by Paul A. Rice
Within seconds of receiving the panic-stricken call, the emergency switchboard had dispatched two patrol cars, along with an unneeded ambulance. Ten minutes later, the racing vehicles swung into the delivery yard of the old warehouse, sirens and lights bouncing crazily within the confines of the high brick walls. The young sergeant knew straight away that this one was a bit more than he was qualified to deal with. Leaving the warehouse in a hurry, the officer pushed the transmit button on his radio. It wasn’t too long before he and his men had cordoned off the area in readiness for the specialist agencies to arrive.
Within the hour the picture at the crime scene became much clearer.
‘Obviously gang-related, wouldn’t you say, Harry?’ DI Bolderson said, turning his large frame towards his partner.
‘Yes, you would have thought so, John. We’ll let SOCO make the final call, but it does appear as though there’s been a hell of a fight!’ Harry replied.
Shouldering the plastic tape out of the way, the short, grey-haired DS pushed into the sealed area where the bodies of the four men still waited. John Bolderson followed him through. The smell of death hung like a fog. A rank odour had begun to permeate through the warehouse. The pool of blood beneath each corpse had attracted a few flies, which were now starting to feed at their new watering-hole. It wouldn’t be long before the need for face masks arrived.
Initial impressions led them to believe that there had been a meeting, one that had turned very nasty. It was obviously drug-related as there were two shopping bags and one black holdall, all sitting in undeniable evidence upon the table. One bag held a large amount of what appeared to be cocaine. The other bag was stuffed with cannabis resin. Two of the men were slumped together. They looked as though they had been killed simultaneously, their bodies entwined like lovers where they had fallen after facing the hail of bullets that had cut them down.
Bolderson looked down at the blood-speckled faces of the corpses. He was sure that he recognised them. ‘Those two are from the Cracker Gang, aren’t they, Harry?’ he asked his partner.
‘Actually, I think they all are…’ Harry said. ‘Look at Mister Blondie over there, surely you recognise that bastard?’ He pointed at the huddled corpse lying by the table.
It was difficult to say for sure as the bottom part of the face was blown away. The man’s lower mandible dangled below his left ear, hanging precariously by a thread of flesh. A single gold tooth glinted beneath the corpse’s shattered top lip. There was a wall behind the body, small pieces of flesh, teeth, and bone fragments lay streaked across its white surface.
‘Well, well, well! It looks as though our friend, Stevo, has finally received his comeuppance, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, either, if you were to ask me!’ Bolderson said, only just managing to restrain his laughter. Winking at his colleague, he said, ‘Make sure that forensics do a proper job on him, won’t you, Harry? I’d be really interested to see where the gun has come from and, more importantly, where it’s been!’ He reached over, and in typical TV-cop fashion, used his pen to pull the blood-spattered machine-pistol away from the corpse. Several empty shell cases rolled out of the way as he did so.
Glancing at the final body, Harry said, ‘John, you’d best come and see this!’
The sense of urgency in Harry’s voice stirred Bolderson from his crouching position. Rising to his full six-and-a-half feet, he turned to where his colleague was looking down at the last man. With his leather-soled brogues clicking officially on the concrete floor, Bolderson stalked over to join Harry.
‘Bloody hell, that’s Jacko Jackson isn’t it, what’s he doing here? I thought he’d given all this up and gone legitimate,’ Bolderson said, knees cracking loudly as he crouched to examine the smartly-dressed corpse.
The body had been almost cut in two by a hail of 9mm bullets, which, they guessed, had probably been dispensed by the MAC-10. Jacko’s dead hand still clutched a .50 Desert Eagle automatic pistol. The two policemen were able to make out a wad of money bulging in his jacket pocket. They weren’t sure of the exact denomination of the bills because they were covered in blood, but it appeared to be rather a lot of money. By the looks of things, Jacko had only fired one round from the pistol, its empty shell-case stood out like a sore thumb amongst the plethora of smaller, 9mm casings littering the floor.
