Quite Ugly One Morning (20 page)

Sod it, Darren had thought.

Bloody fucking sod it.

Lime could keep the money, it wasn’t worth this, and it certainly wasn’t worth the stir he was looking at. He had to get out of this fucking city as soon as bastarding possible, get out of fucking bloody Scotland and get to a fucking bloody hospital where they weren’t on the look-out for nine-fingered men. Or even four-fingered ones.

He had crawled into the railway tunnel out of sight and found a little niche in the wall where he could lie down. He had spent most of the day there, although he had no real idea what time it was. He had slipped in and out of consciousness, as much a result of whatever that old bitch had poisoned him with as the blood loss, and as the niche was about thirty yards inside the tunnel, he was in near-darkness the whole time.

It was usually a train that woke him up when he slipped away again; they had rumbled through every couple of hours, going in either direction. Eventually, one had rolled through when he was already awake, and that was when the idea struck him. They travelled this part of the route grindingly slowly, so he could maybe climb on to one of them and see where it took him. This was the east coast, after all. Fucking thing could be in Newcastle in a couple of hours. Get some Geordie doctor to stitch his hand back on then catch the first bus to London. Convalesce for a while, hit Lime for some sick pay or even disability benefit. And if the cunt wouldn’t shell out, wait until he was fit again, come back up north and collect what he felt he was owed – with interest.

In the silence of the tunnel he heard the first tell-tale rattlings of the railway line to signal that there would be a train along soon. He picked himself up and staggered back to the mouth, from where he awaited its approach. It limped along inside the tunnel like an iron worm, a nerve-stretching shriek of metallic protest that horribly reminded him of his most recent personal tragedy.

As the engine emerged, he began jogging alongside, getting
his pace right and picking his spot. With a painful lunge he leapt upon the coupling between two of the huge metal containers and flailed his good hand at the steel bar that ran down the outside of one of them. His hand missed and his foot slipped, causing him to land on one trunk of the heavy steel coupling with the full weight of his impact concentrated on his bollocks. Almost passing out once more with the paralysing pain, he slumped forward and rattled his face off the unforgiving metal of the container carriage in front, and sobbed pathetically to himself.

The train rumbled along for a few minutes with Darren perched where he had fallen, his forehead pressed against the cold, hard surface and his hand gripping the steel bar above to keep himself steady. He was worried about his feet getting caught on something underneath and dragging him below the train, but his crushed testicles would not allow him to attempt to change position. He just had to summon the energy to keep his feet raised rather than merely hanging down.

Then the train began inexorably to slow, and he anticipated the jolt of it finally coming to a standstill just a moment too late to stop himself sliding forward and thumping his tender balls against the base of the car in front.

He rolled over and fell to the ground, where he was not consoled to see that the train had pulled into a depot at a council sewage disposal works, probably only quarter of a mile from where he had boarded.

That was when he realised that the letters EDC, stamped rustily on all of the white containers, did not denote the name of a major rail freight operator.

His life had turned to shit and now he had hitched a ride on the shit train going to the shit disposal depot.

He sat up, buried his head in his hand and stump, and sobbed again.

Then, suddenly, he was startled by a familiar sound from his bag – a sound of unexpected hope, forgotten options – and within minutes, completely out of the blue, the picture had become much, much brighter.

Lime had sounded pissed off, of course. He usually did. You didn’t phone a guy like Darren when everything in the garden was rosy. He had been trying to call for ages, but there had been no response – that would have been because he was in the tunnel.

But what the hell. He was back in business, big-time. Lime had found a way to clear everything up and end this fucking nightmare, but he needed Darren’s help and was prepared to paytop dollar for it. Lime said he knew it was damn good money he was offering and so he was expecting damn good service, and suddenly Darren felt like a real man again, a man with a job, a man with skills in demand, a man with a life.

Two jobs and out. He had explained that he was in pretty bad shape, but Lime said it didn’t matter – they’d already be restrained. He just had to wield the knife. He didn’t tell Lime that it was his knife-hand that was lying in the fucking satchel, but the stupid cunt wouldn’t know the difference between good bladework and bad – he’d only care that they died. And with thirty grand the total pay-off, he wasn’t going to turn down the work, for fuck’s sake. Thirty K, then Lime would drive him –
drive him
– to Carlisle, where he could get himself sorted then head for home.

