Beyond the Rage

by Michael J Malone

  With a flick of his arm, the knife released from its hiding place and was in his grip. He stepped up to the boy quicker than he could blink and punched the steel spike through his belly. He withdrew the blade in a tearing motion to the side. Minimum effort, maximum damage. The boy went down in stages, hands over his wound, face folded in surprise. Alexis was leaning over his body screaming for help. Budge leaned over and wiped the blade on the boy’s jeans.

  ‘Knife crime in this city is shocking,’ Budge said. ‘They really oughta do something about it.’ He smiled large and said to no one in particular:

  ‘Now for the main event.’

  49

  ‘Where the fuck did I park my car?’ Peter stood in the middle of the street, craning his neck the length of it.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere until you tell me everything,’ said Kenny, stepping in front of him.

  Peter pushed him out of the way. ‘If they see us together...’ He walked away. Stopped as if walking into a wall. ‘What am I saying? They’ll have people on us right now.’

  Kenny was at his side. ‘What people? Where are they? Tell me and I’ll deal with them.’

  ‘Got to go. Got to get home. Why did I agree to come here? Must have been off my fucking head.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Kenny. ‘Look...’ He grabbed Peter’s arm. ‘I understand you think your kids are in danger. But we need to deal with this rationally. Running off half-cocked is just going to get everyone killed.’

  ‘You have no idea.’ Peter was breathing hot in his face. ‘No fucking idea. These people are ruthless.’

  ‘Give me an idea,’ Kenny argued. ‘Let me know what I’m dealing with.’

  Peter gave Kenny a hard push in his chest. He fell back, stumbled and managed to right himself. His father was half-walking, half-running along the street. Kenny caught him easily. Peter swung round to push him away again. Kenny dodged the hands, stepped in close, positioned a foot, twisted a hip and his father was on the ground on his back.

  ‘What the...?’ Peter struggled to get back to his feet. Kenny stopped him with a foot on his chest. A passing couple changed their course and gave them a wide berth. The woman mumbled something about not being safe on the streets.

  ‘You tell me what exactly what we’re dealing with or so fucking help me, every time you try to stand up I’m going to knock you back down.’

  Peter stopped struggling and managed to raise himself up on to his elbows. ‘Don’t be stupid, how am I going to tell you everything from here?’

  ‘Make a start and if you’re doing good I’ll let you up on to your knees.’

  Kenny’s mobile began to ring furiously in his pocket. He pulled it out and read the caller. ‘Alexis,’ he said out loud. ‘Well, she can just bloody wait.’ He terminated the call. ‘Start talking, old man.’

  ‘The family owned a hotel near Queens Park. It was a modest wee place but it was like the head office of their kingdom. They dealt in illegal immigrants, drugs, prostitutes, re-selling stolen goods. You name it. It was sticking to their fingers.’ He stopped. ‘This really isn’t comfy. Can I get up now?’

  ‘You can go as far as your knees.’

  Peter moved on to his knees and sat back on his heels. ‘I really didn’t give you enough of a spanking when you were wee, did I?’ His face showed an uneven mix of pride at how his son was handling himself and frustration that he was no longer the one in the position of power.

  ‘We made a lot of money. I made a lot of money. Your mum hated me working for them. That was about the only thing we argued about. Well,’ – he looked at Kenny – ‘apart from the time she found out I was having an affair with Vi.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know how that woman put up with me. She was a saint.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kenny. ‘And it fucking killed her.’

  ‘You’re not for cutting me any slack, are you?’

  ‘Get on with the story.’

  ‘They were a devious bunch. Gifted at making money from any illegal source. Gifted at making people regret they’d ever met them. Their son was about my age. Maybe a wee bit older. He was always looking to test my loyalty and he thought a gun would be the ultimate test.’ Peter was committed to the story, locked into the past. He was now sitting on the ground with his legs crossed. Kenny joined him. Several groups of tourists walked past and stared at them as if waiting for them to produce a mouth organ or a banjo. They all walked away disappointed. Kenny heard one American accent: ‘Kinda disappointed with the street theatre, man.’

