Raucous (10 page)

“And these can be trusted?” Roach asked.

“As much as anything of that nature can.  I believe Sharon Stone has an IQ on a par with Einstein, but I know which one I would prefer to be building an atomic bomb.  But Raucous is in no way a moron.  And he started to make good use of the library.  An avid reader.”

“You have educational texts?” Charlotte asked.

“They are on offer.  But Raucous slipped into Literature.  The classics, the not so classics and the downright awful.  He read them all.”

“Your opinion?”

The Governor sat back again in his chair.  It creaked and he moved forward in panic.  He recomposed himself and leaned far back.  He made a pyramid by touching the fingertips of each hand together and he looked down, deep in thought, before looking up.

“On a strictly paper point of view, it looks like he came to his senses, figured life inside was a waste of his existence, and he started to do everything that would get him out early.  He has a rubber stamped balanced personality.  He has a rubber stamped IQ that puts him in the top one percent of intellect in the world.  And he had a ten-year spell to end his incarceration in which any physical altercation was self-defense and defined by the most minimal of force.  These cost him probably an extra year, combined with everyone’s disbelief that Raucous was able to change.”

“You don’t see that?” Roach asked.

“If I read, I see that.  But the problem for me is that single visit.  The catalyst was there.  If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would have a wonderfully imaginative explanation for the motives of Jim Sharples visit.  Because Raucous didn’t scare. I can go through point by point.  If you would like.  But in essence, Raucous was and is a very hard man.  But he changed to get out.  He followed everything he needed to do for six years to achieve his goal.  And he got out.  And I imagine whatever it is he wanted to get out for is something that will have the consequence of him coming back inside again.”

They paused.  The governor smiled.  He pressed the intercom on his desk.  Within fifteen seconds his secretary opened his office door.

“Your time is up,” the Governor said, rising from his chair.  He stretched out his right hand, Charlotte then Roach accepted his limp shake.  “That’s all I have to give.  If you want the file you need to apply officially.  The majority is dull.  Maybe you could find a hidden meaning somewhere, but I doubt it.”

Roach and Charlotte were thinking, they were paying no attention to the governor as they walked from the office.

“It is quicker leaving," the Governor said.  “By on average, five minutes.  But if it makes you feel any better, I have to go through the whole thing too.  Twice a day, each day.  I eat lunch in my office for obvious reasons.”

Neither Charlotte nor Roach turned.  They thought of Raucous.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

"Do you like this place?" the Turk asked.

Jean was sat on a steel barstool.  The Turk had taken a call, everyone had waited.  The Turk finished.

“Heard it does good business,” Jean said.

“There are a lot of people looking for horrible.  Pay a lot of money for it too.”

“Your three boys here help with difficult clients?”

“These tins started out that way and received promotion through demonstration of rather unique qualities.  The flabby guy is a very old aacquaintance.  Maybe you’ve met.”

“Once, briefly.  I thought he was a plumber.”

Their attention turned to the swearing that entered the room through the double doors.  Timothy brought in a young man, whose hands were bound.  Jean watched with interest.  The Turk spoke to Jean. 

"This man has been a regular for a while.  Likes to drink.  Unfortunately he likes to touch the girls who work here and then not pay for the pleasure.  He believes he is above repercussions because of who he is.”

“Well that’s just plain rude,” Jean said.

The small man, barely out of his teens, pulled hi arms free from Jim’s grasp.

“My father will be looking for me now," the bound man said.  "He’ll come for you, you know that.  You can’t touch me.”

Turk turned to Raucous.  “If you could please have little Marty quiet down.”

Raucous stepped forward and raised his fist back until it was level with his right shoulder. He aimed down onto the back of the Marty’s head.

“Not silent, just quieter,” The Turk said.

Raucous dropped his fist, snaked his arm around the Marty’s neck and squeezed.  Marty’s face went crimson, his eyes bulged and he started to kick his feet. His tied hands clawed at the shirt that covered Raucous’ large forearm.  Marty reached the point before unconscious and the Turk raised his right palm.

“Enough,” the Turk said.

Raucous released his grip, stepped back and the guy choked and gasped for air as he fell to his knees.

“My father is going to burn this place down,” Marty choked.

Simon stepped forward and clipped Marty on the side of the head with an open-handed slap.  Timothy put his index finger to his lips.  Marty went quiet.