And appropriately, the first job, his redemption job, was at the same address as that fucking Ponsonby fiasco.

It was all turning around, everything.

So often had he cursed the fact that it only seemed to be daylight for about twenty minutes in this cursed northern city. But now, the fast-encroaching darkness – pitch by about tea-time – would cloak his stealthy progress. And those hopeless hours pounding the miserable lanes and sidestreets with that rancid dead dog in his bag now yielded in his mind a map of tree-shadowed back gardens, deserted allotments and derelict waste-grounds that he could invisibly negotiate between here and his salvation.

Maybe it was more a sewage
treatment
works, he thought, stumbling away back down the track with a grin: shit got delivered there, but it got changed into something much better by the time it left.

Hey. That was fucking poetry, man.

‘Now,’ said Lime, looking relieved but still visibly trembling. ‘I am going to answer the door. I’m going to back down that hallway and I am going to keep this gun pointed at you the whole time. Remember: if you try anything, if anything happens that makes me feel the situation’s out of control, I start firing. So no funny business and no . . .’ he paced forward and burst open Parlabane’s cheek with the barrel . . . ‘false moves.’

Lime was shaking like a Parkinson’s sufferer and sweating as if the room was a sauna. He backed away from them very slowly as the doorbell was rung once more, staring wide-eyed at the two of them, side on to him as he edged delicately backwards.

‘Well I guess you can scratch that stuff I told you about computers not running off and telling the boss someone’s been asking awkward questions,’ Parlabane said mournfully. ‘Sorry.’

‘He’s going to kill us, isn’t he,’ Sarah mumbled, swallowing back tears. ‘He doesn’t have any other solution, does he?’

Parlabane hadn’t been quite sure what Lime might have in mind. At first he had thought the man was just crazy with wild desperation, then begun to realise his actions were a little more calculated. But he wasn’t sure Lime was personally up to killing them, or stupid enough to fire off two shotgun rounds in a tenement block in a city centre square and not expect to be seen leaving the scene of the crime. He had thought of Lime’s hitman, wondered why – if Lime had decided the solution was to kill the pair of them – he hadn’t just got a professional on to it, instead of showing up in person.

He had entertained a strong suspicion that the stupid prick was just playing it by ear, which was why Parlabane had been as obstructive as possible, playing for time in the hope that someone or something might intervene before events came to a final head. So when the doorbell rang he had enjoyed a moment of unexpected hope, then seen it die in Lime’s look of relief. The bastard was expecting someone, and it could only be one person.

‘Lime’s not going to kill us,’ Parlabane whispered from the side of his mouth. ‘The hitman is going to kill us. Probably a lot more quietly than with a gun.’

‘Potassium chloride?’

Parlabane sighed. ‘I’m afraid that’s not his speciality.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, and wept.

‘Look, I realise that this sounds like the most fatuous thing in the world to say right now, but try and stay calm. No matter how bad it looks, don’t panic, don’t do anything that’ll force Lime’s hand. And stay alert. If there’s a chance, an opp . . . Jesus Christ alfuckin’mighty. What the fuck is that?’

The creature staggering drunkenly, bow-leggedly down the
hallway with Lime was the most revolting vision of bloody carnage Parlabane had ever seen.

He was a leprous gargoyle, shattered and decayed.

He was a giant zombie, slouching lumberingly along, barely sentient, barely conscious.

He was the angel of death in a shellsuit.

His hair was a deep, unnatural black, like it had been coloured in with a magic marker, and was strewn with pieces of twig and tufts of moss and grass. His bloodshot eyes stared unfocusedly ahead, the lids slowly closing then laboriously raising themselves again every few seconds. His nose was spread flat across his cheeks and had bled heavily down over his lips, chin and neck. And his mouth went on forever.

The opening didn’t stop at the edges of his lips, but continued on into both cheeks for several centimetres, although it was difficult at first to see where his lips actually stopped and these extrapolatory slits began, because of all the dried blood plastered around them.

