The Rule of Fear

by Luke Delaney

King nodded without looking away from her. ‘How come you’re here?’ he asked.

  ‘Night Duty CID called me,’ he explained. ‘I’m covering for the DI, so when this happened …’ He stopped, as if he didn’t need to spell it out. ‘She’s a good girl and a good cop,’ he continued. ‘Only seemed right to come and see her for myself.’

  King just nodded. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘They think she’s going to be OK,’ Marino assured him. ‘They’re still in and out of here every few minutes, but the major panic seems to be over. It’s going to take her a while though,’ he sighed. ‘The cuts and broken bones will take a few months, but the other stuff …’ King knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘Was she …’ He struggled to say the word.

  ‘No,’ Marino quickly answered. ‘We don’t think it went that far. But she was naked when they found her. Her torn-up uniform was found close by, along with the rest of her equipment.’

  ‘Fuck,’ King cursed again as he swallowed the rising nausea back down – the thought of some foul basement-dwelling sex offender touching her making him feel sick to his core. ‘The Night Duty Inspector said you already had two in custody?’

  ‘We do,’ Marino answered. ‘Renita was smart enough to call in where and what she was doing. When they couldn’t get her on the PR they sent the troops to find her. Our suspects were still having their … fun when the first units on scene sneaked up on them and caught them in the act – although one still managed to get away in the confusion that followed. It’s pretty dark down there.’

  ‘Who?’ King demanded.

  ‘The two arrested?’ Marino clarified. King just nodded. ‘Lucas Dyson and Robbie Jones.’

  King looked confused. ‘Dyson and Jones?’ he checked. ‘This isn’t their form. What the hell were they thinking? They’re lazy, vicious parasites with their tin-pot protection racket, but this?’

  ‘Probably not thinking at all,’ Marino explained. ‘They were pissed and stoned when the uniforms brought them in. Didn’t even hide their faces or wear gloves … or condoms for that matter. If it had gone any further they would have left us a DNA goldmine. Probably already have.’ He registered the look of distaste on King’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he apologized.

  ‘And if it was Dyson and Jones it doesn’t take a genius to work out the one who got away was Ronnie Butler,’ King told him. ‘Where one goes they all go.’

  ‘Probably,’ Marino agreed, ‘but the troops who were on scene can’t … won’t swear to it.’

  ‘Pricks,’ he complained. ‘By-the-book pricks.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Marino reminded him, ‘it’s dark down there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ King said, without sounding like he accepted it. ‘I suppose it must have been.’

  Marino could hear the vengeance in his voice. ‘Don’t get any stupid ideas,’ he warned King. ‘We’ll catch up with Butler and—’

  ‘And what?’ King cut him dead. ‘You’ll charge him with assault and maybe he’ll get convicted and maybe he won’t. You said it yourself – it was dark down there.’

  ‘There’ll be other evidence. Forensics for one.’

  ‘So he gets convicted, so what?’ King raised his voice. ‘And gets two, maybe three years in a young offenders institution. Out in eighteen months – bragging to his lowlife friends about what he did to a cop.’

  ‘Our job’s to catch them,’ Marino reminded him. ‘Not to decide on their punishment.’

  ‘But she’s one of our own,’ King snarled.

  ‘You’ve got to put it out of your mind, son,’ Marino warned him, getting to his feet. ‘Right now, our job is to find him. Use your sources on the estate to find out what you can. I’ll give you a minute alone,’ he finished and walked quietly from the fabric cubicle.

  Once King was as sure as he could be that they were alone he leaned in close to Renita – his lips so close to her ear that he could feel her hair touching his lips. ‘Who did this to you?’ he whispered, but she remained still, her peaceful breathing the only movement. ‘Renita,’ he tried again. As sure as he was that it was Butler, he needed to be certain before he unleashed his justice – his revenge. ‘Tell me who did this to you. Tell me who did it and I’ll make them pay. I’ll make them suffer more than they could ever imagine.’

