A Twist Of Noir 614 - Gary M. Dobbs

614 - GARY DOBBS

I shouldn’t have broke The Hub.

It did no good, had no effect other than momentarily confusing people. Most thought it was a trick, others didn’t even notice. I showed them the truth and they ignored it. It should have set their minds free and perhaps it would have had they wanted freedom, but freedom required effort and it was much more comforting to remain amongst the pack, allowing themselves the illusion of free will.

“OBEY. REMAIN CALM. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS IN CONTROL.”

I can hear the words now even if they are inaudible to me. I know they are there, being constantly fed into my brain and thus I hear them or rather I imagine I hear them.

I hear them but I do not obey.

Soon I will be dead.

So it matters not and no-one will ever know of my efforts, of the greatness I achieved when I set everyone free, if only for the most fleeting of moments. I liberated them all but they did not want liberation. They had been bred under control, conditioned to that control and without the guiding hand of the government they were lost, nothing more than mindless zombies living a life of illusion. We, the people of this country, are nothing more than a part of the great machine. A cog to keep the wheels turning, to keep the rulers in the luxury they have become accustomed to while we toil believing we are improving our own lot, never considering the fact that there is only so far we can go. Only so far we are allowed to go. And the saddest bit of all this is that we could end all this, we could bring the rulers down, we have power and that terrifies those in control. And so they create this illusion, keep us in the so-called comfort zone, while we follow a destiny that is decided upon by a select few.

When they come for me, and it will be soon, they won’t be wearing jack-boots though they might as well be. They have no more freedom than I; they too are living the illusion. I wonder how my death will be reported? Will it be a suicide like my friend and colleague Gene, the weapons expert who was due to make a report to the War Commission, when he suddenly and inexplicably committed suicide? It was Gene’s death that led me to stumble onto The Hub.

The Hub, that’s what they call it.

It’s a suitable enough name.

Subliminal messages – there had been experiments with this form of brainwashing for decades. The American Government were running experiments in the Fifties – It was known as the MK-Ultra program but the experiments were condemned and closed down. No one ever considered that the clandestine experiments would continue but in the mid Sixties the British government started The Hub.

At first, The Hub was basic, consisting of subliminal messages broadcast over the television and on the cinema screens, and were only marginally successful but these days the system has improved considerably – substances to make us more susceptible to the suggestions are placed in our water, our foodstuff and the messages, too high pitched for human hearing but registering on a subconscious level, are broadcast at an amazing speed – the experts claim a mind boggling 614 times each second. Broadcast from televisions, CTV systems, bank machines, speed cameras, any electronic device – there is no way to avoid the messages, the mind control. That was until I, a junior minister with only limited clearance, managed to get into the control centre and close everything down.

Here they come.

I can hear them.

It’s over now.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. You can find out more about Gary at The Tainted Archive.

A Twist Of Noir 596 - Gary M. Dobbs

THE MAN WITH THE SUN IN HIS EYES - GARY M. DOBBS

The man with the sun in his eyes smiled. It was without warmth and revealed even white teeth; cold white teeth.

He raised the pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger.

‘Shouldn’t have fucked up, Leroy,’ he said, pocketed the pistol and walked from the room. It had been untidy when he had entered, magazines and CDs strewn over the floor, unwashed plates and mugs everywhere, one of which had a healthy looking mould around the rim.

It was even messier when he’d left.

The man with the sun in his eyes stepped outside into a fine August afternoon and went straight to the silver Porsche, his pride and joy. He jumped in, turned the key and pulled off into the quiet suburban street. As he reached the junction and turned left, he was aware of the black saloon following.

He kept to a steady thirty until the end of the street and then made a right onto the main road and, by the time he reached the roundabout and swung a left, he knew for certain that he had a tail.

Question was, who the fuck was following him?

He drove one-handed and removed the pistol from his side holster, unscrewed the silencer and then placed the weapon back into the holster. It wasn’t so bulky without the silencer, which he tossed over his shoulder onto the rear seats. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed that the dark coloured car had fallen back two cars but was still very much following him.

