Raucous (13 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

It was easy to set up. No video needed this time.

Raucous had made a trip to a town and found a shop Mike Spillman’s pretended to be.  A store for geeks run by a middle-aged man whose childhood modelling passion had led to a shop, no wife, no evolution and little profit.  He paid eighty pounds for what he needed, twice its value.  The middle-aged owner told him it was illegal to use, and couldn’t hold up in court.  Raucous smiled at the memory as he found ten minutes alone in the Turk’s office.

Easily done, the microphone hidden, the range a hundred metres.

Raucous waited downstairs, watching for Mike Spillman to arrive.  He knew it worked; he had listened to Turk take a young woman in his office.  Grunts and groans, a slap or two and a “you can go now.”

Raucous heard Spillman enter the office.  He was unaware and heard by chance.  Mike had entered the building unseen.

“You are sure of what you told me on the phone?” Turk asked.

The Turk sat in silence listening to Spillman’s explanation.  Raucous concentrating in a different room, a headphone against his ear.

“He used those words,” Spillman said.  “He used your name, mine and that word, snitch.”

Raucous hadn’t heard Spillman sit.  Turk hadn’t asked.  It must be Spillman who shifted uneasily making creaking noises on the floor.  He came to Turk’s rarely, Raucous thought.  Spillman didn’t feel comfortable, not while they were doing what they needed to do.  But now was an emergency. 

Christian knew.

“Snitch?”  The Turk asked.  “And what did Raucous say?”

Raucous knew what Spillman would do in the pause; he could imagine the guy rubbing his hands like he was cleansing them in antiseptic. 

“He’s dumb.  He didn’t know what was going on,” Spillman said.  “He nearly beat the shit out of me because he thought I was trying to avoid paying.”

“You believe Christian knows?”  Turk asked.

“I already told you that on the phone.”

“I believed you.  I have set something in motion.  A resolution.”

Raucous felt his stomach contract.  A resolution?  The Turk was not dumb enough to kill Christian.  He wasn’t powerful enough to get away with that level of killing.

“He knows,” Spillman said.  “He remembers.  He was playing.  I don’t know why.  That doesn’t make sense.  But he knows.  About us, about what we do.  Who we speak to.”

“He said Turk, he said me and he said Snitch.  He knows.”

“From a long time ago.”

“But we still pass on what we know.  He has to go.  The wrong word to the wrong person and that’s it.  We’ll never make it to the next day.  We are what he says we are.”

“I needed to see you to confirm.  I believe you.  The resolution is in place.”

Raucous heard the beeps of numbers on a phone being pressed.  The Turk spoke, his voice different, friendly. 

“Yes, it’s me.  Our conversation.  It needs to be done now.  Take the package and the BMW to the address.”

There was silence, eleven seconds, each of them counting to ten slowly and badly. 

“Survival I get,” Spillman said.  “That’s why I’m here now.  I don’t know who has what on you over Christian.  But what Christian has is information to kill us.  We have put a lot of men away to save ourselves from the same fate.  With that info out there, even without proof, puts us in danger.”

“It is resolved,” the Turk said.  “He is making his own way to his death.”

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

The day had been long.  He didn’t need the Turk calling now.  Jean could do the delivery tomorrow.  His father, Raucous, now this.  The other two needed to earn their way.  It was fun to mess with Mike Spillman, but a delivery of a box to the middle of nowhere.  A cash payment.  The GPS in the BMW told him the trip was one hour there and back.  He was less than a kilometre from arriving.  Already four miles down a badly lit country road.  But he panicked.

The flash of yellow on white and a hind leg skipping left when escape was right.  A hare in snow, as camouflaged as a Blackshirt in the Arctic.  The Hare bounded across the lane, the snow banks on each side of the asphalt too high to jump. Ben was driving at speed, the Hare had one small divot to jump but he missed and zagged back into Ben’s full beams.  Ben crashed the brake pedal down and the back end of the BMW moved sideways as the front end moved forward.  Low gears and no brakes.  Simple advice in snow conditions.  Ben was driving on ice. He kept his foot on the brake and pressed harder.  The back tyre hooked into the snow-bank.  The icy mound of brown-stained snow bumped and scratched at the black gloss finish on the side panel.  Ben spun the steering wheel left and right, but the car did not respond.  It had its own trajectory and speed.  The BMW bounced back, for a split second Ben was driving straight in the centre of the road, but momentum swung the back end further to the right.  The Back right tyre snagged on the opposite bank, the weight broke the ice barrier and the wheels dropped into the irrigation ditch.  The car slid, still moving at 50 miles per hour, and caught a buried tree trunk.  The tree dug into the lower side panel and would not give.  The car was not ready to stop and the left side tyres lifted off the icy surface, and kept on going.  The car rolled, bouncing on the softer snow covering the patch of flat land between the road and the wood..  Three flips and an abrupt stop brought on by generational major oak.  The car hummed and the motor died, the front right wheel spun unstopped as shattered windscreen glass hung, dangling from a thread of rubber seal.  Ben was dazed but not unconscious, the smell of petrol keeping him awake but high.  He reached for the belt buckle, pressed the button and his stomach gurgled as he fell head down onto the roof.  Blackness came.

