Raucous (6 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mitch liked to wait, to ponder.  If confused, as he was now, he had to decide and do.  This was a moment of choice.  Rash actions were for Jean, Inaction for Ben.  Mitch had to decide, for them all.

Mitch flipped the card over in his fingers.  A name and an address.  One printed and representing the services of an ex policeman, the other handwritten and an invitation into the past and future.  The present was gone.  Their bank account was frozen.  The bank manager, the friendly smiling youthful face of smarm, was no longer their friend.  When the limitless money was coming in he was handshakes and freebies.  Now the account was as good as dead, they were nothing, not even worthy of an explanation.  Jean knew where Ben kept his stash and so did Mitch.  They knew the safe deposit box and the codes.  Mitch had walked in, gone through the security checks, asked for the private room and emptied the contents on the table.  In seventeen years Ben had saved £4077 pounds sterling.  A stupid idea at the time was now a lifesaver.  No house, no bank, no salary.  Four thousand in cash, and an address in London.  There were no options.  Mitch knew the timetable, at least the section relevant to now.  He looked at his watch.  He had an hour and thirty seven minutes to kill.  He walked up to the seafront, a bag of clothes on his back and a bag of cash in his hand.  The wind blustery at 5.30 in the afternoon, the promenade empty except a teenage couple linking arms, laughing and buffeted around as the sea spray splashed they happy faces.  Mitch leaned forward and held his forehead in his palms.  He smiled.  A decision made, money in his pocket.  London was where they were headed.  The next train out.  Second class, because 4000 is a lot of money only for a short amount of time.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jim had told him to have the balls when the moment came.  Raucous hoped he would.

Raucous prepared the food.  The empty kitchen, the clean surfaces the freedom to walk in or out as he pleased.  No rules, no routine.  A prison life ended and he still needed a timetable, a system to break up the day. 

He walked to the basement and unlocked the door as he balanced the tray in his free hand.  He pushed the door open and Jim wasn't sat in his usual place.  Jim was not in the room at all.  Raucous placed the tray down on the bed, the water spilt and steam rose from the hot mash.  Raucous turned and walked out of the room as he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the Turk.

"Where is he?" Raucous asked when the Turk answered.

"Come to my office," the Turk said.

Raucous walked quickly to the first floor.  He didn't knock, he walked straight in.  The dark room, wood and leather, the curtains drawn, the smoke that hung in the air and the fat man behind the desk believing he was a London Godfather. 

"Where's Jim?"  Raucous asked.

The Turk smiled and clasped his hands on the desk in front of him.

"He spoke.  But don't worry; he didn't take any persuading at all.  Came right out with what we already knew.  Christian is alive, and he has always known.  Seems I have been paying the boy's living expenses all these years too.  Jim, it turns out, was a very generous man with the money I gave him."

"That's it?"

"He said we should kill you.  Said you aren't to be trusted.  Said it would be safer for everyone to eliminate you now from the picture."

"And you agree with that?"

Turk looked unsure.

"Some of it,” he said, "but not all.  Certainly I don't feel enough fear from you to have you killed.  I believe you are an asset not a threat."

Raucous stood silent, trying to filter bullshit from truth.  He gave up, leave it for another time.

"So where is he?"

"Downstairs, in one of the private viewing rooms.  Soundproofed so our customers can enjoy certain perks without bothering other clients."

There are always variables, in anything you do; some problems have a finite number, others infinite.  Some speak of a butterfly effect, or destiny, or a life already written, everything happens for a reason.  Well now this had happened, and Raucous had fucked up.  Psychotic variables just couldn’t be predicted.  Raucous hadn’t factored insane.

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“You don’t have the balls to do it.”

The phrase, Jim knew, would make Raucous do it.  Raucous looked at that old man, cut up, in pain.  He wanted out but he didn’t know if he could do it.  He hadn’t killed a man for 13 years, and never with a gun.  The old bastard was a hard man.  Raucous knew that.  Jim had taken some serious pain.  But that phrase, the significance it had, the memory Jim knew it invoked meant Jim wanted death.

Jim was tied to a chair.  A small room.  The twins had worked on him.  He was bleeding and in pain.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, old man,” Raucous said. 

Jim spluttered, blood dribbled down his chin, a combination of red fluid from the gash on his forehead, cheek and the bubbles popping from his mouth.  He should already be dead.  Jim stared at Raucous, but Raucous wouldn’t look his way.  Jim shouted, and wrestled with the rope bonds that held him down.  His wrists and ankles bound to an Edwardian desk chair that would never appear on the antiques roadshow.

“Yes, I do.  Look at me, you coward.”

Raucous stared at Jim, “Just tell them what you know, Jim,” Raucous said, "and it all ends quickly."

Simon, wiping his already clean blade in an attempt at being a James Bond villain said, “He’s already told us everything.  This is just the revenge bit.”

