S K Paisley

by Take a Breath (epub)

  His mid-Ulster accent cracked with bitterness. “Who told you to come here?”

  “Mr Munroe did.” Paul held out the flier.

  Terry’s hand, thick like a bunch of bananas, took it from him. He gazed down at it. “What’s your name?”

  “Paul Dalziel.”

  Terry went to the phone inside the door. Paul couldn’t hear what he said. Bucky Buchanan and Dunsmore circled him, ready to pounce.

  Terry came back out. “Let him up, boys.”

  Grumbling, they stood aside.

  Terry led him up the stairs, past the pool tables and into an office. Manny was waiting for him behind his desk. “I wondered if you’d show up,” he said.

  “I only just got out the hospital.” Paul was shaking uncontrollably.

  Manny watched him with scepticism. “Are you a smackhead or something?”

  Even if he’d had a voice, Paul wouldn’t have known what to say.

  Manny’s face darkened. “I’m asking if you take heroin?”

  Better to be a reckless junkie or a liar? “I… I’ve never injected.”

  Manny digested the information. “Make sure you never do. I don’t employ smackheads.”

  If he thought about it, that day marked the turning point. The boy he’d been then no longer existed. He looked at Manny and Terry now. He wasn’t sure what the connection was between them. Over the years he had observed a loyalty that went beyond just hired muscle. Like a faithful pit-bull, Terry was always at Manny’s side.

  “That phone call you gave us today caused a bit of a stir.” Both Manny and Terry laughed.

  Paul read the road sign as they joined the motorway. “So John was talking to the polis?”

  Manny nodded almost imperceptibly. “Detective Chief Inspector Carmichael. CID cunt. Likes squeezing my balls. When you’re a high-profile businessman like myself it goes with the territory. Low-paid civil servants can’t stand to see anyone else make a living.”

  The car rolled smoothly on. They were driving north.

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  There was a moment of silence in which Manny and Terry exchanged glances.

  “What has to happen when someone can’t be trusted.”

  Behind Manny’s head, Paul could see black telephone wires running in an endless stream against the night sky, the hypnotic lines loosening and slackening between pylons; closer, further, closer, but never quite close enough to meet. He kept an eye on the signs.

  The leather squeaked when Paul moved in his seat.

  They drove for over an hour. Paul didn’t ask any more questions and Manny didn’t give any more answers. He didn’t need to. Paul would find out soon enough. He had an idea and it was easier not to hear it out loud. Either way, he was going with them.

  They left the city behind. The further they went, the fewer streetlights there were. They were going deep into the countryside. When they finally pulled onto a dirt road, Terry flicked the headlights off and they crept along the gravel.

  “I was worried something like this would happen with John. A dependency makes you vulnerable to men like Carmichael.”

  Paul caught sight of a darkened house at the end of the drive. A white van was parked outside, its lights switched off. The Daimler rolled up beside it and Terry cut the engine.

  “OK, Paul, let’s go.”

  Terry stayed in the car while Manny and Paul got out.

  The earlier storm had carried off the clouds and the sky was crystal clear now. Manny led him by the light of the stars, past the house to a barn next door, the night sky a sequin-studded dome hemming them into the vast space.

  It was dark inside the barn except for a faint yellow light to the rear of it, which they followed. As they neared, Paul could hear voices talking, laughing. He held his breath as he walked through the door.

  A sickly light shone from a bare bulb hanging off a wooden beam. It cast an eerie glow over the bloodied figure beneath it; tied to a chair, head bent over, softly moaning, his chest moving lightly up and down. Dickie Dunsmore and Bucky Buchanan stood to attention.

  “Good work, boys.” Manny examined their handiwork with his professional eye. “Still some breath in him.”

  He lifted the prisoner’s head. The man’s face looked like it had been crudely carved out of wood, with indistinct lumps where his features were meant to be, seemingly painted with red and purple varnish. Teeth were scattered across the floor. Manny’s heavy boots crunched over them. It was almost impossible to recognise in the blackened pulp, horrifically swollen and covered in congealed blood, the face of laughing, good-time publican John. But it was him. Paul fought the urge to vomit.

  Manny spat on John’s broken body.

  “Sorry it had to end this way, old friend. But you always were a fucking pussy. Now you’re a fucking grass.”

  Sounds started to emanate from the body. The gentle breathing changed to heavy panting. Sweat and blood dripped from his face. Strangled, choked coughs escaped him.

  Manny turned to his men. “OK, go set up outside.” He nodded his head towards Paul. “Give him the bat.”

  “What?” Paul swung round to face him.

  “I told him to give you the bat.”

  Paul stepped back as Buchanan’s gloved hand offered him the shiny aluminium baseball bat; he wore a buck-toothed grin on his pallid face and his skin was grey like a corpse’s. When Paul didn’t take it, it was shoved into his hand. The metal burned cold against his skin.

  Dunsmore and Buchanan left the room.

  Now it was just Paul and Manny alone with what was left of the whimpering John.

  “I knew I wasn’t making a mistake with you. What you did impressed me today.” Manny moved around the room, checking its contents with bored curiosity. Paul looked down at the bat, which weighed surprisingly light in his hands. “You understand why I need you to do this?”

