The Rule of Fear

by Luke Delaney

  ‘What did you do, Jack?’

  ‘I started taking more painkillers than I should – with drink.’

  ‘Christ, Jack,’ she told him. ‘You can’t mess about with buprenorphine. It’s practically a class A drug.’

  ‘It worked for a while,’ he continued, ‘helped with the pain and the memories, but it stopped working – so I tried something else.’

  ‘What do you mean you tried something else? What did you take?’

  ‘At first just cannabis,’ he admitted.

  ‘At first?’ she seized on it – her voice growing increasingly concerned and disbelieving.

  ‘After that … crack, cocaine.’

  ‘My God, Jack. What have you done? No wonder you look like you do. Haven’t you seen what that stuff does to people? It destroys their lives.’

  ‘I know,’ he confessed, ‘but I needed something and it made me feel good. It took away the pain and made me forget.’

  ‘OK,’ Sara said, trying to rationalize the situation and find a solution – thinking like a cop. ‘If it’s just the drugs we can get you cleaned up without anyone knowing. I’ll call in and tell work you’re sick with flu. That’ll buy us a week to ten days to get whatever shit’s in your system out of you.’

  ‘It’s not just the drugs,’ he told her, hanging his head, unable to look her in the eye any more. ‘I’ve done … other things.’

  ‘What have you done, Jack?’ she asked – afraid of the answer she was about to be given. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I … I just wanted to shake things up,’ he tried to explain. ‘Put the fear back in the criminals and the thugs and the dealers. We roughed a few up – took their dope off them and … and planted it on others.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Sara slumped into the chair next to him. ‘What the hell were you thinking, Jack?’ They sat in silence with each other for a while before Sara spoke again. ‘Does anyone else know? Does anyone else know what you’ve been doing?’

  ‘Davey Brown,’ he told her. ‘Danny Williams.’

  ‘And Renita?’

  ‘No,’ he answered firmly. ‘She knows nothing, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Maybe Frank Marino knows,’ he said. ‘He’s been sniffing around my business for weeks. I think he has a grass on the estate.’

  ‘Your business?’ she questioned him. ‘D’you know what you sound like?’

  King ignored her as he purged himself through confession. ‘There’s more.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘Butler,’ he said, as if the name alone should be enough.

  ‘Butler?’ Sara shook her head – confused. ‘Ronnie Butler?’ He said nothing as she began to work it out for herself. ‘Jesus Christ, Jack. I heard rumours police were involved in what happened to him, but I thought it was just silly canteen whispers. When you said it was vigilantes I believed you. My God. Maybe I just wanted to believe you. Maybe I was fooling myself because I didn’t want to believe you could do something like that – now you’re telling me it was you?’

  ‘He deserved what he got,’ King retaliated – a fire flashing in his eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t for you to decide,’ she told him. ‘You should have left it to the CID – the courts. We don’t get to decide the punishment, Jack. We just catch the bastards. What happens to them after that is out of our hands.’

  ‘People were laughing at us,’ King argued. ‘I had to do something or they’d never have respected me.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Jack,’ she disagreed. ‘You’re wrong.’ Again they sat in silence, but Sara’s mind was racing as she recalled everything she’d heard about reported incidents on the estate until another name surfaced from the darkness. ‘Swinton,’ she accused him. ‘Alan Swinton. It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who beat him nearly to death.’

  He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. ‘It was a mistake,’ he answered.

  ‘Oh my God, Jack,’ she said, pinching her forehead between her thumb and fingers to ease the pain of what she was being told. ‘That’s what happens when we become judge, jury and executioner – we start making mistakes. But that’s not why you’re here, is it, Jack? You’re not afraid of Butler or Swinton, but I see fear in your face. So what is it? Are Professional Ethics and Standards on your case?’

  ‘No,’ he sneered. ‘They got nothing on me. As far as I know they don’t even know I exist.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘The Campbells,’ he admitted. ‘I turned one of them over.’

  ‘The Campbells?’ she asked – already shrinking from the answer. ‘What the hell do you mean, you turned one of the Campbells over?’

