Bad Men (21 page)

The boy grinned. "I'll take my chances."

"Is this love?"

"Aye."

"Oh, that's nice. Keep doing that. You got rubbers?"

"I won't come, eh? Trust me. Just. Come on. That's it."

And there in front of him now was May's dog, he supposed. No, it wasn't. Well, it might have been but it turned into that fucking wasp and said, "You fucked the girl. You got her pregnant. You fucking deserve everything you get, you fucking idiot."

"Are you paying attention?"

The voice. What was his name? Brain like soup. Brain like glue. Brain like sizzling bacon.
Szzzzzz
. Like a buzzing wasp.
Szzzzzz
. Dropped in water.

Floobadoob.

I'm Popeye, the sailor man.

Jings, crivens, help ma boab.

"Are you paying attention?"

Nuuuuuuh. Okay.

Sweep to the right. Nothing. Sweep to the left.

Cross, yep. Jesus, yep. That other guy.

God. No, devil. Whoa, yeah. The skin on Wallace's face was shifting up and down like it needed stitching onto the bone underneath.

Pain under Jesus's arms as Wallace lifted him onto something unyielding and tied him down. Tried to resist but his muscles were weak and his body unresponsive.

Sudden clarity. Adrenaline rush. Cancelled the effect of the mushrooms long enough to think: "Leave me alone, Wallace, you big fucking donkey fucker," but he couldn't say it. Power of speech denied.

Caught Pearce's eyes. Man looked sad. Gonna be okay, big man. Gonna be okay.

Sound of a man crying. Oh, Pearce, you big poof. But Pearce wasn't crying. It was himself. He was the poof.

Not in pain. Not yet.
In mournful acceptance of your doom?
Thank you, Mr Wasp. That about hit the nail on the head.

Jesus knew what was going on. Just had to fight through the fireworks in his head, focus.

Memory.

No, nothing.

"You with us, Jesus?"

The guy – Wallace, that was it – face in his face.

And there he was, tied down on two planks of wood. He knew that. Felt okay so far. What was all the fuss about?

The end. This was. For him.

B-bam, b-bam, b-bam
. Heartbeat, or was he on a train?

B-bam, b-bam, b-bam.

Heartbeat. No train.

More crying. Louder. Wailing, that was the word. And then, "No."

Then: whack.

Took a moment to register and then the pain shot through him. Came from the centre of his palm. An intense ache like a giant wasp had stung him. And the heat. His hand was burning.

Whack.

Gonna lose it, gonna fade out. The drugs wouldn't let him.

Whack.

And it
huuuuuurt
like a fucking bitch.

He yelled.

Wallace said, "That's one hand."

Whack.

No time to get used to it. The other hand, yeah, done. He looked up, saw the nailhead embedded in his palm and spewed.

"You dirty fucker. Got some of that over my shoes."

Jesus roared, as much in rage as in pain.

"You got nothing else to say?"

Whack.

Gasps, "Ah, ah, ah," didn't help but they were necessary.

Whack.

When pain gets this bad it's almost funny.

Whack, whack.

He screamed.

"Oh, shut up, Jesus. That's the easy part. Now here's where we might have a bit of a struggle. Got to reload the fucker with some big fuck-off nails. Look at the size of these beauties."

Jesus didn't want to look, but somehow his head turned to face Wallace.

The nail gun was black and yellow, wasp black, wasp yellow. Wallace was fiddling with the nail magazine, which slotted at an angle underneath. Jesus caught a glimpse of one of the nails and it was fucking massive. He yelled again at the pain in his hands. Struggled, but stopped cause it hurt too much. And then he yelled at the thought of the pain he was yet to experience.

Wallace said, "Nail's got to be big enough to get through both your feet."

Jesus yelled again, didn't stop, his mouth wide open, so that when Wallace finished loading the gun he had to shout to be heard. "Take a deep breath, you dirty little prick," Wallace said. "
This
is gonna hurt."

Pearce tried not
to watch, tried not to listen. Seeing Jesus being murdered destroyed any credibility Wallace's claim that he hadn't killed Hilda might otherwise have had. Of course Wallace had killed Hilda. He was clearly a sadistic fucker. And, anyway, if Wallace hadn't killed him, then who the fuck had?

Pearce had to back off. He was getting emotional about this. He had to detach himself, had to keep thinking straight for as long as he could. Detach. Come on.

Jesus meant nothing to him. Okay, Pearce didn't particularly like to see another human being crucified, but that was ultimately between Wallace and the law. But Wallace had made Pearce sip some drugged tea and Pearce hated drugs. And Wallace had killed Pearce's dog. And that's the main reason Pearce was raging.

But this too. He couldn't deny it. He didn't want to hear it. There it was again. Another nail thumping into Jesus's foot. And that fucking infernal screaming.

De-fucking-tach.

Cat & Dog Home.

"Kind of breed is it?"

"A terrier. Dandie Dinmont. You don't see too many of them about."

"Why's that?"

"Dunno. They're expensive."

"Yeah?"

"Show dogs."

"You'd have thought people would have been scrabbling to get their hands on a little runt like this."

"He'd have gone in a flash if it wasn't for the ... leg."