  ‘I refused to use it,’ continued Peter. ‘Gimme a knuckleduster, a club, I’ll break a few skulls. Guns are just heartless. Hate the fucking things.’ He exhaled. ‘The son wasn’t pleased. He was worse than his old man. He swore if I wasn’t with him, I was against him. He saw me out one night with Vi. He made a pass at her. She slapped him in front of a lot of people. Man, was he crushed.’

  ‘Good for Vi,’ Kenny said.

  Peter laughed. ‘Yup, our Vi was a feisty one in her youth.’ His eyes took on a dream-like sheen. ‘I used to wish I could take your mum and Vi away to, like, a kibbutz by the side of the Red Sea and we’d live as a threesome. Sharing everything.’

  ‘Enough with the wet dreams, Pete. You’ll give yourself a heart attack. Get on with the story.’

  ‘So the son’s mad. Fucking furious. He wants Vi taken down a peg or two. I tell him, he touches her again and I’ll take his gun and shove it up his arse.’ Exhale. ‘Ah, the folly of youth. I was so pleased with myself in those days. I could take on the world. Despite the fact I was sleeping with both sisters, the girls were still in and out of each other’s houses. One day a parcel arrives at ours. Vi was there watching you while me and your mum were at the pictures. Robin Hood, or some such shite. Anyway, Vi opens the parcel. And it’s a gun and a wee box of bullets. She freaks. She knows exactly where it has come from. So she wraps it back up – tells me nothing about it – and the very next day she takes it to the mad son’s house.’

  Pete bit down on his lip. Chewed on some words and then resumed speaking. ‘This is where it all gets a bit Hollywood tragic. This guy lives out in Shawlands with his wife and boy. The boy was a wee bit older than you. Spoiled rotten. Anyway, this day he was home from school and he answered the door. Vi gave him the parcel and said something like, give this toy back to your father. So apparently the boy thinks everything his father has belongs to him, opens the parcel, sees the gun and is jumping for joy, thinking this is such a cool toy. He goes in to the kitchen, aims it at his mother, trying to give her a wee fright. He doesn’t know the gun is real. Or that it’s loaded. He pulls the trigger.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Aye. The mum dies. The wee fella is distraught. Can’t speak. Can’t say where he got the gun, except they all know it was sent to me. But the tragedy isn’t quite over, because about a week after the funeral the boy hangs himself.’

  ‘Holy fuck.’ Kenny remembered the words of Harry Fyfe. The old guy was spot-on. The truth of this story could already have been his if he’d only listened. ‘The family. Who were they?’ asked Kenny.

  ‘They were numb with grief. As you might imagine. Completely took their eye off the ball. Some other gangsters moved in. They lost nearly everything apart from the hotel. The parents sold up what possessions they had and moved to Spain. The son paid your mother a wee visit when you were out. Told her he was going to kill every last one of us. Gave her the pills and the drink and told her she could save everyone. The choice was hers.’

  ‘You mean?’

  Peter nodded his head, his movement going back up again almost too much for him. As if the weight of the memory was robbing him of strength. ‘Matthew was more than happy to tell me all of this before he warned me out of town. You,’ – Peter looked at Kenny – ‘you were next. If I didn’t leave and promise never to return, he was going to have you gang-raped and your throa
t cut in front of me.’

  The two men sat in silence as the horrors of the past coalesced, shifted and worked into shadow around them. Kenny was almost robbed of the will to move as the facts and actions of the past piled one on top of the other in his mind.

  Then he thought of events of the last few weeks and his father’s assertions that everything that was happening was all part of the plan. It was all part of the slow-burn of revenge.

  How much patience, how much energy does it take to hate for so long?

  Something his father said earlier burrowed its way out of the morass of information.

  ‘Matthew?’ he asked. ‘You’re saying this guy’s name is Matthew?’ It’s a common enough name in a city, but the coincidence of it was worming its way through his thoughts.

  ‘Aye, Matthew King.’

  Kenny repeated the name. Recognition a tantalising distant. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s in to these days. Haven’t kept track.’ A shrug. ‘Apart from the hotel he used to hang out in an old gym. Well, calling it a gym was a bit of a cheek. It was a pair of long huts with some weights and mats inside.’

