Chapter Text
I order a Dewar’s neat and settle onto a stool. Spend enough time camped out in third world shitholes, and you forget about things like clean glassware and ice. Call it cultural reacclimation. Give me half a second and I can suss it out: even a dive bar at the arse-end of Hackney has an industrial dishwasher and tap water that ain’t gonna give me the runs. But old habits, you know? I pull out a cigarette as the bartender slides my drink over. A phlegmy grunt reminds me London has gone non-smoking, and I snort as I return the pack to my pocket.
This town. This fucking town.
Ten years selling my trigger finger to any self-proclaimed warlord with the cash to afford it, and here I am back home, only to discover the Disneyfication of everything I once held sacred. You know things are fucked when Starbucks owns half the real estate on any given street and vegan restaurants outnumber corner shops.
Glass to lips, half my drink goes down in one gulp, burning my throat like honeyed smoke and pooling warm in my gut. A second swig and I’ve drained it. I pat the bar for a refill, telling myself to take it slow this time—nurse it a bit—knowing even as the barkeep pours another round I won’t.
Patience? Sure, I’ve got patience. Gun in hand, eye on my scope, I’m more patient than Gandhi. I can tell you the pub’s two obvious exits and three others that aren’t so visible. I can describe every sad-sack slumped in the booths and predict their particular poison with eighty percent accuracy (scratch cards, booze, oxy, lesbian porn). I can list thirteen improvised weapons within my reach. But I can’t slow down long enough to enjoy a single fucking drink. All that other shit? It’s work. It’s staying alive, and survival is muscle memory. Lingering over a scotch? That’s the kind of leisure that simply isn’t in my programming.
I knock back two fingers, set a twenty-pound note on the bar, and head towards the toilets. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I don’t know … homecoming should feel like home, right? All I feel is empty. I drain my snake and give up on the pub, heading out the rear exit into the alley.
Some dick with a shiny black Mercedes has taken it upon himself to block my egress to the main road, and while it would be just as easy to walk back through the building and exit through the front, it’s the principle of the thing, you know? Douchebags with fancy cars don’t get to do whatever the hell they please. This is supposed to be a civilized fucking society. So instead of stowing my irritation and calling it a night, I lean against the driver-side door and light up. I got nowhere to go but my rat-infested bedsit. If Mr Douchebag comes back to move his car by the time I’ve finished my smoke, I won’t stomp my boots over his sleek piece of machinery. If not … well, anyone with money enough for a car like this can surely afford to have a few dents popped out.
The cigarette’s halfway gone by the time a door at the far end of the alley squeals open. Out comes a Goliath of a bloke—big, lumbering, slow. I’m tall. Fit, too. But I’ve got nothing on this guy. From the paleolithic brow to the brass knuckles bulging in his pocket, everything about him screams Muscle For Hire. Obvious. Embarrassing. My suspicions are confirmed when he holds the door for a petite pretty-boy in a suit then shuffles on, dull eyes cast down to the oily pavement. Rule number one: the muscle pays attention. At. All. Times. If this behemoth doesn’t get his shit together, he’s gonna get his boss—or more likely himself—killed.
Pretty-boy sees me before Muscle does. He glares, looks me over, then smiles darkly. Hoping for a ringside seat, then. I know his type: this sleazy prick likes to watch, but twenty-to-one he never gets his hands dirty.
Deep drag on my cigarette. This your car?
Long, slow exhale. Well, fuck you.
“Eddie,” says the suit, his voice soft and amused.
Goliath finally takes note of my arse resting on the boss’s baby, and he snaps into action, balling hands into fists and drawing shoulders up to his ears. Fucking gorilla.
“Hey! Off the car!”
Look. In spite of evidence to the contrary, I don’t actually go searching for trouble. But some people rub me the wrong way, you know? And this meat mountain and his pixie stick boss fit squarely in the category of people who need to be taught a lesson.
“You wanna say please?”
Manners go a long way towards keeping me from beating someone to a pulp, but I’m guessing Eddie here doesn’t have the brain cells to calculate that kind of risk-versus-reward scenario.
“Get the fuck off the car, now!”
Sometimes I hate being right. I settle in—arms crossed and cigarette dangling from my lips—as I wait for the inevitable.
Eddie takes the angry bull approach, barreling towards me in an attempt to catch me off guard. He’s too big. Too slow. You can intimidate people with that kind of bulk, but it’s not actually that useful in a fight. When he’s close enough to attempt a swing, I dodge back, slip my foot out and trip him. Momentum and my guiding hand on the back of his neck drive him forwards, and he kisses the roof of the Mercedes. The wet crunch echoing down the alley spells a broken nose, maybe a cracked tooth. That in itself won’t necessarily take him out. While he’s still trying to figure out what the hell happened, I twist his right hand behind him until I feel a pop. Even now, he could still function with a dislocated wrist, so I give his face another love tap against the car for good measure. With a little nudge, Eddie crumples to the ground a few feet away and gurgles through a low moan.
I shake my fists out and rest against the Mercedes as the suit crosses the divide. History tells me this can go one of two ways: he’ll back off or double down. If he can manage an apology, I’m happy to drop it, but odds are he won’t. Thing is, I really don’t want to have to hurt him. He’s got such a nice face, and given the choice, I do prefer a fair fight.
To my surprise, he doesn’t do either—simper or pour on the aggression. Instead, he saunters over and settles himself against the car like we’re two blokes having a friendly chat. His shoulder hovers near my bicep, scent floating up to me, clean and crisp. I’m still trying to work out if he’s brave or just incredibly fucking stupid when he nods at the fag burnt down to the filter between my lips.