“Now, this boy believes his father to be some type of special man,” The Turk said, “A super-hero even.  He comes in here and he causes problems and it annoys my girls and many of my favorite customers.  What he lacks is intelligence, but also in this case knowledge.  I and his father go back in business a long way.  And I’ll admit I’m not a completely honest man.  I have done my fair share of shall we say legally dubious activities.  His father has joined me on a few of these and made a considerable sum.  We’re not friends, nor are we enemies.  But in all of my business dealings I like to be able to feel safe.  What the young son here doesn’t grasp is that I am very safe from his father, who is a criminal of a different type, one without physical muscle only financial and influential.  Those old Cambridge boys, eh, Marty.”

“So what to do?”  Raucous asked.

“I can’t really have this young man go through his growing up years causing havoc amongst my girls, now can I?  And his father is a man who I respect.  But if I let him go without any retribution that would make me weak.  Killing would just be too extreme, we’re not Miami coke dealers of the 80s here, are we.  And would almost certainly end my lucrative connection with the great Mr. Deacon O.B.E.

“A scar?”  Timothy said. “Something on the cheek to remind him every day?

“I don’t know,” Turk said.  He turned to Jean.  “What would you do?”

Jean paused, pretending to think.  She already knew, but no need jumping straight in.  She smiled and reached across to Marty.  She stood and grabbed his throat.  He opened his mouth to gasp then clenched his teeth tight, struggling to pull Jean’s hand away.  Jean threw a short straight jab, and connected with his big shit-eater grin.  His four incisors shattered leaving open roots and a mouth full of a hundred shards of enamel.  His hands rushed up to his mouth but there was little blood.  Jean had connected cleanly with his teeth and avoided all contact with his lips.  Every breath he screamed in pain. And he spat on the floor.

“Something like that,” Jean said, releasing Marty.  “A temporary, very painful scar.  Money to be spent on a refit, that when done will make him seem OK.  A painful memory, no real harm done, and Marty will be right as rain soon enough.  But I’m open to other ideas.”

The Turk stood,

“Put him in his car; let him go," he told Simon.  He turned to Jean.  Turk pulled a roll of cash from his pocket and tossed it to her.

“In three days, Raucous will visit and explain your new work.  Hang out, get to know the city."

CHAPTER THIRTY

The car pulled up like Mitch was a walking prostitute.  The driver’s window on the black BMW X5 wound down as the car slowed to match Mitch’s pace.  Mitch stopped and the woman braked and stared as if she knew him.

The car said this is the wife of a man who gave gifts but not time, but her face, or more her look, said she would never be that woman.

Mitch was lost in her look.

The right side of her face seemed stiffer than her left.  Mitch stared and she stared back as if it were he who had to explain.  The car was too big for her, she seemed tiny inside.  Her right eye had a small different shape to the left one, but her eyes blazed hazel.

“Need a ride?” she asked.

Mitch smiled at the question.  He was a popular man in the city.

“No thanks, I live just down here,” he said.

He pointed, but she never let her eyes leave his face.

“No you don’t,” she said. You don’t live anywhere.  You’re staying up there with Sophie though.”

Mitch smiled and rubbed the back of his head.  Too many people knew too much about him. 

“A friend of Parker?” he asked.

It was her turn to smile.  “Hardly.  I’m not that way inclined.  But I’d still like to give you that lift.”

“My mother always said never accept lifts from strangers.”

“You never met your mother.”

Mitch put his hands in his chino pockets.  He frowned and snorted air.  “And who are you?” he asked.

“Get in and I’ll tell you.  You can’t be scared of someone as little as me.”

“I think I should be.”

“Maybe, but not for what I can do, more for what I can say.”

Mitch walked around the front of the car never taking his eyes from the woman.  She watched him all the way until he was sat next to her in the leather interior. 

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Charlotte.”

Mitch pondered, it seemed the right name.

“Suits you,” he said.

She started the engine, the car was an automatic.  She slipped the lever into D.  She turned to Mitch as she pressed the accelerator and said, “I didn’t choose it,”

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

The equipment was easy to buy.  A small electronics shop in the back streets of Soho.  Nothing illegal.  Home security for the massively paranoid.  The shop owner was late twenties, glasses and slicked back hair with a beard and tattoos copied from the arms of sailors of the early 20
th
century.  They would be cool for ten years and then old fashioned in a heartbeat.  Raucous figured the guy would be married and settled by then but still cling to his young carefree life by wearing the same hipster style and still looking like a geek wanting to be cool.  He paid in cash and the money went into the till without any official receipt. 