Yeah, so he had a missing leg. So fucking what? "He can get around okay, though? He's not in pain?"

"The leg was amputated a long time ago. An old war wound. He arrived here like that. Seems to be perfectly at home on just the three."

Pearce reached down, stroked the little bastard's head. The dog was predominantly white with brown patches running down his spine. Had a barrel-shaped chest like a Dachshund. A feisty-looking little fucker.

"I think he likes you," the girl said.

"You think so?"

There was something going on, now. Wallace was heaving the cross off the floor, lifting it onto his shoulder, dragging it towards the wall. Jesus was yelling louder.

"You'll be okay for a while yet," Wallace shouted. "I did my homework. I'm going to lean the cross against the wall. That way your chest won't cave in, and you won't die of suffocation. Cause that would be a shame. I want this to be as prolonged as possible."

He swung the cross back against the wall and it hit with a dull thwack against the egg cartons, which must have absorbed some of the jarring at least. Wallace straightened it up, looked at Pearce. "I'll leave the light on," he said, "so you can watch. I'm away to fetch someone else who needs to see this. I'm sure you could use a bit of company, right? She might even fuck you if you ask nicely."

The door squeaked open. Slammed shut. Then Pearce heard the scrape of a bolt being drawn on the other side.

Wallace was off to fetch May. Made sense now. Pearce's bench, the mattress, the restraints, they were here already. Pearce hadn't stopped to think about that. Wallace had been right, Pearce
was
a fucking fool. It had all been planned. But not for Pearce. If Pearce hadn't shown up, May would have been lying here instead. Maybe the one thing he'd done was buy her some time.

Pearce looked towards Jesus and wished Wallace had turned the lights off. The only good thing was that maybe the adrenaline caused by Jesus's fear and pain might be stopping his head from being scrambled by the mushrooms. But that was probably wishful thinking. He looked pretty fucking scrambled.

"You think I
need this?" May said, eyeing her brother. She could totally do without all this crap right now. She fell out with her best friend, Joanne, last week. Fat tart always thought she was in the right. Reckoned May should own up, tell the truth. No chance of that, not now, especially after what Flash had just told her. So this would have been crap, anyway, with everything that had happened. But it was May's bad week on top of everything else and she just wanted to lie down with a hot water bottle over her belly and cry. Well, she was part of the way there. She was lying down. But she couldn't use a hot water bottle for obvious reasons. And she wasn't going to cry in front of her brother. Anyway, it was all a genuine mistake.

Flash sat down on the bed next to her, sliding the knife back in its leather sheath. Cutey-pie growled at him and when May told Cutey-pie to behave he laid his head back down across her lap.

"Better to be safe than sorry," Flash said.

"What's going on, Flash? You all think I'm stupid or something but I know there's some serious shit going down. Tell me the truth."

Flash said, "Just a precaution. First there was Louis, then Rodge." He shrugged. "So who knows?"

"What do you mean, Louis?"

Flash couldn't hold her gaze. He said, "Oh, well. You know."

"I don't fucking know. Stop trying to cover up and tell me. What's going on? Why wouldn't you let me see Louis? It wasn't cause he'd been run over, was it? And you know who shot Rodge, don't you?"

Flash told her the truth.

She wasn't surprised. Wallace was a mean bastard, even though he'd always been pretty good to her. He'd got a bit frightening sometimes, right enough. Told her she couldn't leave him cause he didn't know what he'd do. Well, that was part of the reason she hadn't left him, wasn't it? She didn't leave him. He threw her out. But it wasn't a shock to find out he was still angry. She'd been entirely to blame. She knew that. "You
think
it was Wallace?" she said.

"Well, everything points to him."

"I fucking
know
it was him." She took the knife from Flash, slipped it in her handbag. "Why haven't you done anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Why haven't you gone round to Wallace's and killed the fucker?"

"Well, he has a gun, doesn't he?"

May said, "He never used to. When we were together he was more than happy with just his fists."

Flash told her about Rodge's visit to Wallace's. Explained exactly what Rodge had intended. That it hadn't gone according to plan.

"Rodge was going to do that for me?"

Flash nodded. After a minute he said, "You okay?"

"Leave me alone," she said.

"I'm sorry about all this, May. It'll be fine."

"I said, leave me the fuck alone." She paused. "Please, Flash."

Flash got off the bed, shuffled towards the door, shoulders slumped.

May really wished Brian hadn't done a runner. The very night she told him Wallace had found out about them shagging, that was him. Offski. Didn't even say goodbye. Claimed he was a hard man, but when push came to shove, he had no bottle at all. She could have used the cowardly poetry-writing bastard's help right now. That'd teach her to let a Jambo shag her. You couldn't trust Hearts fans.

She opened her handbag, took out the knife Flash had just given her. Removed the sheath. The thin blade gleamed. The black plastic handle had a price sticker attached. Scottish Dirk, it said. Stainless-steel blade. £39.99. Fuck, that was a lot of money. And Flash had gone out and bought it specially for her. That was nice. She had a pair of brothers to die for, really. It had been a while since she'd had a present even if he'd no doubt bought it from a souvenir shop on the Royal Mile. She made a stabbing motion into the space in front of her. Felt good.