  “Do what?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Crush his skull.”

  Beside him John began to cry, his pleading words nothing more than babbles. A stream of urine formed a bloodstained puddle beneath him.

  “I can’t have people talking. I brought you here tonight so you could see what happens when they do. So you know. The pigs are going to be coming down hard on you from now on. So don’t give them any hold over you.”

  Paul clenched his teeth and a thin film of sweat formed on his upper lip. “I can’t do that, Manny.” His two feet were fastened to the floor.

  “You don’t have a choice. I need to know I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me.”

  Manny sighed.

  “Please don’t make me do this.”

  “We don’t have all night. If it makes it any easier, I told those boys out there to dig a grave big enough for two.”

  The words shot through Paul like an electric current. He looked at the weapon in his shaking hands, then back to Manny, who had lit a cigarette and was staring dead at him. He wasn’t going to change his mind; he wasn’t going to save him. Paul looked around: there was only one exit and Manny was standing in its way.

  The pallid bone-white moon shone through the window.

  “Go over there, take a couple of practice shots.”

  Paul walked limply into the corner. He began swinging the bat, softly at first, then with progressively more strength. He swivelled from the hips, the weight of his body packing power behind the swing. The bat made a loud swishing sound as it sliced the air.

  “OK. Ready?” Manny said impatiently.

  On unsteady legs, Paul walked up to John and measured the correct distance from his ear. He took deep breaths, the bat swaying back and forth just behind John’s head.

  John was braying like an injured animal; harsh, dry cries.

  Paul measured once, twice.

  Three times, then
put the bat down.

  “I can’t.”

  Manny exhaled and nodded over Paul’s shoulder. Paul whipped round, right into the cavernous face of Terry, standing silently a few feet behind him.

  He backed away, bat still in hand.

  “OK, Paul.” Terry’s words crunched in his mouth like broken glass. “Put that bat down and let’s go for a walk.”

  He didn’t say anything else. He just stood there, waiting, something like pity on his hideous face.

  Paul looked up to the draughty roof, its missing rafters letting in the cold night air, then down to the brown pool beneath the dying man.

  The silence seemed to last forever.

  “Is this where you want it to end, Paul?”

  There was something soothing in Terry’s cracked and broken voice. He wasn’t like Manny, who could commit extreme violence one minute and eat a sandwich the next. Terry understood the true cost of what you were taking away. Somehow that made it easier for Paul to answer no.

  An odd state of calm came over Paul and he moved back towards John.

  “All it takes is one good swing. Then it’s over,” he heard Manny say.

  All his focus was on the bat in his hand. He stood once more behind John and placed the bat close to his ear. He could feel Terry’s deathly presence behind him.

  John’s cries grew shrill.

  Paul sucked in a lungful of air.

  “Put the fucker out of his misery!” Manny growled.

  Paul lifted the bat. Closed his eyes. Swung with every ounce of strength he had.

  “You can tell a lot about a person from their shoes,” John once told a group of them after hours during one of his lock-ins. “Look at me. Traditional brogues. Strong, reliable. A man’s shoe. The shoe of a man. Little the worse for wear. Maybe not as functional as they used to be, ladies.” Paul, not long started in the pub, had laughed along with the rest of them. “Jennifer, even in a pub you wear high heels; classy lady. You’ll make a good wife for someone someday. Barney, your boots are always polished even when the rest of you is not. You used to be a military man. Sheila: comfortable, trustworthy shoes. Well trod. They’re a pair of shoes that could tell you a thing or two. And Paul. Always in trainers. Is that so you can make a sharp exit? Ladies, can you trust someone who’s always ready to run away?”

  The bat smashed into John’s skull, cracking it like an egg. His body flopped over lifelessly. Paul lifted the bat away; blood, bone, hair and lumps of brain were stuck to the shiny metal. His breath came out in short gasps, like someone crying, but there were no tears.

  He looked down at his trainers, covered in blood.

  There was nowhere left to run.

  Manny flicked specks of blood and brain from his jacket. “That’s why I get other people to do this. Can get messy.”

  Paul stared in a daze at the tortured body slumped in the chair. At the collapsed skull, the oozing matter.

  Manny took the bat from him and patted his back. “Well done. There’s a hose out back. You’ll have to clean yourself. There’s a change of clothes waiting for you in the back of the van.”

  Paul wandered to the back of the house, past the others, who, with shovels in hand, were digging a shallow grave for John’s remains. The flames from their bonfire reached into the night sky. He found the hose and, like Manny had instructed, stripped and began to wash. The icy water was numbingly cold, but he didn’t care. It was too dark to see the blood wash from him and down the drain. He rinsed his hair, holding the freezing stream over his head until he couldn’t take it anymore. Then, reaching for the handle, he blindly switched the flow off and stood in the moonlight blinking the last of the water from his eyes.

  Manny’s figure appeared in the blurry half-light, standing there holding a plastic supermarket bag and, in his outstretched hand, a towel. Aware of his nakedness, Paul grabbed the towel and wrapped it tightly around himself. Manny’s eyes lingered before he threw the bag at Paul’s feet.