  ‘They came after me,’ he explained, ‘so I beat him and his crony like dogs so everyone could see I wasn’t going to be pushed around by anyone.’

  ‘Wait,’ Sara told him. ‘You’re confusing me. Why would the Campbells be coming after you? What are you to them?’

  ‘I …’ he tried to tell her, but the words kept sticking in his throat. ‘I …’

  ‘You what, Jack?’ she pushed him.

  ‘I … I moved in on some of their … businesses,’ he finally confessed.

  ‘Businesses?’ she queried. ‘The only businesses the Campbells are interested in are drugs, prostitution and gambling. How could you possibly …’ She stopped mid-sentence as the realization of what he’d become dawned on her. ‘Which is it, Jack?’ she insisted. ‘Prostitution? Gambling?’

  ‘Drugs,’ he spurted out before she could torture him any more with her questions.

  ‘A fucking drug dealer,’ she shook her head – her voice heavy with disgust. ‘A fucking peddler of misery and death. Get out of here, Jack. Get the fuck out of my home.’

  ‘I thought you were going to help me,’ he pleaded. ‘You said you’d help me. I lost my way. That’s all. I wasn’t ready to go back. Being on that estate these last few weeks – I just wasn’t ready for it.’

  ‘Jesus, Jack,’ Sara told him, shaking her head in dismay. ‘A few weeks? You’ve been in that damn place for almost six months.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, swaying with the shock of her words – the reality of how far he’d drifted from the real world cutting through the fading effects of the drugs and his own paranoia. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’ve been there almost six months, Jack,’ Sara spelt it out for him. ‘Now get out. I just want you to get out. You bring drugs and drug dealers and the Campbells to my front door and you want me to help you?’ she asked. ‘I want you to leave and take all your shit with you. I won’t tell Professional Standards what you’ve done. That’s all I’m offering.’

  ‘Fine,’ he growled as he stood. ‘I might have known you’d turn your back on me.’

  ‘It was you who turned your back on me, Jack,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You were happy to stand by me when things were good,’ he pointed at her. ‘When you thought you were on to a good thing with me on accelerated promotion – happy to play the part of a senior officer’s wife. But now I’m in trouble you’re showing your true colours.’

  ‘Just leave, Jack,’ she told him, looking away.

  ‘At least it proves I was right about you,’ he said. ‘Nothing about you is real. It’s all false – all just for show. You’re barely alive – just a pathetic social climber. Even fucking you was like having sex with a robot – and you expected me to be grateful that you’d allowed me to fuck you.’

  ‘I swear, Jack,’ she warned him, ‘if you don’t leave I’ll call 999.’

  ‘At least I know what it feels like to be alive now,’ he told her. ‘I know what it feels like to make love. You’ll never know what it feels like to have true power – to have thousands of people do anything you tell them to. To see the fear in their eyes when they look at you.’

  ‘So,’ Sara picked over his words, ‘you left me for some little whore on the Grove Wood Estate. You probably deserve each other.’

  ‘She’s not the whore,’ he
accused her. ‘She’s not with me because she sees a ticket to a semi-detached in South Woodford. She’s with me to be with me – the real me.’

  ‘You’ve lost it, Jack,’ she told him. ‘Run back to your little Grove Wood Estate slut. I wish you both luck. You’re going to need it.’

  ‘Fuck you, you stuck-up bitch,’ he cursed her and stormed towards the front door. ‘And fuck your pointless life.’

  ‘Do yourself a favour, Jack,’ she called after him, ‘and hand yourself in to the station. Tell them everything. Maybe they can save you from the Campbells and yourself.’

  ‘Fuck you and fuck the Campbells,’ he shouted before yanking the door open and slamming it shut behind him.

  Sara slumped in her chair not knowing whether she wanted to cry or just enjoy the quiet relief of knowing now why he’d left her and that he’d never be coming back.

  ‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she whispered to herself, looking at the broken pictures on the floor. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Look at the state of you two soppy cunts,’ Archie Campbell, the father and leader of the family, reprimanded his eldest son and his supposed minder George. Despite being in his mid-fifties, Archie had lost none of his menace as his piercing blue eyes glared with violent malevolence and intelligence, his short, stocky, muscled body tensing with rage. ‘You let one fucking beat copper do this to you?’ He waved his hands around to indicate the multitude of wounds that covered their bodies and heads as they looked sheepishly away. ‘What was this cunt,’ Archie continued in the only way he knew how, ‘ten foot tall and built like a silverback gorilla? Some sort of fucking superman?’

  ‘He got the drop on us,’ Josh complained through split lips that still seeped blood.

  ‘Got the drop on you?’ Archie shook his head with disgust. ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘He had CS spray,’ Josh tried to explain. ‘We couldn’t see a fucking thing. I could hardly breathe.’

  ‘He’s fucking Old Bill,’ Archie screamed. ‘They all have that shit. What did you expect?’

  ‘We was just talking to him,’ George tried to help. ‘Next thing we get a face full of CS gas.’

  ‘Did I ask for your opinion?’ Archie asked calmly, but his voice was still full of foreboding menace that made the much larger man visibly shake. He knew all too well what Archie was capable of. ‘Did I say you could fucking speak?’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ George managed to splutter.

  ‘Get the fuck out of my sight,’ Archie ordered.

  George knew Archie’s words could be a death sentence. ‘But, boss …’ he tried to plead his case.

  ‘I said get the fuck out of my sight,’ Archie screamed, causing George to spring to his feet and head for the door, passing Josh’s two younger yet even more vicious and violent brothers – Tyler and Callum. Their eyes were fixed on him like vultures just waiting for their father to give the word they could feast on his carcass. ‘You’re supposed to be his fucking minder. Some fucking minder you are. Get the fuck out of here. I’ll deal with you later.’ George left the comfortable study of Archie’s council house that had doubled as the meeting room where the family business had been discussed in private for decades. ‘And you,’ Archie turned on Josh, ‘you’ve embarrassed the whole family. I can only imagine what people are saying about us. I give you one simple job and you fuck it up. Pray word of this doesn’t get back to the Balcans. They start thinking we’re a Mickey Mouse firm what can’t even handle one rogue copper – they’ll cut us loose.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Josh apologized. ‘I’ll put it right – I promise.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ Archie told him. ‘You had your chance and anyway – look at the state of you. You ain’t going anywhere till you’ve healed up a bit. The less people see you looking like that the better.’ He turned to his other sons. ‘Tyler, Callum – I want you two to find this slag copper and show him what happens to people who fuck with us. Understand?’ Tyler and Callum nodded their stony faces. ‘Beat the shit out of him if you have to, but don’t kill him. He’s still Old Bill at the end of the day. Don’t want half the Met after us looking for payback.’

  ‘Fine,’ Callum, the youngest but most intelligent and violent of the brothers, agreed. ‘I’ll use a hammer on his knees. He won’t be walking the beat any more.’

  ‘Just make sure the message is sent loud and clear,’ Archie told him. ‘You don’t fuck with the Campbells.’

  ‘No,’ the soft voice of a woman emitted from an oversized armchair in the corner of the room, making the men tense as they turned towards Iris Campbell – the wife and mother of the family. If Archie was the muscle and front man, then it was Iris who was the brains and tactician. ‘You’re right,’ she said, cryptically. ‘He’s Old Bill.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Tyler asked.

  ‘Meaning you can’t just beat the crap out of him like he was any little slag,’ she explained. ‘He may be bent Old Bill, but he’s still Old Bill. You beat the shit out of him and let him live – what’s to stop him going crying back to his old mates looking to make things … difficult for us? We got too much on the line with this thing with the Balcans to be having Old Bill breathing down our necks right now.’

  ‘So what you saying?’ Callum asked.

  ‘I’m saying we have two options,’ Iris told them calmly, as if discussing a simple business decision. ‘Either we do nothing and leave this copper alone to continue his expansion into what is supposed to be our territory, which leaves us looking like a laughing stock and jeopardizes this thing with the Balcans, or …’

  ‘Or what?’ the middle son and largest of all asked.

  ‘We find a permanent solution,’ she said.