The fumes were Ben’s first sensation as he awoke.  A chemical burn on the inside of his nose.  Like sniffing glue, he thought.  But that was one of her memories not his.  The box was open, the cash he knew it contained, rolled into bundles and held with elastic bands, was spread over the inside of the roof on which the car swayed gently.  There was also a plastic bag with a plastic zip, something an aged couple would use to keep sandwiches fresh for a day out in the countryside.  It held a gun.  He reached to grab the bag to feel if it were real and not a petrol hallucination.  As he extended his hand he saw his arm had a hundred spots of dried blood.  He touched his scalp, behind his left ear and felt the gash that had still not dried to perfection.  Ben crawled from the car and lay down on the cool damp grass.  He heard the longer reeds that were overgrown by the side of the road rustle and move.  A rat, or a something else he'd hate to see, was moving away disappointed that Ben wasn't dead and a free human meal.  Ben leant into the car and gathered all the bundles he could.  There were more, he couldn't have collected them all, he couldn't see and the lights in the car flashed and fizzed on the frayed connections they now had.  He reached for the gun, expecting cold metal, but the plastic stopped the sensation.  He unzipped the bag and held the gun in his hand, lighter than he imagined, lighter than the old steel cap guns of generations past.  How did he know that, he thought.                

A shout came and Ben panicked.  He thrust the money bundles into the broken box and the gun from the glove compartment into the back of his jeans.  He looked around and saw the beam of a torch passing and bumping as the holder moved quickly toward the car.  The house from which he came was at the end of a gravel path surrounded by a birch wood.  The quickest way to Ben and the now destroyed BMW was across bare uneven shrub land and at night his steps were very unsteady as if each pace he was expecting a perfectly flat concrete floor.  The man swore and the educated accent was very clear.  Ben crawled and then rose to his feet.  His right thigh throbbed and weight on his shoulder caused him to intake breath sharply.

"They you are," the posh voice said.

Ben held out the box without speaking.  The man was one of the Twins, the one they called Simon.  Simon snatched and opened the box, throwing the money to the floor, scrabbling to see the bottom as if he expected a message to be written.  He shook the box.

"Where is it?" he asked Ben.

"The rest is probably in the car."

Simon pushed past Ben and shone his torch into the car.  He ducked and pulled at glass and the chairs. 

"It's not here."

"Some of it may be strewn around the place."

"Strewn?  What the hell is strewn?"

"It means-"

"I know what it means, posh boy.  I got most of an education in places you could never afford."

Simon turned and pulled a knife, a little blade flicked open.  Simon stared at Ben.  "I guess I'll use this instead of the gun that should have been in the box."

"You are looking for the gun?  I have that."

Ben pulled the gun from the back of his jeans and Simon stopped his steps toward him.

"Well, that puts me at a disadvantage, weapon power speaking.  But I'm guessing you never killed a man and don't intend to now."

Simon paced forward and Ben remembered the words of Jean.  Shoot, in the leg if you must, in the head is best.  Without a weapon you are dead.  They'll kill you there's no talking your way out.  Ben raised the gun, Simon smiled,               "The safety needs to be off first."

Ben looked. "No, I already took that off."

Simon rushed, Ben lowered the gun and shot.  He aimed for the right thigh, take him down, and hope not to hit anything that would bleed him out. 

The bullet hit.