Was it the police?

He didn’t think so.

Without taking his attention from the mirror, the man with the sun in his eyes reached out and switched the stereo system on, it was pre-tuned to his iPod and immediately a scratchy blues sound filled the car.

It had been a run-of-the-mill job. Leroy Carter worked as a street dealer for the organisation, pushing out pills and coke. He’d never really handled too much money, fifty grand at the most which was a nice wedge but nowhere near enough to go into hiding and stay hidden. A paltry sum for a life, but Leroy hadn’t seen it like that and had fucked up big time, hitting the organisation for just over ten K. It was a blow that didn’t really hurt the men that mattered and Leroy was targeted for the cross rather than the amount of money he had stolen.

Nobody crossed the organisation and lived.

Leroy should have known that and the fact that a goodly portion of the contents of his head was now splattered over the CDs and dirty dishes and magazines was pretty much his own doing.

You didn’t cross the organisation and certainly not for a measly ten grand.

There was a country lane ahead; little used, it ran up over Llanwonno Mountain and onto Ferndale.

The man with the sun in his eyes took the turning.

The dark coloured car did also.

The man with the sun in his eyes sped up and so did the car following. The road ahead was in a poor state of repair and there were potholes everywhere, which wouldn’t do the Porsche any good. But all the same the man with the sun in his eyes floored the accelerator and the powerful engine gave him an instant power boost like a can of Red Bull laced with amphetamine.

He took corner after corner at speed, the wheels screaming but gripping the uneven surface like glue and soon he had lost his tail, but he knew the car was still behind him for there was nowhere else for it to go. He looked again in the mirror but couldn’t see further than the bend immediately behind. The road straightened up ahead and he kept the Porsche at speed as he approached the straight and then accelerated even harder until the needle was touching the hundred.

Suicidal speeds for roads such as these but if there was one thing above all else that the man with the sun in his eyes was good at, it was driving. There was still no sign of the car following and after maybe another mile, the man with the sun in his eyes pulled the Porsche off the road and took it into a field, concealing it behind the Hawthorn Hedge. He jumped out of the car and hid behind a small banking while he waited for his tail to appear.

He felt that he’d figured the tail out – someone had put a hit on him.

The organisation, no doubt - it had to be.

They were meticulous in clearing their tracks. It seemed someone had decided that once he’d taken Leroy out, he became a problem himself. He was a loose end that could unravel and linked the organisation to Leroy who was an unknown quantity. It was common knowledge that Leroy had been shouting off his mouth about his links to the organisation and maybe when he turned up dead one of his crack-head friends would go to the filth, tell them that Leroy was connected.

Least that was the way the man with the sun in his eyes figured it and he guessed he’d know soon enough when he saw the dark coloured car appear in the lane where it started to straighten.

He remained there, crouched behind the banking as the car approached. At first, it went past the point where he had left the road but then stopped dead and started reversing, maybe the driver had noticed the Porsche in his rear-view mirror. The man with the sun in his eyes pumped his pistol, sending a slug into the chamber.

He watched as the dark car stopped and the driver stepped out.

The driver, a big man with shocking ginger hair held an automatic pistol in his hand. For a moment, the ginger guy looked around him and then, on cautious feet, walked into the field. He held the pistol out in front of him and approached the Porsche.

The man with the sun in his eyes pulled the trigger and dropped the ginger guy.

A shoulder shot, not fatal but enough to put him on his arse.

The man with the sun in his eyes ran to the fallen man and located the automatic and kicked it out of the way. He levelled his own gun, setting its sight directly between the ginger guy’s eyes.

‘You fucking shot me,’ Ginger said, clutching his injured shoulder. Blood gushed through his fingers and his face drained of all colour. ‘You fucking shot me.’

‘You were going to do me,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said.

‘I guess I was,’ the ginger guy said as if that made everything all right. He looked at the man with the sun his eyes, taking in the pupil abnormality. The pupils were bright yellow and looked like twin suns floating against light blue irises.

‘You know what I’m going to do now?’ the man with the sun in his eyes asked.

