Raucous (14 page)

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Jean woke up to the noise of a fight, a weak one without violence.

Ben had walked back, two hours.  He had hid in trees when the fire truck had passed.  The response time pretty quick, but the flames had risen high.  He had reached the edge of the city and caught a night bus back.  He walked through lit late-night streets high and cocky on what he had done.  He had let himself into Sophie’s apartment and found it empty.  He had curled up on the couch and slept with a smile on his lips.  One act of bravery and he thought himself untouchable.

The apartment wasn’t empty any more.  Jean could hear two voices not forming words, only sounds as they wrestled.  She looked to the curtainless window and saw that the sun had not risen.  She pulled off the light sheet that Ben had not placed there and made her way to the bedroom. 

The fight was for fun, if pain is ever fun.  A sinewy man of mid-twenties, no body fat but lots of body art, was naked with Sophie.  Her plastic breasts barely moving as he flung her around, and bit and squeezed and touched.  He forced her onto all fours and grabbed her hair as he knelt behind her.  Sophie looked up and winced at the strength of his pull and saw Jean looking back.  The man did now too, but he cared little.  Sophie was about to speak but sinewy man pulled her hair hard.  Sophie's important speech was lost forever and she groaned and tried to look back, but was stopped with another pull of her hair. 

Jean saw a third-full bottle of cheap, invented brand supermarket scotch on the bedside table, she moved around the bed to reach it, unscrewed the top, noticing the sharp burr left on the protection ring, and poured herself a two fingers into a dirty glass.

The man, not breaking rhythm, said, "That's mine."

"I believed she was mine."

"He's not possessive," Sophie said. 

"Leave me some," Sinew said, and was lost again in his pleasure.

Jean moved back to the front room and sat on the sofa.  She left the bedroom door open, but she zoned out of the sound.  She thought about Ben, and what he had done, and what he had left behind.  The idea had been to kill Ben.  Ben was the weak link, but how would they know?  They couldn't, so they cared not of attacking the weak point but the whole.  The shooting was not the end.  And soon the repercussions would be here. 

Jean had to think, and her first thought was fight.  She wasn't trapped, not yet.  Still room to move.  What future if they ran?  No money, a job, a normal, low-paid job of servitude.  A career as what?  A group of fuck-ups.  They would be dead quickly.  If not physically then in their soul. 

Jean poured another shot of methanol made up to taste like peat water and raised the glass to sip and think.  She drifted off into a half-sleep.  But it lasted only seconds. 

The door shattered open from the force of a police issue battering ram.  Raucous and Timothy walked through.  Timothy with his gun raised and Raucous twirling a kid's size-four wooden baseball bat he has procured from a supermarket superstore.  He probably had the low-quality, shitty stitching glove and ball in the boot of his car. 

Jean sat immobile as she watched Raucous vanish into the bedroom and two minutes later drag Sophie and Sinew naked, tied and gagged with gaffer tape into the front room.  He threw them down.

Sophie and Sinew were on the floor next to the sofa.  Gagged, and naked, but only sinew was scared.  Sophie didn't cry at possible death, she embraced it.  Jean got the feeling that she would be more annoyed if someone didn't top her today.  She was no cool kid, but she had the tattooed sleeves of a woman who had suffered.  She was not happy in her own skin so she changed it to a colorful tapestry of designs with no real meaning to her, only the artist who had the opportunity to doodle expertly in color on her body.  Sinew was tattooed too, but his were of the home-made kind, or tats from borstal, a number on his ankle that told him where he'd been.  Little black squiggles on his body and arms to show that he could do pain.  His were no Russian gulag tattoos of eyes and stars and significance and story, his were kids playing at wanting to be these men, wanting to be the men without soul or fear, but it's not the tattoos, it's the life, and his was one of petty crime and continual imprisonment for being dumb.  And Raucous knew he could bully him.

"Where did you get those?" He asked, pushing his bat into sinew's chest design of an illegible biblical phrase.

Sinew tried to speak, but the gaffer tap across his mouth made his words as unintelligible as his body art.

"Shut up, it was a rhetorical question," and he tapped the bat hard on the top of sinew's cranium.  "And you, sleeping beauty, I believe, are awake and watching."

Raucous turned and looked at Jean, and Jean, lying back on the sofa, opened her eyes fully.