  ‘You sure, Iris?’ Archie asked. ‘Never heard of anyone taking a copper out before – even a bent one.’

  ‘Does he look like he’s going to stop if we do nothing?’ she questioned. ‘Take a look at Josh’s face,’ she insisted, jutting her chin in his direction. ‘If he wasn’t scared of us before he’s even less scared of us now, which means he’s not afraid to go after more and more of our business interests. And a little bird tells me he’s not alone. There could be as many as four of them working together. Four bent coppers is quite a force, but this Sergeant King is the leader all right. Cut off the head and kill the beast.’

  ‘And have the Met come after us?’ Tyler reminded them. ‘How long we gonna last with half the Met looking to take us down?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Iris told them. ‘We’ve got contacts in the police, right?’

  ‘We have an arrangement with one or two,’ Callum answered. ‘Sensible ones we can deal with.’

  ‘Which means we have a line of communication,’ Iris pointed out.

  ‘So?’ Tyler asked.

  ‘He’s been a very bad boy, this Sergeant King,’ Iris explained. ‘Be very embarrassing for the Met if what he’s been up to ever got out. After we’ve taken care of this little problem we talk to them through our contacts – tell them that should their investigation be unsuccessful as to who took him out, then our lips would be sealed, but if they come after us, we’ll let every newspaper and journalist in London know what he’s been up to.’

  ‘Think they’ll go for it?’ Callum asked.

  ‘Don’t see how they’ve got any choice,’ Iris said, pausing to sip tea from her fine china cup, the saucer balanced expertly on her thigh. ‘They can’t afford another scandal right now – they’ll cut a deal.’

  ‘You sure, Iris?’ Archie checked.

  ‘Have I ever been wrong before?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not on the big stuff.’

  ‘But killing a copper,’ Tyler worried. ‘That’s a major fucking call.’

  ‘Things have to be done,’ Iris wagged a finger at him. ‘Sometimes things have to be done – for the business. We may not like it and God knows I hope none of you ever start to enjoy it, but sometimes necessary things have to be done. You don’t think me and your dad built this business without getting our hands dirty
from time to time, do you? You don’t think I don’t see some of their faces in my dreams sometimes? Taking a life should always be a last resort – to protect the business. To protect the family. But this rotten apple’s given us no choice. Another time maybe I would have walked away and let him have that shithole of an estate, but not today. Not with this thing with the Balcans coming up – not while we’re trying to move up. He has to go.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Callum volunteered quickly and without emotion. ‘I know what to do.’

  Iris and Archie looked at each other for a long time, as if communicating telepathically before Archie spoke. ‘I could get one of the crew to do it,’ he said, ‘or even bring someone in from outside.’

  ‘No,’ Iris dismissed it. ‘This needs to be kept tight and quiet. Need-to-know only.’ She turned to her youngest son, her feelings a mixture of maternal fear and pride in what he was willing to do for the family. ‘It needs to be quick and clean,’ she told him, ‘which means using a shooter. Get him in the open, corner him and take him down. Take Tyler with you for back-up. You know who to see about the shooter?’ she asked. Callum just nodded. ‘Good. Once you’ve used it lose it in the deepest part of the Thames and make sure it’s untraceable. If it gets dredged up thirty years from now I still don’t want it leading back to anyone who can put us in the frame. Understand?’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he assured her.

  ‘Then time waits for no man,’ she told them, ‘or woman. Do what you gotta do and get back here. I’ll take care of your clothes while you two scrub yourselves clean in the shower.’ The two brothers nodded that they understood. ‘It’s settled then,’ Iris finished the meeting.

  King knocked on the door of the maisonette in Millander Walk and it was quickly opened by Kelly. He barged past her into the cool of the interior while she bolted the locks behind him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, panicked, as she watched him pull the plastic bag of cocaine from under his body armour and tip a small pile onto the kitchen table before pulling a credit card from his pocket and slicing and shaping it into a long, thin, white line. He bent over the table, covered one nostril and inhaled half the line before swapping nostrils and snorting the rest – the effects instant, making him stand bolt upright and wide-eyed.