“May I have one of those?” His vowels stretch out decadently through a slight Irish brogue.
Awfully calm for someone who just watched his boy’s face get smashed in. Maybe this is his way of dealing with stress. Usually the little guys like to puff up, scream and threaten—overcompensate—but this one’s cool, unfazed. I can respect that.
I crush the cigarette under my heel and pull out another two, popping one in my mouth and holding out the spare. Instead of taking it, he tilts his head towards me and opens his mouth, tongue resting obscenely against his bottom lip.
Jesus Christ. Is Pretty-boy flirting with me?
This night has definitely taken a turn for the surreal, but I figure, what the hell? It’s interesting, at least. I set the cigarette to his lips and raise my lighter, shielding the flame with my free hand. He sucks in—wide black eyes glowing with reflected light—and exhales through his nose.
“So,” he says, rocking back against the car. “Looks like you’ve lost me a driver.”
Behind his words is the kind of soft threat that might work if he had any leverage here. But he’s got no leverage, and I’m not paying any medical bills, if that’s what he’s angling at. The runt has money to spare, from the look of things. I just hope Eddie opted into the employee health package.
“He’ll heal.”
“No he won’t.”
There’s a loud crack, and Eddie’s skull is suddenly decorating the pavement. Pretty-boy has a smoking Beretta Tomcat in hand, but he’s already tucking the petite piece back into the holster under his suit jacket by the time I think to take it from him. The fucker’s fast. Scary fast.
My cigarette nearly drops from my mouth, but I save it, plucking it between my fingers and making like I just needed to flick the ash away. Fucking sloppy, letting him get a shot off—even if it wasn’t aimed at me. Back in town less than twenty-four hours, and I’m slipping already. I take a drag, buying time, trying to calm my nerves enough so my breath doesn’t waver. I mean, yeah, death is as well-known as a clingy ex-girlfriend by this point, but I wasn’t exactly expecting to flirt with the bitch my first night back. Thing is, whatever I thought about the pretty little bloke before, this is some game-changing shit right here.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he purrs. “I’m not going to kill you.” The way he pins me with his stare spells an unspoken yet.
I snort. Sometimes I just can’t help playing with fire. “Not with a little lady gun like that.”
He laughs a dry, slithering rasp. Then his eyes go cold—dark and bottomless, like a vast underground cavern—and it hits me hard. Looking into those black pools, I finally realize what I should have fucking seen before. What I should have known when he fired that shot, should have recognised in his first, creepy smile. This fucker is crazy. He’s bat-shit-padded-room-pump-him-full-of-Thorazine bonkers.
“No-o,” he intones, his voice dropping into a lower register. “If I were going to kill you, I wouldn’t make it quick like I did for Eddie. He was a valued employee—until he wasn’t—and you’re the scum sitting on my car. No, for you, I’d think of something much more interesting.”
He licks his lips, raises his cigarette. There’s a splatter of red on the cuff of his white shirtsleeve. I wonder how he’ll feel about his “valued employee” when he sees his dry-cleaning bill. Actually, I bet bloodstain removal is calculated in the household budget, line-itemed between Armani suits and Colombian coke.
Eye-fucking. There’s really no other way to describe how he’s looking at me. “Of course, if you wanted to make yourself useful …”
How the fuck am I supposed to take that? I mean, yeah, on one hand it sounds like he wants me to replace the broken stain on the pavement; but on the other, I think he’s got me in mind for a different kind of job altogether. I know I’m too beat up to be handsome, but I was a good-looking bloke at one time. Had all the girls lining up to be with me, all the boys wanting to be me. He doesn’t seem to care about the good-looking man underneath these years of rough living. His gaze is sliding over my crooked nose and crosshatched scars like they’re something he wants to touch, something he wants to taste.
I swallow hard and try not to think about his plush little mouth and what it might look like on me. Jesus, I can’t imagine letting his teeth anywhere near my prick.
“Ten a.m. tomorrow.” Pretty-psycho-boy jots down a note on a blank card and hands it to me. “Be at this address.”
“You offering me a job?” Good to be clear about what I’m turning down.
He shrugs. Smirks.
“Don’t need a job.”
“Call it a welcome-home present, then.”
It takes me a minute—I’ll admit, I’m not at peak form here. But what the actual fuck?
“How did you know—?”
“Oh, don’t be bor-ring,” he groans. “You’ve been doing so well up until now.” The way he talks, it’s like I’ve got a plum benefits package and a corner office on the line, not murder and mayhem.
He pulls on the door handle and I step out of his way, careful not to slip on the red stream leaking out of the pile of meat that used to be Eddie. This whole thing is so fucking off, I’m half-expecting to wake up any second now. But I know, deep down, even my subconscious isn’t this exciting. Reality’s stranger than fiction, don’t they say?
“We meet tomorrow under friendly circumstances,” Pretty-psycho-boy says as he settles into his seat. “Or we meet another time, and I won’t be quite so charitable.”
A shiver slinks down my spine. I don’t hold much stock in threats, but something tells me this man would hunt me down and disembowel me just for the hell of it.
A flick of his cigarette, a squeal of tires, and he’s gone. Under a yellow puddle of streetlight and next to a cooling corpse, I’m left with the distinct impression that whatever life in London might offer, it ain’t gonna be dull. I slip back into the bar and leave by the front. Black eyes and a wicked smile linger in my mind as I walk home. I’ve gone three blocks before it occurs to me I don’t even know his name.
….