  Her eyes fired open without warning and her body started to convulse as she remembered what had happened – unsure if she was still trapped in the underground garages with her rancid, verminous attackers, their fingers clawing at her clothes and skin as they fumbled at the strings of their own tracksuit trousers. She raised her hands to fend off the assailants only she could see, threatening to pull the drip from her arm and the tubes from her nose.

  ‘Take it easy,’ King whispered, putting his hands on her shoulders and easing her back onto the pillow. ‘Take it easy. It’s me – Jack.’ She seemed to relax a little at the sound of his voice, but he could still see the panic in her face. ‘You’re all right now, Renita. You’re in hospital. You’re safe.’ Still she looked terrified and confused, her entire body trembling as she tried to part her cracked and bloodied lips. ‘Wait a second,’ he told her as he picked up the beaker of water next to her and tipped some through the straw and onto her lips, breaking the glue of blood. After a few seconds she was able to open her mouth slightly and speak almost inaudibly. It was little more than a rasp, but with his ear so close to her lips he could just about hear what she was saying.

  ‘I can’t see,’ she was barely able to say.

  King swallowed hard before answering – her pain and suffering seeping deep inside him, stoking his fury for revenge. ‘Your eyes are badly swollen,’ he told her, looking away for a second to compose himself. ‘When the swelling goes down you should be able to see again.’ She managed the faintest of nods to let him know she understood. King looked around the cubicle to ensure they were still alone. ‘Listen,’ he hissed in her ear. ‘We already got two of them. Dyson and Jones.’ Her breathing instantly became more frantic and irregular at the sound of their names. He gave her a few seconds to calm down before continuing – once again quickly glancing over his shoulder at the empty room. ‘But there was another, right? Who was the other?’ he asked, but she couldn’t seem to answer. ‘Who was the other, Renita?’ he asked more urgently – desperately. ‘I have to hear you say it.’

  Her lips parted just enough for the words to escape. ‘Butler,’ she told him in the weakest of voices. ‘Ronnie Butler.’

  ‘Good,’ he told her, nodding his head as he watched her drift back into unconsciousness. ‘Good.’ He straightened and stood staring at her for a while before leaving the cubicle, only briefly stopping to tell her uniformed guards she was asleep now and not to be disturbed by anyone but the medical staff. Once he’d made his way outside to the ambulance bays he pulled out his mobile and speed-dialled O’Neil’s number. Addicts like O’Neil didn’t live by the time routines of normal people and King knew he was just as likely to be awake as in a crack- or heroin-fuelled stupor. After a long while his call was finally answered by an alert-sounding voice. King wondered what he’d disturbed.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s me,’ King told him. ‘You recognize my voice?’

  ‘Yeah,’ O’Neil assured him. ‘It’s—’

  ‘Don’t say my name,’ King silenced him. ‘Just say if you recognize my voice.’

  ‘Yeah,’ O’Neil replied, ‘I recognize your voice. What d’you want? What fucking time is it anyway?’

  ‘Information,’ King kept him on mission.

  ‘About what?’ O’Neil nervously asked.

  ‘Ronnie Butler,’ King said. ‘Where is he?’

  There was a pause before O’Neil answered. ‘This something to do with what happened to that lady copper?’

  ‘You know something?’ King pressed.

  ‘I heard something bad happened to her,’ O’Neil admitted. ‘Word spreads fast when bad shit like that happens.’

  ‘Butler?’ King reminded him. ‘Whe
re is he?’

  ‘He’ll be where he always goes when he’s trying to keep his head down,’ O’Neil explained. ‘Flopped down at Tanya Murphy’s – an old girlfriend of his.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘17 Clifford House – on the Grove Wood.’

  King hung up without another word. He needed to wake the Unit.

  Ronnie Butler was in a deep, peaceful sleep – the consequences of his actions the night before not making even the slightest scratch on his conscience as he dreamed of money and power, twitching with pleasure as his dream became increasingly debauched – like a cat dreaming of hunting. A second later his fantasy was destroyed as the solid door of the fifth-floor flat exploded inwards and the heavy feet of men came running across towards him.

