Bad Men (12 page)

Flash would have liked to stay, now that Rodge was dry-eyed if not bushy-tailed, sit next to Rodge and chat to him for a while, tell him everything was going to be fine, that he had the situation under control. But May was just that bit more vulnerable if Flash wasn't with her – she'd lost one of her protectors now with Rodge in hospital. Although Flash reckoned that if Wallace were to try anything, he'd do the same as he'd done with Rodge and strike in a quiet spot, when they least expected it and in any case Flash reckoned that Wallace was still enjoying what had happened to Rodge too much to deflect attention from it. Anyway, Flash wasn't going to stay behind again, cause last night Rodge hadn't felt like speaking, said it hurt him to talk and at first Flash didn't understand how that could be because although Rodge's nose had taken a serious crunching, his mouth was okay – apart from the stitches, but they were just above his lip and the wound seemed to be on the mend again after Wallace had messed with it – but then he realised that Rodge had meant it hurt him emotionally and that there was no physical pain from speaking as such but that the very act of moving his lips, shaping words, deciding what to say – those were what hurt, because they reminded him of what had happened, reminded him of the other pain, the pain of being shot and the pain of putting his shattered legs back together again.

So Flash wasn't going to remind him and, you know, there were other things Flash had to focus on now. "Yeah," he said. "We should be going."

Rodge looked relieved.

The sooner Flash got his plan in motion, the better.

Outside, he grabbed Norrie by the arm and whispered, "We need to talk."

Norrie was still
on holiday from the factory, so he offered to spend some of his free time watching Pearce so Flash and Dad could do the bodyguarding job on May, who was well freaked out by what had happened to Rodge. Flash had asked Norrie to get a handle on Pearce's routine, which Norrie did for the next two days. Strange guy, Pearce, it seemed. Didn't have any emotional ties, very much a loner, didn't visit anybody, nobody came to visit him. In fact, it was almost like he didn't know anybody. Flash knew Pearce had a phone cause he'd called it, but he wondered why Pearce bothered cause he couldn't imagine Pearce talking to anyone on it, not for a chat, anyway. Maybe he did have some friends, but even then, he wasn't the talkative sort, probably just grunted hello and grunted goodbye and hung up. Probably his friends were guys he met in prison, anyway. He didn't have a job, just had the stupid yappy three-legged dog that, according to Norrie, he took on regular walks down to the beach.

Which was fine. Flash had a fair idea of how he was going to play this.

Third day, Flash changed places with Norrie, which was a relief, cause as much as Flash trusted him, he knew that Norrie wasn't completely reliable on account of the accident. Lost it sometimes, you'd be talking to him and you knew he was somewhere else.

Anyway, it seemed Pearce had changed his routine. He'd gone out, visited the library. God knows what he was up to in there, cause obviously Flash hadn't wanted to follow him inside because he didn't want Pearce to notice him, did he? Flash took a seat on a bench round the corner, where he could keep an eye on the library entrance. Problem was, the bench was across the street and along a bit from the police station and Flash felt exposed. Still, not a lot he could do other than try to avoid looking at the uniforms going in and out of the station. He tried to spot
guapas
instead.

Spotted one straight away, but she was a
guapa
in police uniform, so she didn't count. Spotted a few after that, a lot more than he'd expected. It was still warm, even though the air was much cooler now than it was this morning, you could feel it, and the warm weather always brought them out, although he couldn't explain his attraction to the policewoman, which was worrying. Never thought he'd find a cop attractive, not in uniform anyway with those clumpy shoes and the daft hat. It'd be different if she was bare-arsed, wearing just a Kevlar vest and maybe toting some of the hardware accessories, cause they kind of had an S&M appeal, handcuffs and baton and the like, yeah, he could definitely find a use for them.

He looked towards the library again, saw the dog still tied up, no sign of Pearce.

The bench jostled under him and he turned to see a large wheezy woman waggling her buttocks into a comfortable position. He instinctively moved over even though she had plenty of room. She took out a packet of fags and offered him one and he said no, so she lit up and told him her name was Virginia but that her husband had always called her Vagina and his name was Rick so guess what she called him?

Flash said nothing but she asked him again, so he told her to shut up and she said aye and asked him his name and he told her and she said aye, but what was his real name, and he got fucked off and stood up.

She said something else to him but he didn't catch it cause Pearce came out of the library, couple of books tucked under his arm, bent over, untied the mutt from the railing. He looked up and frowned as he stared towards the bench Flash had just vacated.

Flash turned, thinking he was a bit obvious stood here like a prune right enough, knew he should sit down, keep his back to Pearce, pick up his conversation with Vagina where they'd left off, but he couldn't bear it. He knew what he was going to do and had a fair idea of when, so, hoping to Christ Pearce hadn't clocked him, he stuck his hands in his pockets, started to walk away, feeling Pearce's eyes on his back. Shit. Had the fucker seen him? Flash started walking quicker and quicker, and by the time he'd reached the crossroads, he'd broken into a jog.

Flash headed towards
the beach at a slow jog, then he looked around for a good five minutes but saw no sign of Pearce. So Pearce hadn't been following him, most likely hadn't spotted him back at the library. Flash found a shop selling ice cream and got a double scoop and sat on the beach wall, plucked his phone out of his pocket and called Dad.

They needed to act sooner rather than later, cause every day they did nothing was another day Wallace might carry out his threat, although the jizzwad was unlikely to do anything else so soon after fucking up Rodge, but still. Wallace was tough to predict. Anyway, Flash knew what he was going to do and he didn't need his old man's advice, not really, but sometimes it was good to get some feedback, just to confirm that you were doing the right thing. Dad answered, agreed wholeheartedly.