“It should be you, Raucous,” Jim said.  “But you can’t do it, can you?  Walk away, hide, let others do what you should do.  An observer.  You heard what I told you.”

Raucous looked away again.  Timothy and Simon laughed identical Mutley chuckles. 

“Prison life not welcome you to the realities of violence?” Timothy asked.

“You have no idea.”

“Maybe the old man’s right," Timothy said.  "Maybe you have no balls for it.”

Jim laughed, and rocked in his chair.  They hadn’t covered his mouth, they didn’t need to.  This was a private room for strippers, sound-proofed to avoid distraction to customers in the room next door and the door was closed.

“You know, Raucous, they are right.  They with their knives and posh southern accents, all educated and pompous, yet they’re doing this and you aren’t.  Did you not hear me the first time?  You don’t have the balls for it.”

Raucous pulled his snub-nosed .38 and extended his arm, the barrel shook, making small circles.  Jim was two meters and if Raucous shook more, there was the danger of hitting the twins.   Tears welled in his eyes, the barrel circled further from his shaking hand.  Timothy stepped forward, snatched the gun, and pointed it at Jim’s head.

“I'm getting bored,” he said.

He pulled the trigger, a large blast, Jim’s head shot back, and the chair toppled as a pool of blood spread across the floor under a white wall splattered with Jim’s brain.

Timothy threw the gun gently back to Raucous.  Raucous fumbled briefly, taking three attempts to hold on tight.  His eyes never left Jim’s dead face.

“That’s how you do it,” Timothy said.  “You don’t have to clean up, we’ll send down one of Turk’s Zombie women.  If you’re nice maybe you can get some action going on.”

Raucous felt his eyes well-up as he crouched down next to Jim’s body.  He stared at the smile he had died with and looked up at the Twins.

“That was for me to do.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mitch had found a small hotel.  Zero stars and probably not officially in existence.  Ben awoke and knew the place, where it was and why Mitch chose it.  There were many, mostly filled with young foreign travelers or students.  This was A budget bargain room, one that the internet would refuse to publicize for fear of lowering the tone.  The building an obvious choice, the establishment a classic of the hideaway kind, a breakfast spent flicking suspicious eyes at others doing the same, but there were so many of these places in the city that the idea of searching everyone was an idea that only an idiot would enact.

Mitch had found a hotel in an alley off an alley, where aged men with low pensions paid next to nothing to sleep on a dirty bed in a room just big enough to hold it.  There were many of these in the city and drifting under false names and false accents was easy to do even when being hunted.  Ben had no instruction, no idea.  Mitch had bought food.  Bread and water, biscuits and chocolate.  The plastic bag was on the floor.  Twenty Camel were also inside.  Ben opened the window onto the alley, lit up and inhaled.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sir Alex Chamberlain's phone rang.  Nobody phoned him on his landline any more.  It was an old Bakelite circular dial from the 70s.  Everything was done through the mobile network.  He looked at the phone ringing away, the repeated trills. The memories it brought back. He was sat at his desk in his small mansion in the country, a two million pound property in perfect condition, Ivy climbing the walls, a long gravel drive.  A two-meter high perimeter fence enclosed the forty acres of perfectly kept grass and woodland.  The only entrance was a large security gate to stop unwelcome intruders.  The media circus that arrived twice a year to ask him questions about new policy and the effect it had on the poor.  He felt safe here.  It had been his home for thirty years.  There were memories of his wife, but he thought little of her.  She had served her purpose, more in death than in life.  No children to look after, or support or discretely remove from bad choices and embarrassing incidents.  Just him and three dogs, all with the same names of the dogs that had lived and died in the past.  Tosh, Keegan, and Shankly.  The names given by a man who had spent a lifetime pretending to care about a football team he rarely watched.

The phone kept ringing.  If it were urgent, his cell would start to vibrate, if it wasn’t, then nothing lost.

Sir Alex returned to the documents on his table.  He needed to make cuts.  He had no idea where, his staff made the decisions and he signed off.  He could flip a coin on every one and claim his decision was based on the collective good of the nation.

The phone rang again. 

Sir Alex checked his mobile.  No missed calls or messages.  He stared at the phone and stood.  The phone stopped ringing again.  He bent forward and took the mouse in his hand and clicked onto his open email account.  He refreshed the page but there were no new messages.  He decided on making a tea and started to walk toward his kitchen.  The phone started to ring again.

Sir Alex picked up.

“Good Evening, Sir Alex,” the voice said.

Sir Alex had heard the voice before.  Maybe, he thought, it is that fake-patriotic journalist from the telegraph.

“How did you get this number?”

“I took the chance you hadn’t changed it in seventeen years.  Looks like I was right.”

Sir Alex blinked.  Recognition sank in.  He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared as if it too were memory from a past age.

“Is it true?” the voice asked.

“Is what true?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Sir Alex paused, licked his lower lip.  “It appears to be so, yes.”