The hipster explained how to set it up.  Raucous listened and understood.  Plug it in and press a button.  It was designed for middle-aged parents who wanted to know what their kids were doing to their drinks cabinet when they were off in the city earning big money for being bastards. 

He opened the box in his apartment.  A two piece set up with two wires.  One to plug into an electrical source, batteries optional, and a wire to connect the two devices.  He opted for the plug and tested the quality.  The two devices could communicate over Wi-Fi, but they would be sat next to each other when in use, and he figured Wi-Fi was easier to hack.  He didn’t know too much about any of the intricacies of the internet, he had heard of the thing before he went away, had even typed something into a yahoo search engine when he was seventeen on a friend's computer.  He hadn’t used it long as the parents had wanted their phone line back.  And the rapid rise of the all encompassing electronic boom in consumer happiness had passed him by.  But it was a simple set up.  A bells and whistles upgrade on an old basic concept.

He tested the results, played them back and was surprised at the crispness of image.

He sat in his armchair.  His apartment had basic furnishings.  A kitchen unit in the corner of the single room.  A wooden table, two wooden chairs of basic pine and an old, well-worn leather armchair.  He had always wanted one, even when a kid.  Now he had one, he realized he had nothing to do when sat other than think. 

He sat down little.

But now he needed to make peace with what he was doing.  He had promised himself and others that he would do everything he could to stop what was going to happen.  He could not and would not do what those others had done.  But destroying that now, being good to his word from the start, would mean what he wanted to achieve, the people he wanted to destroy would be left untouched.

He thought back to school.  The place he hated.  He didn’t understand now why he had hated so much back then.  He hated teachers saying he had potential to fulfill, he hated that they saw something within him, within his brain that marked him out different.  He grew up in a place where academic success meant you were an outsider.  He learned to mask his thoughts in a cloud of ignorance.  Play dumb, and they believe you are dumb.  And a lot of the time he played it so well, he did the dumb thing.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Mitch liked the type.

She was compact and lean.  Two large muscles started on her hips and slid in, making a large V.  Her stomach showed small squares of hard abdominals, her chest a layer of strength below her small breasts.  Her shoulders were rounded, and her arms sculpted to show she used them to push and pull high resistance.  Mitch saw bruises that had spread and were fading, light yellows in a patch that was darker around its edges.  Her ribs had the same markings as if someone had beaten her but wanted to leave the marks unseen under her clothes.  Only she was physically not a woman who would take such a thing without defense.  Her thighs were large.  Bulging muscles from heavy squats.  Here she had small bruises in the shape of finger tips.

She watched Mitch examine her body.

“I work out.  With men.  Full contact mostly.  The bruises fade.  But the muscle stays.”

"You look beautiful."

"A little too manly for most."

"Not for me."

Charlotte had brought him back to her apartment.  She had made no secret of her intentions, although she had not spoken about them.  She was confident, Mitch thought, but there is something she is not saying.  She had removed her clothes without word as Mitch sat on her sofa and watched.

Charlotte moved toward Mitch.  She pulled the T-shirt he was wearing over his head.  She stood back to look at his torso.

"You are a bit more in shape than I remember."

"Remember from where?"

Charlotte knelt down.

"I'm remembering my father's house,” she said.

Mitch shook his head as Charlotte unbuckled his belt.

"I had a lot of fun back there.  Kids fun.  Not this.  Although I wanted to.  My father was not about to let that happen."

"Pretty strict guy?" Mitch asked.

"More the scary type.  Do as he says or else."

She slid Mitch’s belt free.

"He still around?"  Mitch asked.

Charlotte stood; she stared into Mitch's eyes for twenty seconds. 

"No," she said.  "He's gone."

Charlotte leaned forward and down, she grabbed Mitch's head and kissed hard as her weight pushed against Mitch's face.  Mitch pushed her away.  He wanted to ask about her father.  There was something in his mind, something that felt right, something he maybe knew.  Charlotte wouldn't let him speak.                "Later," she said.  "After."

They kissed their way to the bed, crawled under the covers, fumbled, stroked together and made quick, frantic, teenage love.

              They lay naked under a summer duvet, drifting in and out of consciousness for an hour.  They held each other in silence and listened to noises coming from the street.  Charlotte's unrest grew, and Mitch felt the tension in her muscles grow.  She opened her eyes and looked at Mitch.  “You don’t remember, do you?”  She said.

“Then tell me.”

“I want you to remember.”

“Want or need?”  He asked.

“A lot of both.”

“What do you remember?”

She cried and Mitch tried to hold her.  She pushed him away.

“A life I never led,” she said.