It was on.

Of course, Flash wanted to discuss it with Rodge, too, but Rodge couldn't know about all this, it'd upset him too much, so even if Rodge had wanted in on the plan, Flash couldn't have said a word, which was a pity, any way you looked at it, you know, cause Rodge could use some cheering up and this would have done the business, no doubt. The situation with Rodge was confusing him no end. Thing about hospitals was they made you depressed, even if you were perfectly healthy, which was a bit like churches if you can imagine being locked up in a church for weeks on end with all that morbid music wailing through the speakers. Anyway, hospitals were fucking grim enough places even as a visitor so God knows what they felt like when your knees had been shot to fuck and the more you thought about it the less surprising it was Rodge hadn't smiled since Wallace had shot him and it was really not surprising in the least that it hurt Rodge to talk, was it?

Flash took a good long lick of his ice cream. That was a narrow escape from Pearce back at the library and he couldn't afford to be seen again, so there was nothing for it now other than to get prepared, get the few bits and bobs he needed, scout out the territory for a good hiding place and make his move tonight.

Yeah. Tonight was the night, definitely, and a bonus factor, the

fog starting to roll in, cause it wouldn't get properly dark till well after ten.

Bring it on.

Flash knew the plan was unlikely to persuade Pearce to help protect May, but what he hoped was that it would make Pearce keen to beat the shit out of Wallace and that was a second prize Flash was more than happy to take.

So much more than happy, in fact, that he almost dropped his ice cream.

A chill touched
Pearce's cheeks and made him smile. He could taste the haar in his mouth. And with it, this time, a much-needed cooling off. When the temperature dropped, Scotland was more like it ought to be. If you wanted heat, you'd move to sunnier shores. You wouldn't stay in Scotland. Not unless you were one of those arseholes who just loved to complain.

"An end to the good weather, eh?"

Like this guy jerking towards him, straining to control a weird bastard of a mutt – head like a Bull Terrier and a body like a Great Dane – at the end of a short lead. The dog had stumpy legs and a tail that looked capable of taking your head clean off with a single swipe. Its mouth hung open, tongue practically dragging along the sand.

Its owner was the only other person on the beach, at least that Pearce could see. Mind you, he couldn't see very far. The mist was pretty thick.

Pearce said, "You don't like it, then fuck off and live somewhere else."

The miserable tosser glanced at him, maybe considering having a go. But he decided against it. Not brave enough, even with the ugly dog as backup, and once he'd made up his mind that tonight wasn't the night to commit sudden acts of violence, he seemed happy to let the dog pull him away at a trot.

Having said all that, about complaining about the weather, Pearce himself had a definite complaint. This year was pretty bad. He couldn't take much heat. Even in winter he'd go around without a jacket, often without a jumper. Didn't feel the cold like other people. The heat had been causing him the odd sleepless night lately. Last night he'd resorted to a single sheet, nothing else, but even then he had to cast it aside after a while. And lying on the bed naked was no way to encourage sleep, not when he got the occasional nocturnal visit from Hilda. Sneaking through from the spare room. Last thing Pearce wanted was to wake up to find Hilda licking his balls. Jesus.

Pearce had suffered from insomnia all his life. Didn't sleep particularly well in prison. Other people in the room capable of killing you while you slept, definitely didn't promote deep slumber. But even as a kid he'd lie there awake, night after night. He used to have this thing about moths. Funnily enough, it didn't apply to other flying insects. Just moths. And it was based on nothing at all. At least, he couldn't remember ever having swallowed a moth or anything like that. But he was utterly convinced that if he went to sleep, a moth would fly into his open mouth and choke him. He was the only kid he knew who went to school not having slept at all the night before. Which meant his concentration wasn't always too good. Which meant that adults thought he was a bit slow.

He was happy with that. He didn't much care what they thought. For the most part, it meant they either left him alone or indulged him. And as a kid, that was a pretty good deal.

But he did care what Mum thought. She used to go on at him about making friends. But he could never understand why. What would he do with a friend that he couldn't have much more fun doing on his own? Eventually she realised he was perfectly happy and gave up. Told her cronies he was ‘solitary.' Which wasn't true, cause he did spend a lot of time with Muriel.

But fuck it, what was he dragging all that up for? The two people he'd ever loved, both dead. His sister had junked up, fucked up and got fucked. The latter, literally. After she'd OD'ed. His mum got it in the neck. Literally. Trying to stop a post office robbery.

He was there. He could have prevented it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He wasn't going to beat himself up about it. It was done. Nothing he could do to change anything now.

This was the kind of introspective shit that crept up on you when you owned a dog. All these walks kind of forced you to think, and thinking really sucked.

Introspection was for cissies and lags. Time to get the dog, go home, watch some mindless crap on TV. Or read his library books. He'd picked up a couple of American crime novels, having developed a taste for them while he was in prison. Anything to pass the time. Anything to forget about the past. Just
get the fucking dog.
Okay. Where was the little bastard?

He'd run off when the Bull Terrier-Great Dane cross had appeared. Last Pearce had seen of him, he was scurrying about among some rocks off to the left. Playing with dead crabs probably (he liked to toss them in the air, then run after them, grab them, shake them to bits). Fooling himself into thinking he was some remarkable killing machine. Or maybe he was chasing ghosts in the mist. Pearce was too far away to tell what he was up to.

The Fife coastline was gone. The island, Inchsomething, was gone. Pearce looked behind him. Orange glow through the mist all that was left of the town. "Hilda?" he said.