“I went to the funeral.”

“I am aware of that.”

“I don’t recall seeing you there.  Did you know?”

Sir Alex thought, he tried to do it quick.  Nothing came.  Emptiness.

“This is as big a surprise to me as it is to you,” he said.

“You shouldn’t pause so long, makes it sound like you’re lying.”

“I wouldn’t lie.”

“That’s a plain ignorant thing to say.  You’re a politician.  Goes without saying you’re a liar.”

“It doesn’t change the deal.”

“I disagree; it very much changes the deal.”

“Not on this.  For this you are very much on your own.  Any plan of action is yours.  Any risks are your risks.”

“No, Sir Alex, we are very much together.”

“It wasn’t smart phoning here.  Parker could have answered.”

“No, he couldn’t.  He left twenty minutes ago in his big posh car.  I watched him.”

Sir Alex looked to the window.  There were no curtains only a light silk mesh. 

“Can you not see me?” the voice asked.  “Shame, I'm looking particularly good this morning.”

“What do you want?”

“Make sure he stays safe until I’m ready.”

The line went dead but Sir Alex held the phone to his ear and stared out of his window.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Raucous hated the dead.  He couldn’t understand what they were.  He felt scared.  Unknowing gave him the shakes.

The morgue was hidden in the basement of the hospital.  There were no signs telling anyone who wanted to visit where it was.  You followed pathology and looked for the door that stated, No Patients Admitted.  There was an elevator directly down the five storey building, but a special key was needed to travel all the way to the dead bodies.  Without the key, the doors opened on the ground floor and reception.  The only patients near were the perennial psychiatric cases who lived behind a locked double door at the opposite end of the corridor.  Raucous heard a few screams as the nurse led him down steps and through the maze of corridors.

The nurse pressed her hand against the no patients allowed sign and they stepped through and felt the instant drop in temperature.

The room was small, six cooler drawers for the bodies.  It seemed too few for such a big hospital.  The Nurse looked at Raucous and answered his thoughts.

“The dead don’t stay here long.  Funeral directors are here the same day to take them, and anything suspicious is taken up to the Pathology labs in the City hospital.  Six is more than enough.”

The centre of the white tiled room held a gurney.  The gurney held a body.  The body was covered in a thin green sheet.  The Nurse walked up with Raucous at her side and removed the sheet quickly, like Tommy Cooper doing a bad magic routine revealing a secret he did not intend to show.  The body had not disappeared. 

Jim's face, eyes closed, set in a scowl, pallid skin, almost transparent, with freckles and liver spots standing out like they were trying to break free.  Raucous stared, felt his eyes welling again. 

“Did you do this?” the Nurse asked.

Raucous didn’t move his attention from Jim’s face.  “No, but it should have been me.  It was mine to do.”

The Nurse grabbed Raucous’ arm, and pulled him around so he faced her.  She was five feet five, with short, cropped blonde hair.  She would be shorter without the thick rubber hospital shoes.  Raucous towered above her.  She had covered her face carefully with foundation, a color that didn’t quite match her natural rosy skin, but covered the small scars the right side of her face carried.  They were small, five in total, small bumps in long threads showing a surgeon had worked miracles.  Under her right eye, a scar had dragged down the lower eyelid.  It was subtle but it was there if you looked.  Her hazel eyes burned as she stared up into Raucous’ face.  She was shaking, fighting against the hate-filled adrenaline that surged in her body. 

“You didn’t have the courage to make good on your promise.  He was cut up before he died.”

“I made a mistake.  He never begged.”

“He never begged for anyone.  Too proud to be squealing.”

“He-”

Raucous couldn’t finish the phrase.  He had no idea what to say.  But the nurse gave him no chance to finish.  She raised her hand and arced a fast, sharp slap on Raucous’ face.  Raucous could have stepped back, and he instinctively made the first move of avoidance.  But he moved back and accepted contact.

He looked at the Nurse as the sting on his cheek receded.  He read the name tag she had pinned to her green coveralls, Charlotte Evans.  A nice name, he thought.  He would have chosen different, but Charlotte sounded right. 

Her energy had gone, her shakes remained.  Her stare continued.  Raucous had seen the same look from men inside.  She had started, goaded and she wanted retaliation. She needed to fight, to test herself and ease the hate out of her body.  But Raucous was tired, he was thinking that maybe he couldn’t do this after all; maybe he wasn’t the man he thought he was.  The doubts he always had, the lack of self-confidence he had carried since before his teens, the fear of being hurt he hid in aggression.  Today was not the day, and this petite nurse was never going to be a victim again.  Not at his hands.  He smiled, but conveyed only sadness. 

“I thought you would have done that sooner,” Raucous said. 

They looked at each other and Raucous exhaled. 

“Christian is alive,” he said. 

Charlotte squinted. 

“I know.  He’s here, in town," she said.  "Seems you are not the only miracle.”