The ginger guy nodded, accepting the situation. It was all part of the game and he’d lost and what came next was inevitable. There was no use kicking up a fuss and he took some comfort in the fact that he’d finally seen the man with the sun in his eyes for himself, discovered that the story of his freaky eyes were not a myth. The guy was a fucking freak.

‘Tell me who sent you,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said. ‘Was it the organisation?’

‘Guess it makes no fucking difference,’ Ginger guy said. ‘They can’t touch me now. Yeah, it was.’

‘Thank you,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said and pulled the trigger.

He went to the Porsche and drove it out of the field, parked it in the lane and then jumped into the ginger guy’s car and reversed it into the field, parking it tight against the hedge.

The man with the sun in his eyes smiled and walked back to the Porsche. He saw another car coming along the lane, a silver Range Rover and the man with the sun in his eyes stood back against his own car while he waited for the vehicle to pass.

The Range Rover pulled level with the man with the sun in his eyes and then the driver killed the engine and shot the man with the sun in his eyes in the throat, sending a spray of gore onto the afternoon air.

The newcomer stepped from the Range Rover and walked over to the man with the sun in his eyes, who was slowly drowning in his own blood.

‘You got the ginger guy, the newcomer said. ‘I was supposed to get ginger after he got you, but I guess it makes no difference.’

The man with the sun in his eyes would have smiled if he could. The organisation was being extra cautious and had double-crossed both himself and the ginger guy.

‘It’s true,‘ the newcomer said. ‘You really have some freaky fucking eyes.’

There was no answer from the man with the sun in his eyes.

The sun had finally gone from his eyes.

The newcomer turned and made his way back to his Range Rover just as another car came screaming along the lane...

A Twist Of Noir 340 - Gary Dobbs

CISSY’S HEEBIE JEEBIES - GARY DOBBS

Originally published in Peeping Tom Magazine (Issue 15) in 1995

1

-

July 1994

Cissy struggled out of bed. She wasn’t sure which creaked the loudest; the aged mattress or her ancient back. Nether were up to much, she thought and smiled to herself. She grabbed her teeth from the jar besides the bed and popped them into her mouth. Her face immediately filled out, her cheekbones becoming less prominent, her chin much more rounded.

‘Another day,’ Cissy chuckled. ‘Won’t be many more.’

Cissy had taken to talking to herself many years ago. At first, she had been self-conscious and would cast a head over her shoulder, as if someone were there watching and listening, but now it had become second nature. Cissy Jones was her own best companion – her only companion.

She dressed quickly so the cold air would not linger on her skin and chill through to her bones, and went down to the kitchen to get the kettle brewing. A day started without tea is a day of woe; her mother had been fond of saying. Cissy smiled at the memory of her mother, long dead now, more than seventy years gone to ground.

‘You’ll be joining her soon, Cissy gull. Mark my words you will.’

She made her tea, thick like tar, and took it through to the living room. She sat down and switched on the electric fire the Social Services had provided and heat instantly filled the room. She relaxed; eyes looking at the soft orange glow but focused on the past. There was such a lot of it to see. More each day.

Cissy had been born on the first day of a century that was fast drawing to a close. She had come into this world during one of the harshest winter the area had known. Of course, Cissy didn’t remember it herself but her mother had often told her about it. All in all 1900 was a year that boasted of firsts – first flight of the Zeppelin, first Browning revolver produced and of course Cissy Jones had drawn her first breath.

1900 – 94 years ago, closer to 95. It was still relatively recent and yet as distant as Christ’s birth, ancient Rome and the birth of Mankind itself. None could ever be touched again. They were gone and gone is gone. There are no degrees of distance concerning time, Cissy had learnt. A minute ago was no closer than an hour, a year, a century even. All were gone forever and gone was very much gone.

‘Awck, at Cissy gull. You’re becoming morbid.’

For a moment there was silence and then Cissy answered herself. ‘That’s as maybe but morbidity is all I’ve got left.’