  50

  ‘You are fucking kidding me?’ Kenny demanded and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Why? What? Why are you so...?’ Peter’s expression widened in alarm. ‘You know him, don’t you? The fucker’s worked his way into your life.’

  ‘Matty the Hut.’

  Kenny wanted to kick something. He wanted to tear Matthew King apart with his bare hands. He walked a pace. Spun. Took another step. Fury surged through him, threatened to blind him with its force.

  ‘I need to get home,’ said Peter. ‘I couldn’t bear it if...’

  ‘No,’ said Kenny. ‘The time for running from this man is over. We deal with him now. Once and for all.’ All the times he had met with King; all the conversations they had ran through his mind.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Kenny said. ‘Why the broken arm? Why the thing with the prostitutes?’ He had an image of Alexis’ mother lying in a pool of blood. His thoughts ran into the wall of realisation. ‘Fuck me, but he’s a clever bastard.’

  ‘What?’

  Kenny told him about his mission of mercy down to Dumfriesshire. How there was a body but it never appeared in any news programme or the body didn’t turn up in any hospital. ‘The whole thing was staged.’ His head turned this way and that. ‘Why so elaborate? Why is he going to all these lengths? Why not just murder me?’

  ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Peter said. ‘Nobody held a grudge like Matt King. And now he’s waited eighteen years for this moment. You don’t savour that and then end it in the flash of a gun.’ Peter placed his hand on Kenny’s shoulder as if willing him to calm down. ‘He knows your weaknesses and your strengths. He knows you better than you know yourself.’

  ‘Like hell he does.’

  ‘Here’s what he really wants: me. He thinks it was me who returned the gun. If it had gone back to the hotel that would have been manageable, but he thinks I was playing him at his own devious game by sending it to his home. Cos that’s what he would do. The whole event with his son played out just the way he would have hoped one of his plans might have. That’s why this is all so over the top.

  ‘Here’s what he was thinking.’ Peter held up his hand and counted off his points on his fingers. ‘He needs to manipulate you into looking for me. He knows you are the only one I would react to. But he also knows how capable you are of defending yourself so he needs to distract you on a couple of levels. He knows you have a weakness for hookers. In pops Alexis. He knows that you have a brain on you, so he needs to manipulate your emotions, keep the distractions piling up. So he puts this woman through all sorts of shit knowing you’ll do your knight-on-a-white-horse thing and come to the rescue...’

  ‘...and he’s seen me fighting so he knows I need to be limited in some way to make me more manageable, but not so much that I can’t get around.’ Kenny exhaled, loud and sharp. ‘There’s people around who are that devious?’

  ‘Oh, the Kings were masters at all this shit. You’ve just got to remember what he did to your poor mother.’

  ‘My God,’ said Kenny and shivered. ‘I was upstairs sleeping. He could easily have done whatever he wanted with me. Mum knew that and saw she had no option. Save my life by killing herself.’

  ‘Kenny, son.’ Peter held him by the shoulders. ‘I need to make sure the kids are safe.’

  ‘They’re only going to be safe if we end this now. Today.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘But nothing. Are you not fed up running?’

  ‘Aye, but that’s how clever he is, he knows how to threaten us with the loss of the things we care about.’

  ‘Right. While you’re still here, the kids are safe. The minute you go back home, he’ll track you and find them. Then it’s–’

  ‘Jesus, you’re right. If I go back home, I’ll lead him straight to them.’

  ‘So we stay. We find him and we finish this.’

  Peter swallowed and nodded. And thought of something.

  ‘King’s been talking to you recently?’

  ‘Shit. Yes. I was at a low point the other day. We chatted down at the gym. Can’t remember what I told him, to be honest.’

  ‘You didn’t know about me at that point, so that’s fine. What did you know?’