‘That may be the bullet that took O’Hara’s face clean off, huh?’ John Bolderson asked, with a barely-concealed grin starting to widen across his craggy face once more. ‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ he whispered. ‘I have to laugh – these pricks have just saved me ten years of work! All of them were involved in the chip shop killing, especially that skinny bastard, Stevo! I have witness statements all over my bloody desk, and yet not one of them will dare stand up in court. Without them, we don’t have a shred of evidence.’
Bolderson walked over to O’Hara’s corpse and stood staring at it for a moment. ‘Everybody knows that he was there, but we just can’t prove it…’ Nodding at the machine-pistol accusingly, he said, ‘Let’s just hope this time the evidence has been given to us on a plate, eh, Harry?’
John Bolderson’s hopes were undeniably fulfilled. The machine-pistol was later identified as having been the murder weapon at the chip shop. Three more pistols at the warehouse were linked to various other crimes, and the cocaine was identified as being part of a particular batch that was currently doing the rounds. There was no other information available. The four had met in the warehouse, proceedings appeared to have turned nasty, and the meeting ended with Stevo gunning down the others. Two-and-two makes four.
However, it was, as always, Jacko who seemed to have had the last laugh. As he lay mortally wounded, the Londoner had managed one final shot from his oversized hand-gun; his last act was enough to remove most of Steven O’Hara’s face, which permanently removed the blond-headed man’s presence from the planet. The only thing missing was any form of transport and the police guessed that the driver of Jackson’s car had high-tailed it when the shooting started; they also knew they would be wasting their time trying to find him. It was an open and shut case; they didn’t spend too much time chasing other leads, particularly since there weren’t any. Besides, they were quite sure that the demise of the four gang-members would bring peace to many people. They were right.
***
Ironically, the wild-odds bet that Stevo had placed on the two o’clock race turned out to be a smart one. The books had been closed at nearly two-hundred-to-one. A beautiful filly named Angelica, a rank outsider, crossed the winning post in the lead by less than a nose. Malky took the winnings and gave them to Jeanie.
‘She’s a good kid and deserves a break, especially now that useless prick has gone,’ he thought, with a fat-faced smile. Malky was in a position to be generous – O’Hara had been the only one who had put anything on the nag.
The young genius, PJ Rogers, never did buy any ‘sweets’. He was far too busy doing other things. Other things like studying under a scholarship in America, where he had been sent as a guest of the world’s largest software company. PJ loved life in Washington, and so did his Mum.
19
Precipice
If you stand near to the edge, very near, you can look down and see things.
Sometimes you can see absolutely everything. But, be sure to take care, and on no occasion should you ever go too near the edge. It’s a long way down and if you do go over, then you might be falling for quite some time, maybe forever…
The last thing that Jane remembered was the searing needle of pain through her side, oh, and the sight of Ken’s worried face blurring in front of her eyes. He had been telling her not to worry, but she knew he was lying, it was all over his face and the look had scared her. Fortunately, the amount of blood she was losing didn’t permit her to remain conscious for too long. She soon sank into the bitter-sweet caress of a strange, red mist, an eerie netherworld that seemed to have risen in her mind. It was whilst she was imprisoned within this red-misted ghos
t land, that Jane dreamt of her father again.
He was pushing her on a swing, an old metal swing, the one from the caravan park in Wales, a place where Jane used to go almost every weekend when she was a child. The rusty chains suspending the seat rasped as she swung like a pendulum. She turned and looked down at him; he was a long way below her and seemed to be getting further away with every new push.
In fact, when she thought about it, he was miles down below now, a tiny figure with long arms, getting farther and farther away with every new shove. As she looked back at him, Jane felt as though she was about to slip from the metal seat. The thought of flying seemed like a good idea, it almost tempted her. She heard it calling. ‘Fly, Jane, jump off and we’ll fly!’ The voice seemed to come from deep inside her head, she tried to ignore it but the temptation was definitely there, perhaps it would make the awful stitch in her side go away.
She heard her father whispering loudly in her ear, his words drowning out the other, darker, voice. Jane wondered: ‘How was he able to do that when he was all the way down there?’ She heard him quite clearly, though.
