She took another step forward, holding her handbag open for her husband to see. Four bags of cocaine, still heat-sealed in polythene covered bricks and nearly all of them pristine. The seriously depleted bag was now bandaged with sellotape.
Frankie twitched a little smile. “I want you back.”
She said, “I know. It’s been a mess.” She looked at the bodies sprawled on the floor, the flickers who’d tortured Callum to death Frankie had evened the score there.
She said, “I brought the boy I’ve been sleeping with.‘
“You brought this Hogie geezer?”
She nodded. Frankie snapped his shotgun up but held it loosely. He had one hand on the shortened barrel, the other on the stock and trigger but he wasn’t aiming. “So where is he?”
Cheb walked forward. When he was thirty inches from the barrel-end he said, “I am Hogie.”
Frankie stared down at him, “You?” Back to Susan, “Him?”
Susan nodded.
“The sick fuck who killed Cardiff?”
She shrugged, “I’ve got strange taste.”
Frankie took a short pace forward, his shotgun no more than two inches from the boy. All but chest to chest with the baldie dwarf as he looked him over. He didn’t believe it. His eyes wandered up, over to Hogie and then, slowly, all the way back down to Cheb.
“Cardiff described the geezer. He said he had blonde hair, something like Callum.” He locked his eyes onto Cheb’s. “Why’d you shave it off?”
Cheb said, “She liked the feel of the skin between her legs.”
“No way. I don’t fucking believe this.”
Cheb yelled, “I am Hogie and I claim my destiny.”
Frankie’s finger never left the trigger. As he squeezed, Cheb’s hand flashed upwards. As the first bullet thumped into him, he had the shiv blade hooked deep behind Frankie’s chest bone. He pushed again before the second bullet pounded him and he lost his grip. Frankie hardly seemed to notice. He stepped backwards as Cheb buckled and fell forwards. The only sign Frankie had been stabbed was the blue plastic tip of the shiv, poking half an inch out of his shirt. When the blood began trickling out, it was only a speck against the material.
All the while, he was staring at Hogie who had staggered forward a pace and was now trying to open his mouth. Slowly, dopily, the words came out: “No. I am Hogie.”
Frankie lifted an eyebrow, just a slight query. He seemed more distracted than anything. He let his gun swing, one-handed, to his side and rubbed his stomach with the other. He looked almost thoughtful as he stroked his hand upwards until his fingertips settled on the exposed blue stub of the shiv. He twisted it between his thumb and forefinger, as though it were another nipple sent to puzzle him. But even as Susan looked for a sign that he understood what was happening, the beetroot red of his face, the Spanish sun and the damage of high blood pressure, drained away. He was dying.
He dropped the shotgun and sank to his knees. Susan turned around and took Hogie’s hands; he was wobbling, too.
“What’s happened?”
She told him, “It was Cheb’s idea.”
When Cheb explained it to her, he had talked about the sun, about the Incas and Aztecs and blood and death and other things. But mostly, he ranted about sacrifice. He was an Olympic psychotic but he had a plan and wouldn’t do a thing unless she agreed to go through with it: right up to the moment of sacrifice when he would die with Hogie’s sins on his mind.
She said, “Don’t worry. He had a rational explanation.”
She couldn’t put it into words but she knew she understood. She had already sacrificed so much. Her son was dead and forgotten and, now, so was her husband. And all she had to show for it was Hogie. Who wasn’t worth a damn but was the reason she had gone through with it and was the only thing she wanted. So there was another sacrifice.
It was understandable that she had wanted him to suffer a little first. And, whether he realised it or not, at the last moment he had been willing to die for her.
THIRTY
Travelling first class inter-city to Manchester, a man had room to spread. Naz had taken up the whole of the table with his newspapers. He skidded one of the large-sized Sundays round one—eighty degrees so Mannie could look at the photograph.
Mannie said, “I’ve seen it.” He’d even read the copy inside.
“Yeah, but what do you think?”
He looked it over again, a shot of Naz in a telephoto blur, straddling his own shadow with his legs spread like he was getting it every night. If you looked carefully, you could even see two figures running around in the background; headless chickens, one with grey hair wearing a crombie overcoat, the other wearing his sister’s mac.
Naz tapped it, confidentially. “That’s the one.”
But he was on the front of every other paper too so he had plenty to choose from if he changed his mind.
The pictures of Naz had thrown the whole story off-centre. Mannie hadn’t yet read one report that made sense of the whole massacre, or the deaths before it. It had been easier to hype Naz’s image than to dig for the truth.
Naz didn’t agree. They’d argued about it for the best part of two hundred miles until Naz finally said, “Look, I know it don’t mean shit to you. You lost your whole family and that’s it. But getting my photo up there, it puts me on the same level as Jools. And that makes me feel better every time I remember the way I felt about her.”
So it wasn’t just an overnight, mismatched thrill. Told right, it stood as an epic of love. And there were quite a few of them, just waiting to be told.
First published in United Kingdom in 1997 by Serpent's Tail
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © 1997 by Nicholas Blincoe
The moral right of Nicholas Blincoe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781910859452
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Avenues and Alleyways”: Words and music by Mitch Murray and Peter Callender © Copyright 1973 ATV Music, London WC2. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. “Furne”: Words and music by Beck. © Copyright 1994 Cyanide Breathmint Music, USA BMG Music Publishing Limited, 69-79 Fulham High Street, London SW6. This arrangement © Copyright 1996 BMG Music Publishing Limited. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited All rights reserved. International copyright secured. “Moondance”: Words and music by Van Morrison. © Copyright 1970 Caledonia Soul Music, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., USA Warner/Chappell Music Publishing Ltd., London W1Y 3FA. Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd
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