Sophie made a noise, an attempt at an insult because she wasn't getting any attention.  Raucous turned, and smiled.  He reached out his bat, and with the tip pressed Sophie's breasts in turn.  She pushed back, and Raucous laughed. 

"Still ballsy and nuts, Sophie.  You used to have the cutest little things and now these plastic cups.  I never have had the pleasure."

    Sinew made a noise because that's what hard men do - protect their woman regardless, and tonight he had chosen Sophie to be his.  Only hard men would never find themselves bound and gagged naked on a tiled floor in front of a man like Raucous.  Raucous, not liking the attempt at interruption brought the bat down on sinew's shoulder and the collarbone snapped.  The scream was long, but muffled, and the air he needed was not able to be inhaled through his nose.  Vomit squirted out of sinew's nostrils and he began to choke.  Raucous watched him, waiting while the suited Timothy stared at Jean.

"How did you kill him?" Timothy asked.  "I mean you?  How was that possible?"

Jean was calm, no panic.  If it ended now it ended.

"Who?"  Jean asked.

"My brother.  You went to meet him, and now you're back and he isn't.  He's dead.  And you killed him.  How?"

Jean leaned back and the cushions gave way and she sank in.  She spread her arms wide and rested them along the back of the couch.

"He was chatting away about something or other, I can't remember what exactly - oh, yeah, that I didn't have the balls to kill him.  So I shot him through the chest and he died.  Not very good at reading people was he, your brother?"

Timothy raised his gun at Jean, his face impassive.  Raucous placed his right hand on Timothy's wrist and pushed the gun down.               

"He's mine, remember?" He said.  "And it'll hurt more with me."

Timothy looked down at Sinew.

"Is he dead?"  He asked.

Raucous looked down.  Sinew's chest wasn't moving. 

"Probably."

"Check."

Raucous lent forward and sinew came to life.  He kicked and Raucous fell back.  Sophie was on him immediately, mini headbutts into his face while sinew continued to kick out at any part of Raucous.  Timothy watched Jean with his gun raised.  Raucous struggled.  He made a mistake.  He tried to fight both simultaneously.  Sophie was dropping knees on Raucous and Sinew's thighs wrapped around the neck of Raucous

Jean spoke to Timothy.  "He's going to need your help,"

Timothy turned, assessed the scene for two seconds and fired a silenced bullet into Sinew's head.  The calibre was low and the exit wound was small, but enough for a large pool of blood to immediately appear. 

Sophie stopped her attack, Raucous untied the dead legs he had around his neck and stood.  He picked up Sophie by the throat and squeezed.  She didn't resist, only a grin challenging Raucous.  Timothy turned with a satisfied smile, all white teeth and shit-eater, while Jean shifted, and slid her hand to her lower back.  She found the handle, grabbed and pulled the gun smoothly free. Jean aimed and shot Timothy straight through his mouth.               

The calibre on Jean's gun was much higher, the back-of-the-head exit wound a large hole, which emptied of brain and blood in the fraction it took for the bullet to end any thought Timothy may have had of shooting back.  Sophie and Raucous were splashed by fragments of flesh, blood and bone.  Raucous turned, using the now silently screaming Sophie as a shield.  He didn't freeze, he moved fast toward the door.  A stalemate in which Raucous stared as he pulled the broken door wide open.

"Run somewhere safe," he told Jean.

Raucous chucked Sophie down, turned, reached the corridor, and he ran.  Jean didn't follow; she wiped her face and sat still.  Jean looked down the corridor and heard Raucous slam a door, a car started and screeched away. 

"You Ok?" Jean asked

And the two midnight lovers, one dead, one alive, looked open eyed and said nothing.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

“She is a very beautiful woman, Doctor,” he said looking at the photo he had taken from Doctor Michaels’ Desk.  “I could make her very unbeautiful.”

The man had walked in with an appointment.  He had been referenced by a respected colleague.  Michaels was now sure that was fake.  The man had strolled in and sat down.  He had taken the picture from his desk.  He had instructed the doctor what was happening and had made him follow to the car.  A large black Mercedes people carrier.  The two back benches turned to face each other.  The man was travelling forward, Petersen backwards.

“Who do you represent?”  The Doctor asked.

The man stretched out a hand and placed it on the doctor's knee and patted before sitting back again.  “Myself.  As I always do.  My name is Rollin.  You should be honoured, I really don’t go out much anymore.  At a certain age you just think, why should I?  Right?  Money to burn, people to pay.  A much easier way of doing business.  Less personal.”