His voice reached out. ‘You just hold on tight now, little girl,’ it said. ‘You hold on really tight! Don’t you dare fall off of that swing, missy, if you do then you’ll never stop falling!’
Jane held tight, really tight, just like he’d said she should. ‘Oww, my side, Dad, stop pushing me, I want to get off – my side is killing me!’ The sound of her thoughts overwhelmed all else.
Then, with a solid thump, her father caught her. She banged into his shins, feeling him as he took her in those caring arms. She fell backwards into him and as she did so, Jane smelt her father. The familiar aroma of whiskey filled her senses, lawn-clippings and peppermints – the ones he sucked so that her mother wouldn’t smell the whiskey – all the aromas of her childhood cuddles came and rescued her from the dark pit beckoning below. Jane looked up at her father, watching as he smiled. She saw him, she heard him.
‘Good girl, we can’t have you falling off that swing, now can we? Good girl, there’s a love, there’s my little one.’
Jane felt him hold her, watching as the light came to smother them.
Her side flared with heat and she turned away from it to see her father walking into the glow. Turning back to her one last time, he waved at her and she saw his smile – that million dollar smile. Oh, how she missed that smile.
As she faded away, Jane heard him say: ‘Just hold on tight, lady, it’s not time to fall off, not yet it isn’t. Don’t you dare fall, not just yet, do you understand?’
Then he said something else, words that she really did listen to.
‘Run, Jane, run!’
The last thing she remembered was a sensation in her mouth. It was as though someone had filled it with water, living water. The coolness seemed to have a mind of its own, it explored every inch of her insides as it made its sinuous way down into her stomach. Jane felt as though she was going back into herself. She slipped into a place, a place she remembered. Then, just as the realisation began to dawn upon her, the lights went out. Everything went out.
***
When she awoke, Jane thought the pain had gone. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if there had been a pain. ‘Perhaps we managed to get a bit too carried away with the brandy,’ she thought. Turning her head, she saw the swirling, green curtain of energy surrounding her. At that precise moment, she knew that what she was experiencing had bugger-all to do with any brandy.
‘Oh, no… Ken, Kenny?’ She croaked out her plea, coughing with the effort.
As her muscles jerked in reaction, Jane remembered what the pain in her side had felt like. A raw slice of stinging heat knifed into her abdomen – she shrieked in agony. Turning away from the pain, she found herself to be standing in the rain, near an old bus stop. As she turned her face from the wetness and the wind, Jane saw that she was surrounded by hedges and fields, it was the countryside, and she remembered it.
‘Where am I?’ Her mind raced back. ‘This is Wales again, isn’t it? It’s the bus stop by the park, where we used to play when we were kids…Dad, are you there, Daddy?’ She turned and looked, but he wasn’t there. No-one was there.
Only the rain and the cold wind kept her company.
She shivered, wincing as the pain slithered back into her belly once more. This time it was much deeper, it reached up and clasped her heart within its thorny fingers. Jane felt it squeeze her soul and she cried out again.
‘Enough of this, you prick – get off me!’
She rose up inside and turned to run, the pain dragged at her but she tore from its grasp. Jane felt something rip, deep inside, and then she was free, free and running. As she half-ran and half-staggered into the green mist, she heard the noise of an engine. Looking up, she saw there was a bus heading towards her. It was the old one, a cream and red-coloured bus, the one they would catch a ride in down to the beach every Saturday. The one where they would all sit across the long back seat, messing about, feeling the cracked leather scratching their bare legs. The one where that faint smell of oil seeped through the hot metal floor. It was that bus, Jane knew it. She had a thought, a memory.
‘Is this my bus? The one Ken meant – oh, no!’ Jane fought to stay alive, but the pain tried to drag her back down into the mire once again.
She heard it speak to her.