  Instinctively he was wide awake and rolling out of the squalid bed he shared with Tanya Murphy and grabbing the baseball bat he always kept close to hand. He sprang to his feet just in time to see the three uniformed cops come running towards him across the bedroom. He pulled the bat back to take a swing at the first of them, but Williams was toofast – catching him flush on the chin with the punch from a gloved fist, knocking Butler back onto the bed where he landed on top of Murphy, who was by now screaming, clutching the filthy sheet to hide her pale nakedness.

  Before Butler could recover, King lifted him from the bed, slammed him into the nearest wall and punched him hard in the solar plexus – forcing every inch of air from his body with one strike before stepping back and watching him slide down the wall to the floor. King turned to Murphy who’d fallen silent as she watched the scene unfolding before her frightened and confused eyes.

  ‘Get out,’ he ordered. She looked to the others for support but they gave her none. ‘Get out,’ King repeated, louder this time, sending her fleeing from the room with the sheet she clung to trailing like a royal wedding dress.

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ Butler panted. ‘Arrest me. See if I give a fuck. I hear it was dark in the garages. Difficult to make a positive ID.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ King agreed, ‘but there’ll be more than that. Forensics. DNA. Fingerprints. You and your boys weren’t exactly careful.’

  ‘Yeah and?’ Butler shrugged – smiling now despite the pain. ‘So what? That pig bitch has been begging for it since she came here. What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know? Yeah, man, she’s a proper dirty whore. Begged us to fuck her – all three of us together, dirty bitch.’

  ‘Just keep talking, Butler,’ King encouraged him. ‘It’ll just make it all the sweeter.’

  ‘Make what all the sweeter?’ Butler smiled. ‘You think I’m worried about being arrested by you – just because you’ve got half the estate running scared? Fuck you. Go on – arrest me.’

  ‘Arrest,’ King replied, faking a confused look. ‘Who said anything about arresting you? We’re here to make you pay, Butler. Really pay.’

  The smile slipped from Butler’s face as he watched King and Williams adjusting their leather gloves. ‘What you talking about? You gotta arrest me.’

  ‘You thought what you did to her sent us a message?’ King asked, moving ever closer to Butler as he picked himself off the floor. ‘Well, this is how we deliver a message.’

  Butler tried to duck the punch, but it was too fast and too accurate, catching him on the cheekbone and sending him spinning, although he kept his feet. ‘Wait,’ he managed to plead, a split second before King’s other fist piled into his nose, fracturing the bone instantly and sending a thick spray of blood flying across the room.

  Butler didn’t speak again as King and Williams punched and kicked him to the ground and took it in turns to brutally beat him, hitting almost every inch on his body – the only sounds he made small, pathetic whimpering pleas until he could barely even manage that. Only when the fog of hate and revenge began to clear did King realize that Brown wasn’t joining in and stop the savage assault. He took a few seconds to get his breath back before he could speak. ‘Don’t you want some of this?’ he asked the pale-looking Brown.

  ‘He’s had enough,’ Brown told him. ‘Let’s just arrest him and get him out of here – get our stories straight on how he got his injuries, although fuck knows how we’re gonna do that.’

  ‘Arrest him?’ King almost laughed. ‘Weren’t you listening? I said we’re not here to arrest him so some court can give him a slap on the wrist. We’re here for justice. Justice for Renita.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Brown said, looking sick. ‘What is this?’

  ‘You heard him,’ King answered, moving close to Brown. ‘Heard what this slag said about her. He needs to fucking pay.’

  ‘He’s paid,’ Brown raised his voice. ‘Enough’s enough.’

  ‘What?’ King snapped back. ‘You know what they did to her.’

  ‘I know,’ Brown reminded him.

  ‘For all we know they could have raped her.’

  ‘That’s not what the CID are saying,’ Brown argued.

  ‘They know fuck all,’ King insisted, ‘and even if they did they wouldn’t tell us. This is for Renita, Davey. This is for all of us. We don’t do this and every slag out there will consider us fair game. The war will be lost.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Brown said again, but King could sense a weakening.

  ‘How you gonna feel when you have to look in Renita’s eyes knowing you did nothing?’ King kept at him. ‘That you bottled it.’

