his knees crunching down into the skinhead’s biceps.
“I could kill you right now. Give me an excuse and I’ll do that.”
He could see a pinprick of light in the skinhead’s eyes and hear his breath, smell his disgusting body odour.
“Don’t…”
“I have some questions. Answer me. Tell me the truth, and you’ll live. Lie to me, and I’ll kill you stone dead.”
In the worst of times past, Dan had made such threats before. Back then the threats had been empty. Right now, with the cold black feeling filling his head, followed by the sweet release of the violence, Dan wasn’t sure if his threats were empty now.
“Start talking, or I finish what I started. Five seconds.”
Dan waited and the brooding darkness closed in.
It was almost morning, the day before the by-election. The day before UKFirst would come to power and change the country forever. Dan was cold, but he didn’t care. Right now, he had cause to breathe. He wanted - he needed - to prove he still had it, that he had a purpose and talent as a private detective. For the first time in weeks, he was beginning to believe again. Cordy Farm was five men down now, and Dan knew a hell of a lot more than he’d known six hours ago. He knew a hell of a lot more than Eva and Jess did too. But there were still many unanswered questions. Peter Serge and Joe Merton ran the farm, and the old lunatic was pretty much confined to his house. The old man believed he had influence, but he had none. He was important only in his own mind. It turned out that Will Burton had been to the farm twice, visiting like a dignitary. The captured skinhead said that they had even put on a show for him. They’d been made to dress smart, to demonstrate their self-sufficiency on the farm, to show off the new mechanical and agricultural skills they’d all learned. But they didn’t spend any more time on that crap after Burton had left. They spent time huddled around laptops, learning the rules, the dogma, and the ideology of the skinhead. Especially the British, Union Jack idolising variety. And the rest of the time they were taught a mixture of hatred and violence. They were shown their enemies. All blacks, all Asians, all Muslims, all foreigners from Europe or further afield. Anyone non-white or who couldn’t speak the English language. Then there were the training sessions, led by Merton. He got them to follow the internet based physical training regime, and to apply it to the point they hurt each other. The training was deadly, a mixture of martial arts and out and out brute force, aiming for the weakest most vulnerable parts of the human body. Weapons were acceptable, but ruthless hand to hand combat was a speciality. Apparently Merton loved to demonstrate his prowess by fighting with them in the fields and on the gravel. Occasionally he would hurt a boy pretty bad. No, Jerry Burton was not one of them. And if the boys showed fear or a hint of disobedience, they were sent back to Curlon’s Foods for more long shifts of fun with processed meat. Curlon’s was a funnel for the skins, and it was a punishment. Dan had gleaned all that from the terrified skin in the barn inside within minutes of sitting on him. Dan asked the questions and the skin just kept talking, as quick as he could. It came in waves and Dan absorbed it all. Know your enemy. And still Dan hadn’t been satisfied. “Who attacked Jerry Burton?” He had asked.
The boy didn’t know. If he’d known he would have said.
“Where’s Coulson? The man from the college gym, you know him?”
The boy knew this one. Dan had to hit him hard to get it, but he got it.
Coulson was being kept at a house right at the edge of Cordy Farm’s sprawling, scrappy acres. Bingo. Dan escaped the centre of Cordy Farm with relative ease. They were scared now, running around looking for their own, reassuring themselves that everything was alright. But it was not alright and they knew it. So panic had been in the air. Dan used it to cloak himself. He jogged in the darkness, his feet padding on the grass so he would be unheard. He kept away from the barns and the house, where they were concentrating all their efforts, and ran in the open darkness where there was no light at all. He kept running in the direction of the scrubland at the edge of the field beyond Cordy Farm, where he had hidden his car. He got there, looked at it once, and then he walked away. He had enjoyed the darkness, being its agent, delivering bad news for those who deserved every bit of it. Dan felt no remorse. He had looked back to the glow of the farm, and then far to the left, to the small distant lump of the cottage where the skin said Coulson was holed up. There was time. Whatever the bastards did now, Dan was confident he had them where he wanted them. He felt confident. He felt in charge, and within those feelings, he also knew he felt just a little crazy too. He’d been walking and moving in the cold for hours by the time the first hint of dawn began to crawl up the horizon. He knew he was supposed to be tired, but he wasn’t tired in the least. He only felt cold, but the wind and the noise was refreshing. The night had been kind. It hadn’t rained, and now he intended to drain the last of the night’s resources to finish off the mission. For himself. For Eva. He had waited a short distance from the cottage. He’d circled it. Two exits, front and back. A small country cottage, red brick, and dilapidated. A two up, two down place. An unknown amount of people staying there, and one captive, Coulson.