‘Just relax, lil’ lady, your bus is right on time. Just hop up on board, why dontchya? It’s a free ride, yessiree, it’s completely free!’ Then she heard another voice in the background, a dark voice. It whispered, thickly. ‘Only thang is, you won’t be getting off this here free ride – you won’t be getting off it ever, never, ever. Not never-ever-ever! You’re coming with me…’
The awful voice chuckled. Jane felt the echo in her heart. Fear and anger jerked her from the stupor she had been sucked into. Pushing the dark things from within her, she looked up at the bus and saw the driver. He looked like Red, only older and meaner. His ginger hair was unkempt and his face wasn’t quite as round. ‘I thought he was dead…’ It was the only thing Jane was able to think of as she stood rooted to the floor and watched the old bus approach.
She heard him grind the gearbox and listened as the engine whined and jerked its way up the slope. The bus became silhouetted in a dark halo of diesel fumes as it struggled towards her. The man was waving to her, as Jane watched he leaned out of the window and spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the green, Welsh hedgerow. The action was to be his undoing.
‘You’re nothing but a filthy bastard!’ she screamed at him, and then turned to run, run as though her very life depended upon it. And it did.
Jane heard him laughing. A terrible sound of hatred and disease, spewed into her mind, the words mocking her. ‘Aww, c’mon, Lady-Jane, where’s your sense o’ huumorrrr?’ She didn’t look back, instead, Jane did as her father had ordered – she kept running. Dark hair swirling in front of her face, gut screaming in protest at the white heat of pain. Pushing them all to one side, Jane ran into the mist and the blackness. She ran and ran. Memories and fear filled her mind.
Time stopped, she had no more knowledge. No more memories.
She was frozen in time – frozen in a place that exists in between time.
No more anything, nothingness.
***
Through the blackness and the vacuum, she came back. Alone, and of her own free will, she returned. When the Darkness had finished with her, lost its battle against her spirit, Jane came back.
Looking up through tears of pain and fear, she saw George. He came and stood at the edge of her bed and lifted her hand into his. Jane felt his cool skin. The pain ceased immediately, almost as though it flooded up her arm and into the old man. He stood and smiled down at her, those blue eyes gazing into her inner-being. She let that gaze take her, whisk her away to some other place. The weird thing was, in her mind, she would have sworn that George was wearing her father’s old trilby. In the darkness she followed George to a
place, a quiet, restful place where neither the pain nor any, bastarding, bus drivers were invited.
She heard him say: ‘Sleep now, my dear, you have no need to be awake. Just sleep, when you awake the pain will be gone. Trust me.’
She did trust him, and she did sleep, slept for a long time.
When she awoke, really awoke this time, Jane found she was lying in a large white bed, a bed that stood in the middle of a large white room. There was a large white duvet and even larger white pillows. In fact, when she looked around, the whole place had a ‘large white’ theme going on. Walls, floor and ceiling, everything was in the gleaming neutral shade. Even the fan blades, which rotated overhead, were large and very white. She lay there and rested.
Jane remembered everything and knew that she had endured some terrible experience. She wondered: ‘Am I dead?’ Looking at the room, and sensing the warmth of her own body, she knew that she couldn’t be dead. But it must have been close. ‘Very close!’ The sensation of having been near to death remained very real to her, and Jane realised how lucky she had been. ‘That’s if I am still alive, mind you,’ she thought, idly. The whiteness, which she was currently surrounded by, was somewhat disconcerting. ‘Perhaps I fell off the swing after all?’ As the sensation of her father’s arms returned, Jane knew she hadn’t fallen. ‘Just a little stumble, is all, a little trip-up, perhaps,’ she thought. ‘Everything will be just fine…’ She was correct, and needn’t have worried about the whiteness too much, either.
When George entered, he was in stark contrast to it, the whiteness. The old man looked like an extra from some Kung Fu movie she had seen along the way. He was dressed from head to foot in black and looked very fetching. Even his brown sandals had been swapped for a pair so new that Jane almost smelled the black leather. They still had the shiny buckles on their sides, and they still seemed to be winking at her. George wore one of those suits that didn’t possess a collar. It matched perfectly with the black silk top that lay under. It looked very Asian, Indian, perhaps. Under his arm, he carried a small box and it, too, of course, was covered in black material.