  ‘I’m not bottling anything,’ Brown fought back.

  ‘Then make him pay,’ King demanded. ‘Leave your mark.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Brown shook his head.

  ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ King told him – his eyes wide with anticipation as Brown began to move to the still unmoving Butler. ‘Do it, Davey. Do it.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Brown cursed as he half-heartedly kicked Butler in the ribs, making him whimper slightly.

  ‘Again,’ King encouraged. ‘They were probably going to kill her. They didn’t hide their faces, remember? Because they weren’t going to leave a live witness to identify them. Now again.’ Brown did as he was told and kicked out again – harder this time. ‘Again,’ King barked. ‘Harder.’ Brown did as he was told. ‘Again,’ King cheered as Brown increased the rate and intensity of his blows. ‘Good,’ King sneered and joined in the beating as Williams stepped back and left them to it – Butler’s body rocking with every new kick to his body and head.

  Finally, through tiredness as much as anything, King stopped his assault and pulled Brown away from the bleeding, swollen wreck that Butler now was. ‘That’s enough,’ he panted. ‘Don’t want to kill the fucker.’ Brown turned away from the body on the floor and looked as if he was going to be sick. ‘Danny,’ King said. ‘Get me some water from the kitchen.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Just do it,’ King demanded. ‘A bottle, a glass – it doesn’t matter.’ Williams pulled a face and headed off as King used his foot to roll Butler onto his side before squatting next to him to make sure he was still alive. Brown realized what he was doing.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t tell me the bastard’s dead.’

  ‘Course he’s not,’ King assured him. ‘You know what these fuckers are like. Bastards are almost impossible to kill.’

  Williams re-entered the room carrying an old pint glass filled with water. ‘You really going to drink this?’ he asked, pulling a face of disgust.

  ‘It’s not to drink, you muppet,’ King explained. ‘Give it here,’ he told him and took the glass. He stood directly over Butler’s head and tipped the contents on his face, bringing him back to life as if he’d been electrocuted – his eyes firing open back into his nightmare as his back arched impossibly – slumping still again once his brain told his body he was too badly hurt to move, though his swollen eyes somehow managed to stay open.

  King leaned in as close to his face as he could bear before speaking. ‘Sooner or later the CID are gonna catch up with you. They’re go
nna want to know what happened to you. You mention our names, it’s going to be bad for you. You tell anyone it was us I’ll put you in a shallow grave. Understand?’ Butler somehow managed to nod that he understood before his eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out – blood still streaming from his mouth, nose and ears. King straightened and gave him one last stamp on the side of the head before spitting on him. ‘Cunt,’ was all he said as he headed for the door, the others following behind him, forever tied to him. Now they were inextricably in it together. They were truly King’s men.

  Only a few minutes later they’d made it safely across the estate to the basement area underneath Millander Walk where days before King and Renita had discovered the children preparing a joint. Now the three of them walked the main area of the underground room looking deflated and tired – the hate and anger all spent and left in a bloody mess on the floor of Butler’s hideaway flat. Once they reached the open space King turned on a couple of electric lamps – the kind used for camping. In the eerie light they could see that King had already been busy preparing things.

  ‘Get your shirts and gloves off,’ he told them, already unbuttoning his own, ‘and put them in the bin liner – epaulettes as well. Use these to wash the blood off yourselves,’ he instructed them pointing to a tray of plastic water bottles, ‘and then put the empty bottles in the bin liner as well.’

  They all did as King had planned, pouring water over their hands and forearms until they were clean enough to use their hands to wash the blood sprays from their faces. Finally they all stood bare-chested in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Brown told them, shaking his head as he looked at himself and his co-conspirators shining with wetness in what light there was. ‘What the fuck have we done?’

  ‘What we had to,’ King assured him.

  ‘Had to?’ Brown said. ‘We didn’t have to do this.’

  ‘Yes we did,’ King snapped at him a little. ‘What they did to Renita was a challenge. It was them letting us know everything’s changed. No one’s playing by the rules any more. We had to hit back.’