When the horizon beyond the industrial landscape of Corringham turned a hint of blue, Dan moved. He jogged to the doors. Both were locked. They must have received a call about the mess he’d made back at Cordy Farm across the way. Fair enough. He checked the windows next, and again, he found each one locked. These people were stupid, but they were not complete idiots. The cottage was in bad shape. Dan circled the house again like a predator, and began to push his fingers against the wooden surface of the window frames. The wooden frame was tender and rotten. He made his way around the back and pressed the window frames there, and his fingers sunk in with ease. The wood felt like wet tissue paper around his fingers. He felt the flat edge of the window pane gently trapped in the rotten wood, and then he smiled and set to work, gouging, scraping, peeling the gun
ge of rot away from the glass, exposing the edge of the glass all the way round on three sides. He worked quietly, but when the frames were all but gone, it was truly time to take a risk. He put his fingers the other side of the glass, and tugged carefully. The glass shifted. The rotten wood at the top of the glass squirmed, and then silently gave. He slid it down, and now the wind and the cold would announce his arrival to any in the room beyond him. Dan thought how appropriate it was that the last cold of the night would let the inhabitants know that the end had come.
He was still fit from regular training at the Boxing club. Dan pulled his weight through the gap, his slim frame and light legs following after with minimal noise. The dark room was small and smelt damp. His feet were on a springy old sofa. He looked around the room. It was pitch black. He closed his eyes and opened them again to get accustomed. There was no one down here, but he heard movement in the next room, like someone rolling over in bed. The changing temperature of the house or maybe the sound of wind must have started to disturb them. Dan slid down on the floor, his feet pressing into a thick rug. The place was clearly old fashioned. He could feel the edges of the rug over a bare wooden floor. Coulson was somewhere in here. He walked, following the room around the corner, to two doors. One must have been the door to the room with the creaking bed. Dan gently tested the handle for noise. It bent easily, and without a hint of a squeak. He held his breath as he pushed the door open, and felt the wind push in with him. As if from a hypnotic trance, the figure in the bed sat bolt upright. It was another skinhead, his age difficult to gather, but his silhouette was thin and muscular. Dan nodded as panic set into the silhouette. Dan leapt at the bed as the skinhead dived out of it, and now the skin was partly hanging out of the bed, and partly pinned down. “It’s you! It’s him!” called the youth. Dan said nothing, but leaned down over the youth and mashed his face into the floor where it hung. Then he picked up the young man’s head and clattered it down into the floorboards. The youth’s body went slack. There was noise upstairs, and shouting. Dan ran his hand under the bed to find what the skin had been going for. There. He grabbed a leather wrapped handle, and a long shining golf putter came up with him. Dan dumped the body back in the bed and covered it with the duvet. He slid back quickly and shut the door. Out into the room where he’d started, and he aimed to hide. There was only one place, but it was a good start. Where the room opened out from the tiny walkway by two doors and a stairwell, there was a sliver of wall to hide behind. There was an urgent padding of feet upstairs, chatter and then silence.
“Dom? Dom, you all right down there?”
Dan didn’t say a word. Silence said enough. The people upstairs were silent too, but the staircase was old, and it creaked. Dan felt the hair stand up on his neck and his forearms. He felt a smile creep across his face, and he knew he was one with the darkness again. Soon the darkness would be gone, but there was enough left to finish this. The stairs creaked. Lower. Nearer. Then he heard the first pad of feet on the hallway floor. So very near. Whoever it was would be armed. Whoever it was would go for Dom’s bedroom door first.
Dan turned his head, unseen. From the corner of his eye he saw the man go for the door, slowly. Down by his side there was a glint of a knife maybe. Dan felt there was more than one man, but he couldn’t risk looking around far enough to see the other. The first one went into the room. By now Dan guessed they would be almost certain they had company. The cold air and wind in the room told its own story.
“Dom? You all right?”
It was as good a time as any. Dan swung around and saw the man half in the doorway and half out. The first man was not yet aware of him in that split second, but the bigger man behind saw Dan clearly. Their eyes met. Dan lunged without swinging and clattered the golf club into the top of the first man’s spine, between his shoulder blades. The knife fell from his hands, and he groaned, falling forward, winded and shocked to the core. Dan moved and leapt over his legs, landing with all his weight on the skinhead’s back to reach the second man. The second man was tense, but ready.