His left arm was bare from the sleeve of a grass-stained and (of course) bloody white T-shirt, down to the length of shiny material tied around his forearm in an untidy bow, above a gory stump that appeared to be oozing a variety of unhealthy-looking bodily fluids.

His right hand, Parlabane did well to notice amidst such distraction, was missing its index finger.

‘Bloody hell, Darren,’ Lime exclaimed when he took his eyes off his hostages long enough to survey his employee. ‘What the blazes happened to you?’

‘Hannassdent,’ Darren mumbled, his pronunciation suffering from the rather flappy action of his widened mouth.

‘Christ, did you lose a fight with a combine harvester or something?’

‘Thassnofuckifunny.’

‘Where’s your hand, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Nnibag.’

‘Well, can you still . . .’

‘Coursafuckican. Issem?’ he nodded towards Parlabane and Sarah.

‘No, Darren, these are dinner guests. Who do you fucking think they are?’

‘Butafowt . . .’

‘Yes, yes. Change of plan. Turned out she was here with
him. Both together. Saves us some trouble. See, Darren? Our luck is changing for the better.’

‘Yeah,’ spat Parlabane. ‘You’re on a fucking roll. Should have done the fucking lottery this week.’

Darren put his satchel on the floor, swaying woozily as he bent over to open it with his remaining hand. He pulled his knife from it and stood upright again, having to close his eyes for a second as he recovered his balance.

Parlabane glanced at Sarah, who was choking back the tears to concentrate her efforts on staring sheer mortal hatred at Lime. The sight of the knife made her give an involuntary sob, but just the one.

She glanced back with a look that told him she was down to her last hope, and that her last hope was him.

‘Do him first,’ Lime spat. ‘I’m sick of listening to the smart-arsed little bastard.’

Sarah was briefly astonished to see Parlabane wink, and took a deep breath as she remembered what he said about remaining calm.

‘There’s something important you should know, big man,’ he said.

‘Wa?’ said Darren.

‘Your boss never told you why Ponsonby had to be killed, did he?’

‘Just get on with it, Darren,’ Lime said, agitated.

‘No, I think you’ll be pretty interested, Darren. This could have a big bearing on your future. You see, Ponsonby was killing for Lime too. Not the same, more specialised.’

‘Kill him, Darren. Cut the bastard’s throat.’

But Darren was staring at Parlabane, though his eyes couldn’t always keep him in focus.

‘He killed twenty, maybe thirty geriatrics for blackbeard over there,’ Parlabane said. ‘And then he had to be killed himself, because once he had outlived his usefulness, he could incriminate little Stephen. Don’t you see there could be a wee bit of a pattern emerging here, big yin?’

Lime was going purple.

‘Kill him, Darren. Get on with it. If you don’t I will.’

But Parlabane knew Lime wouldn’t shoot, because Parlabane knew Lime’s plan.

‘You haven’t quite worked out your role in tonight’s performance, have you, Dazza?’ he said. ‘What did Stephen tell
you? Kill the two of us and his problems were solved? He’d pay you top whack because he really needed you? Something like that? Then you could go back to Cortinaland with a fat wad in your pocket? What happens when you’ve outlived
your
usefulness? See, killing us would stop the cops from ever finding out about Stephen’s big secret, but it won’t stop them investigating Ponsonby’s death, and it’s you they’re after for that. Find you and they’ll find him. Even if you don’t squeal, they’ll know it was a pro job and they’ll go looking for who’s paying the bill . . .’

‘I swear, Darren,’ Lime hissed, ‘get on with it or I’m halving your money.’

‘But if you’re found dead along with us, say, with your head blown off and a shotgun lying in your hand . . .’

Darren turned slowly around to look at Lime, who was now shaking so much he could hardly hold the weapon.

‘D-Don’t listen to him, Darren,’ he stammered. ‘He’d . . . he’d say anything just now. He’s trying to buy time. Just get . . . get on with it.’

‘Think about it, big man,’ Parlabane said. ‘What was the plan tonight? Abduct me, take me to her house, do us both? Think of the story: killer cuts two throats then blows himself away . . . turns out to be the same guy wanted for the recent murder of one of the new victims’
ex-husband.
Cops can play motive roulette until they get something plausible enough to close the case ASAP. You’re dead, we’re dead and Stephen lives fattily ever after.’