  “Change into these.”

  Manny took another clear plastic bag from his pocket and shook it open. Then he picked up Paul’s bloodstained clothes, put them in it and sealed the bag, never taking his eyes off Paul.

  “Insurance,” he said, before turning away. “See you in the car.”

  Stacy ambushed him the moment he walked through the door, channels of black mascara running down her cheeks, her hair tied messily in a bun, her body wrapped in the worn towelling dressing gown that had been her second skin since the baby.

  “Where have you been? Who is she?”

  The baby began screaming upstairs.

  He brushed past her, ignoring her shrill demands.

  “Paul! Whose clothes are they? Paul?”

  He heard her crying behind him as he took the stairs two at a time and slammed shut the bedroom door, pushing the chest of drawers in front of it.

  The baby was standing in his cot, peering through the bars, tears and snot on his little red face. Paul ran over and picked him up, holding him tight to his chest, smelling his soft fuzzy hair.

  Stacy’s feet banged up the steps too. She beat her fists on the door. “Paul! Let me in. The baby’s crying – he needs feeding. Please!”

  It was an hour before she finally managed to force her way in to find Paul, babe in arms, staring out of the window.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Curtains shut all day, all night. It used to be your neighbours would check on you if your curtains were shut all day, all night.” Annie almost sang it. A slice of amber light from the streetlamp shone through as she peeped out the window. “But no one cares anymore. People lie dead for weeks in this city. Only the smell of rotting flesh and the maggots bring concern to the door.”

  She paced manically. The odour of captivity hung in the room.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s been twenty-four hours, Paul, and not a single person’s tried to contact you.” She waved his mobile in the air. “Would anyone even miss you if you were gone?”

  He glared at her as she crossed the room to the mantelpiece, where she rested her elbow; her foot bobbed up and down.

  “How did you find me?” His phlegm-filled words caught in his throat. The coughing that followed caused the tendons in his body to squeal like over-wound guitar strings. He waited for the snap that didn’t come and the fit passed.

  “It wasn’t difficult. I knew you were due for release, I made some enquiries.”

  He eased back into the least painful position he could find. “You knew what I was inside for and still invited me into your home? That was brave.”

  “Why do you think I took precautions?” she spat.

  “Still…” He smiled. A weighty pause ensued before he spoke again. “I already told the polis I don’t know anything.”

  “Liar!” Her face was scrunched like a hideous gargoyle.

  She started towards him. Paul immediately clamped down, expecting her to strike him. She stopped in front of him, looming over his chair. He cranked his neck up to look at her.

  “My sister was involved with a volatile thug with a history of violence. Who worked for murderers, associated with murderers. Was a murderer. She disappears the day you go into prison and you don’t know anything about it? In nine years she hasn’t contacted anyone, accessed her bank account, registered for employment. Missing persons ads, public appeals for information – every possible connection’s been followed up, and still nothing. You don’t just disappear off the face of the earth.”

  “People disappear every day,” he answered.

  The blow finally landed, hard against his head. He lolled forward, then shook off the daze. When he looked up again she was back on her perch at the window, her body resting against the sill. The curtains were pulled tight against hooks ready to snap off the rail. She gripped the windowsill with one hand, restraining hersel
f while the other clenched against her breastbone.

  “So I knew Lena,” he shouted over to her. “A lot of people knew Lena.” His ear burned where she’d hit him.

  “She was fourteen,” she hissed. “You groomed her, led her astray.”

  “I led her astray?” The veins in his temples bulged. “Alcoholic mother, absent father, steroids-abusing stepfather. A sister who she never saw. What chance did she have? I was the only one who cared for her. You haven’t got a clue.”

  “An animal like you isn’t capable of love.” She stood up, close to shouting. “Obsession, possession, control. That’s all you know about. She was defenceless. Worshipped you. Would have done anything for you. And you destroyed her. I remember you at the funeral. I was so scared. She was scared of you. She was trying to get away from you!”

  Annie was gripping and ungripping her fingers, agitatedly chewing the inside of her mouth. “The police say they’ve exhausted all their lines of enquiry. But I’m willing to do what the police won’t,” she said coldly. “I’ve resigned myself to the worst. It may be a confession you give. But whatever happened, I’m going to make you tell me.”

  She turned to check through the curtain and he could only see the back of her head.

  “So you hunted me down?” His voice was low and tremulous with anger.

  “That’s right.” She nodded, snapping back around. “Because I knew that would be the only thing you’d understand. Threats. Violence. It’s the language you speak. You’re a dangerous animal and you need to be caged.”

  “And then what?” He almost laughed. “You’re going to let me go? I’m curious. Like you said, I’m a dangerous animal. A convicted murderer. What do you think’s going to happen once these ropes come off?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, both feet square on the floor.

  “C’mon. Talk to me in my language. Tell me you know what you’ve got yourself into. How far are you going to go to make me talk?”

  “I’ve gone this far.” She wavered a little but stood her ground.

  Paul shook his head contemptuously. “I’ve been starved before. Tortured before. You think you’re going to break me? Think you’re ready for me? You’re not, little girl.”