One fist was up, protecting his face. Where was the other? Drawing a weapon of course. Dan moved backwards, anticipating the move, as the skin lunged forward with a knife.
“They’ll kill you for this. You know that don’t you?”
Dan smiled. “But you won’t. You’ll be dead already.”
The man’s eyes grew wide in the darkness. He could hear the promise, the truth in Dan’s words.
“But you’re a private detective. You wouldn’t kill people.”
“I was a private detective. Now I’m nothing. Nothing except angry.”
Dan span the club so it came down on the blade arm, forcing it downwards. The arm came free and the attacker meant to use the sudden momentum to lunge again, but Dan knew instinctively where the man’s weight was going. He stepped aside, and pulled the man’s shoulder forwards. He fell forward, groaning in fear because he knew he was exposed and vulnerable before a mad man. He landed hard on his chin and lay there, the wind whipping the curtains and the ornaments all around them as if the room was caught in a storm.
“Don’t kill me.”
“Why not? You people are planning to kill, aren’t you? You’re all soldiers, aren’t you? Well this is the war you signed up for. This is the first shot. This world is full of people like me who hate people like you and what you stand for. You push us and we’ll explode in your face.”
“Don’t. Please. I’ve got family.”
It all clicked in that moment. Epiphany. Pure and simple, new insight dropped into his head like it had always been there. Dan moved to the fallen man in the doorway who was beginning to writhe and flail. He grabbed the man’s head and crashed it down once solidly. He went out cold once again. Then Dan turned back, and the man on the floor whined in fear. Dan dropped to his knees and turned the man over. As the man turned, he made a last desperate stab with a small knife. It cut through Dan’s leather jacket, catching his arm underneath. Dan shrugged it off, and smashed his fist through the man’s jaw. There was a cracking noise, and the man groaned in pain.
“You see this?” Dan showed the man in the floor the stump where his little finger had been cut off in the darkness last summer.
“I know what pain feels like. And it doesn’t scare me at all. But all this hate, all this evil scares me to hell. And you’re a part of it.” Dan stood and searched for a light switch. They were no threat anymore. The light came on, and the man from the gym, Coulson was lying on the floor holding his jaw, a trickle of blood coming from his mouth.
“Don’t kill me…” he moaned.
“I want to kill all of you. You’re in this up to your neck. You lied about Jerry Burton not being at the gym that day, the day of his attack, and then you tried to cover it up. Then because you were automatically implicated in the attack, you arranged to be kidnapped so it looked like you were a victim being put under pressure to do the wrong thing. But no, Coulson, you and all of this. It’s all the wrong thing. All of it. I need to know everything right now and you better tell me.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can and you will.”
“I’ve sworn.”
“I will break you where you lie. I’ll break you like porcelain.”
Dan grinned at him and showed him the stump of his finger. It was funny. He still felt the wetness of the blood and the fire of the pain where his finger should have been. Not all the time, sometimes there was just numbness, and sometimes there was pain. Funny. He showed Coulson the stump.
“I can take one of your fingers off, if you like. Just like mine. Do you want that?”
“Please… My wife... My kids.”
“You left your wife imagining you’ve been kidnapped, so don’t go playing the wife card.” Dan picked up the short blade Coulson had sliced his jacket with. He let it glint in the electric light, and then he pressed it gently to the skin beneath Coulson’s eye. Coulson’s breathing changed. He began to whimper. The knife pres
sed up a thin bloom of dark blood. Dan stopped smiling.. The darkness was all around him, but he was waking up. There was bird chatter on the wind. Dawn was coming.
“Did these boys attack Jerry Burton?”
Coulson shook his head.
“But you know who did. I can see it. You’re coming with me.”
“What?”
“Don’t fret, Coulson. Loosen up and come with me I’m going to help you confess.”
As Dan dragged the tearful Coulson up from the floor, he planted a few hard blows into his stomach and one to his solar plexus to keep him loose and compliant. He heaved the man to his feet. “Walk. You can walk.” Dan knew he’d crossed the line, and that now all the lines were blurred in his head. All he knew was that the darkness needed to come out. He was supposed to be out here proving to Eva that she was wrong, that he could hack it. But he’d destroyed a third of the crew of Cordy Farm. Some of them were maybe injured for life. Just like he’d told Coulson, the closet skinhead, he’d gone off like a bomb. It was done. There was nothing he could do about it. He’d blown his whole life wide apart. But at least he’d gotten Coulson as a trophy. And now his options were diminishing, he could only think about Serge. One way or another Peter Serge loomed large on Dan Bradley’s horizon.
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