  ‘Not hellish much...’ Kenny grimaced. ‘But I did tell him about Aunt Vi.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘How she was ill in hospital and how she was sure she was dying. Oh fuck…’ – Kenny rubbed his face – ‘And how she confessed to me that Ian was your son. If that’s not enough, I also told him about Vi saying they killed the wrong woman.’ Kenny stamped on the ground. ‘Man, I’ve been so stupid.’

  ‘That’s where he’s going next.’

  They both said her name at the same time.

  ‘Vi.’

  51

  In the car and they’re driving across to the hospital. Kenny’s phone rang three times. Each time he read the display and cut the connection. He couldn’t deal with Alexis right now. She had a part to play in all this and he couldn’t quite work out if she was as much of a victim as he was or if she was in any way complicit.

  ‘It’s the prostitute,’ he told his father.

  ‘Don’t be too harsh on her,’ said Peter. ‘She would have had something that King could use against her.’

  Kenny said nothing, simply focusing on the road ahead. They were hitting the last of the rush-hour traffic, but it all seemed to be heading in the same direction as they were.

  He tucked the car in behind a 4x4 and then aimed at the slip-road for the Clyde Tunnel. He resisted the urge to drive too fast. It would draw the wrong attention and stop him from getting where he needed to be.

  ‘Fucking put your foot down, Missus,’ Kenny shouted at a car in front. ‘Jeez, it’s like they’re out for a wee stroll. It’s the fucking city. There’s nothing to see.’

  ‘God, I’ve not been through here in years,’ said Peter as the car entered the tunnel and the strip of lights on the roof led them into a brief darkness.

  ‘You were never tempted to come back to the big smoke?’

  ‘Apart from a couple of times when you were a teenager, I avoided the place. Didn’t want to give King and his clan an excuse.’

  ‘You think we’re facing more than King?’

  ‘I’d be surprised if he was doing this all on his own. He’s bound to have at least one sidekick. He’ll not have too many. From what I understand he’s gone for an air of respectability. It wouldn’t do to be surrounded by a gang of thick-necked thugs.’

  ‘His main weapon is a guy called Mason Budge. He’s the guy who seems to enforce King’s will and from what I hear he’s created a real aura of fear about himself.’

  �
��What kind of name is that? Mason Budge.’

  The gates of the hospital were visible just ahead. The traffic lights were at red. Kenny drummed at the steering wheel.

  ‘Is there anyone you could phone to warn?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Nah, Colin fucking hates me. Ian will be high on hash and if I tell the nurses a psychotic killer is about to turn up, they’ll be waiting for me with a straitjacket.’

  The light changed and they were through. The drove through the hospital grounds, Kenny anxious to drive faster but knowing the danger that might put them in. At last they arrived at the right part of the vast hospital grounds, found a parking space and ran into the building.

  Colin was sitting in the waiting room round the corner from Vi’s room. He was staring at the pages of a magazine, not seeing anything when Kenny and Peter appeared.

  The urgency of their movement made him stand up.

  ‘What are you doing here, Kenny?’ he asked. ‘And why are you bringing a...?’ Colin looked at Peter and after a moment of confusion, recognition struck. ‘Pete? What the...?’

  ‘We can do the friends re-united thing in a moment. How’s Vi?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Colin looked from one to the other. ‘He’s no friend... what do you mean, how’s Vi?’

  ‘Who’s with her?’

  ‘I was until minutes ago. A doctor came in. Nice young guy. New...’

  Kenny didn’t wait until Colin finished; he turned and ran towards the room. He burst through the door to see a man in a white coat leaning over the bed. It took a moment for the sense of the scene to hit him. The man was holding a pillow over his aunt’s face.

  He roared and charged forward. The man stepped away from the bed, read Kenny’s lunge and ran round the other side of the bed. The man was grinning and this infuriated Kenny. He heard Peter and Colin arrive just behind him.

  Budge noted the numbers were no longer in his favour and he charged at Kenny. He didn’t go for his head, or throat; he went for his arm. The cast took the blow, but the pain was immense. Kenny groaned. That moment was enough for Budge. He ran at Peter with his shoulder and thrust him against the wall and then easily stepped aside from Colin’s clumsy attack. In a heartbeat, he was out the door and down the corridor and through the double doors.