Simon, Ben thought, should have fallen forward.  He was moving forward, he was shot.  He should fall forward.  John Wayne films and cowboys slaughtering Indians told him a man falls forward when shot, clutching the wound, crying out or dead, spread-eagled on the floor.  But Simon fell back as if thrown or smashed unexpectedly in the head with a bat.  Ben looked and saw he had not lowered his gun far enough, he had fired too early.  There was an impact wound in Simon's chest, perfectly between his pectoral muscles.  Ben didn’t know if this was fatal, but he guessed it was, in all probability, a really painful way to be.  Simon's torch had fallen near and the beam shone a light across Ben's feet.  Ben picked up the torch and shone the powerful light on the man.    Blood bubbled from the hole in Simon's chest.  Oxygen, spittle and blood, but mostly blood.  The air, Ben was sure, whistled as it escaped.  He'd missed the leg and hit his chest.  Too far left to have hit his heart but one lung was gone and the other was filling with blood.  A dark red liquid blood ball popped from the man's mouth and then the movement stopped. 

"Are you OK?" Ben asked.

There was no reply, and Ben looked at the scene. He looked at the gun, and he looked at the money.  He stuffed them into a rucksack.  He grabbed Simon's ankles and dragged him toward the car.  The petrol tank had cracked, fuel fumes filled the air.  Ben saw where the petrol was escaping, held his breath and dragged the body to the ever increasing puddle.  He watched as the petrol soaked into the Simon's clothes.  He covered his mouth with his hand.  He had seen John Malkovich burn someone in an action film with an airplane many years ago.  Only that man had been alive.  Ben stepped back from the pool of petrol and the dead man.  He pulled his packet of ten Camel lights from his pocket.  He had already smoked his three for the day, but he figured they would concede that in these circumstances one more was acceptable.  He lit the cigarette; hoping fumes were not as flammable as he feared.  He stood looking at the man he had killed, pulling on his cigarette, envisaging him as John Malkovich in an orange prison suit.  He pulled hard on the tobacco until the glow reached almost to the filter and he placed it between his thumb and forefinger and flicked.  He expected and immediate fire, but there was a pause, a small flame broke out, but within three seconds the whole pool was on fire, and the dead man was encased in flames like a Viking burial.   

The heat soon started to melt the snow.  Green patches were visible in a circle around the car.  Ben switched on the torch, turned and stumbled through deep snow and found the road.  He looked back once at the rising flames and started to head back to town.

Ben thought of the scene and knew Jean would be proud.  He smiled at what he had done.  The disassociation he had between action and consequence almost complete.  A man was dead, it would have been Ben, the actions justified and the result a dead man.  The car was clean, no prints.  Probably hair and fibres and many forensic bullshit traces, but the flames would kill the evidence before the fire became a beacon attracting police to murder.  Ben's phone vibrated in his pocket.  A message but he had no energy to read.  Tomorrow was someone else's day.  He'd find out soon enough.

CHAPTER FORTY

They waited in Turk’s office but the call did not come.  Timothy believed his brother would call.  The Turk was unsure.  Raucous hoped the call would be Christian.

Turk took his gun back.  Raucous made a scene, but only to hide the fact he carried a Beretta from a different time.

Simon was not answering his phone.  Timothy had given up trying.  The four voice messages he had sent were enough. 

The Turk sat passive.

"Regretting your decision to have him killed?" Raucous asked.

"He was on an errand," Turk said.  "He hasn't come back."

"Bullshit.  You sent him off to meet Simon and neither has come back.  Worst case scenario is they are in custody for something stupid and cutting deals as we speak.

"My brother doesn't cut deals," Timothy said.

"Christian does," Raucous said.  "And sitting around here all passive and waiting is achieving nothing."

"What do you suggest?"  Turk asked.

"The word is the place he was going is crawling with firemen and police.  If they are there, we can carry on and hope they don't cave.  If they aren't, and it seems they aren't, then they will be holed up somewhere."

"Both of them?"  Turk asked.

"Only the one who won.  I think, from the lack of contact, your brother is the one in custody or dead.  Probably dead."

"So Christian is still out there?"  Turk asked.

"If he were smart he'd be long gone," Timothy said.

"He has nowhere to go.  He'll be coming back.  Somewhere safe."

"That woman's house?" Timothy asked.

"A good place to start," Raucous said.  "Know where your brother would go?"

"He'd be back here."

"So he's dead," The Turk said.

Timothy looked at his phone.  He hoped but knew.

"I don't know," he said.  "But I figure it that way."

Raucous rose from his chair.

"You go look where he would be," he told Timothy.  "I'll check the woman's place."

"Go together," Turk said.  "Sophie's flat first."

They started to leave.

"I want, and need him dead," Turk said.  "Understand, Raucous?"

"I already killed him once, didn't I?  Do I get my gun back?"

"You don't need one."