“I’ve been visited before about this patient.”

Rollin sat back and rolled his shoulders.  He clenched his right fist loosely and tapped the left side of his fist against his mouth five times.  He crossed his arms in front of him. 

“I know,” Rollin said.  "Parker first, then the two part-time detectives who are so far out of their field of expertise they do not understand the risks they take.  You on the other hand seem to be intelligent enough to see the risks involved quite clearly.”

Michaels looked behind him.  The driver, a large man, was looking ahead driving slowly and carefully, indicating, keeping in speed limits and giving every car the right of way.  He hadn’t seen any weapons, but both men exuded the idea that violence was not something they were unfamiliar with.  The doctor turned back to face Rollin.  Rollin was watching him.

“I see them,” The Doctor said.

“That’s good.  But you should know that I am a man of my word.  I can’t exactly point you to examples, but I hope you trust my honesty when I say I would ruin your wife, not kill her, ruin her.  And then, when I have given you time to grieve and collapse mentally because you will believe rightly that it is your fault, I will do the same to you.  But, this can be avoided by a simple recounting of the truth.”

The doctor looked around the car.  The two back seats facing each other, a telephone, a sun roof, leather upholstery, darkened windows and a driver.  Everything clean, as if a hire car.  The man was confident enough to be sat with the doctor alone.  The driver was confident enough to keep circling streets but never the same one twice.

“I’ll tell you what I told Parker.”

“No, I know what you said to Parker.  I’d like to hear everything.  Even the small details you may not have found important.  And you will tell me and I’ll know if you are lying.  And If you are, I’ll leave you wherever we are now and make a call to the man outside your house.  I will tell him to phone his friends and that they need to party with your wife.  Do you understand that?”

“I understand.”

“Good.  So tell me about Christian.”

The doctor spoke.  He told him what he needed to tell.  Rollin listened intently, always staring at the doctor’s eyes.  The doctor knew what he was looking for.  The movement of his eyes.  Left or right, accessing memory or imagination.  The doctor thought of his meeting with Parker and told the same story, visualizing Parker in front of him.

Rollin listened, nodded occasionally and watched.  He asked no more questions.

The Doctor finished.  He wanted to hold Rollin’s gaze but couldn’t so he looked down at his shaking hands.

“I will check,” Rollin said.  “But I believe you told me something you believe to be true.  Whether or not you have concealed anything from me I don’t know.  But I will.  And if you have we will see each other again.  Unfortunately there is always the possibility I will be requiring your help.”

The car stopped.  Rollin leaned to the side and pulled a lever.  He leaned back and pulled and the side door slid open fully.  They were in front of the Doctor’s home.

“I was going to work,” The Doctor said.

“Not today,” Rollin replied.  “You need to speak to your wife.”

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Jean knew where she was going, she didn’t know why.  Where is safe?

Jean walked, road after road.  The length of Oxford Street, a million people it seemed.  Groups of foreign students all with the same colored backpack, English youths, walking as teams, spread out and slow, like they were walking away from explosions in every action film of the 90s.  There were different styles everywhere, Punks, Hippies, EMO and fashion.  People all being busy, and everyone, it seemed, walking toward Jean. 

They had come to kill her, them.  There was no way back to the comfortable past, and no way forward.  The Turk was a trap.  They could be here now, looking for a way to end it again.

They had been welcomed back, embraced, hugged.  But nothing was real, a set-up, long and slow.  They believed he had something, something the Turk didn't want.  Eliminate us and eliminate possibility.

Everything at Sophie's flat.  Money, memories.  Could she go back?  She doubted that.  They'd be watching, maybe even Raucous.  He was the new muscle now.  He had eliminated his rivals.  One twin down and he had taken the second out.  Now, if he brought me in, he would be Golden.  He couldn't do it then.  The gunshots, the noise.  The police would have come quick.  She had heard their sirens as she made her escape.

"Find somewhere safe if you can."

What did he mean?  A challenge?  The beginning of a hunt?  A jibe because he believed I have nowhere to go?  He knew that.  I told him.  Not one person here to help.

Charlotte?  Who was she?  A woman Christian knew.  She had got that out of her system in a night of passion.  She was a woman who could provide nothing, no answers.

The Turk came after me.  He's still alive.  He'll come again because he has to.