Cissy felt one of her regular bursts of pain, a severe burning in her chest, and she buckled up as he coughed a globule of phlegm into her handkerchief. At one time she had been able to hawk the vile stuff up into the fire, watching it hiss on the coals and it withered into a blackened reminder of her pain. But now she had to catch it and toss it into the bin. Couldn’t cough lumps onto the electric fire.

Cissy knew the ferocity of her coughing meant that she was going to die soon and she feared that more than anything. She was 94 years old and riddled with the cancer – the end was approaching fast. She did not want to die, though and had not accepted the inevitable. Death would force her to confront her heebie-jeebies, and she had such a lot of those waiting to torment her.

‘No, Cissy gull. Best not think of such things. It’ll do no good to dwell on things.’

Cissy rolled and lit a cigarette. The doctor had warned her that the habit would kill her sooner rather than later, but she was still realistic enough to know that tobacco abstinence would not stave off death’s icy grip. It was coming, almost had her. She could feel the cold grip of eternity upon the back of her neck.

Cissy smoked and tried to think of better times but her heebie-jeebies came to taunt her.

2

-

In the afternoon, after watching her favourite daytime soap opera, Cissy went outside to the yard. It was a wonderful day, of the variety she would have called, "a real cracker" when she was still young enough to care about such things. The village of Gilfach Goch in the valley below basked in the heat, the red roofs of the houses shimmered in fiery contrast to the blue skies.

Cissy wondered what the inhabitants of those brick boxes to combat the heat. Rabbit hutches, that was what her mother had called the houses that sprung up around the once thriving coal industry. She looked back at her own farmhouse. It may be a little ramshackle and the farmlands were no longer working, most of the arable plots having been swallowed up by the other farms, but it was still home. She had been born there, was determined not to die there.

In all her 94 years Cissy had never left Gilfach Goch. The nearest town was Blackmill and that was reached by going over the long bridge that spanned the River Ogwr. Of course this wasn’t the original bridge, it had been rebuilt when the old wooden structure succumbed to age, but it still served the same purpose it always had.

Cissy though had never crossed that bridge, never ventured out of Gilfach Goch.

That fact had played on her mind a lot lately, and she had come to the conclusion that if she could cross the divide that separated communities she would be able to leave her heebie jeebies behind. It was as if Gilfach Goch was a prison, and the bridge had become symbolic of the trials that had shaped her life. It was there, taunting her for her inability to take its freedom road.

But she feared that bridge. Crossing it would force her to confront her heebie jeebies. Of course, Cissy knew that was nonsense but the bridge seemed unconquerable within her mind. It had taken on the physical form of her fears. Her heebie jeebies.

Cissy had such a lot of those.

‘Come on gull, don’t be scaring yourself.’

She went back inside and fell asleep in the armchair besides the fire. She slept a lot lately, perhaps in preparation for the big sleep.

3

-

Good old Cissy – that’s what the locals called her. Eccentric old Cissy, a little bit dotty but she’d never harm a fly. Good old harmless Cissy. But they didn’t know about her heebie jeebies, and indeed they would never have believed the old woman’s dark secrets had she told them herself.

Such a lot of heebie jeebies.

There were minor heebie jeebies such as the fact that Cissy had once stolen eggs from Mort the Shop during the Thirties, and that she had slept with her father for years before and after the heart attack claimed her mother. There were minor heebie jeebies, on the scale of heebie jeebies they barely registered, and when placed next to heebie jeebie number one, the mother of all heebie jeebies, they were nothing.

Cissy’s eyes tightened to slits as she remembered that day back in 1918. She had been a young girl then, full of the joys of youth. She had been partaking in a vigorous bout of lovemaking with a local lad, Smithy he was called, when her retarded sibling, better known as Billy Bob had happened along.

‘I can see his cocky,’ Billy Bob had shouted, terrifying Smithy. ‘And your titties. I see your titties, Cissy. I’m telling,’ his face had been a split melon as he smiled.

It was all too much for Smithy and he yanked his breeches up and had it away sharpish, running past Billy Bob with the look of sheer terror in his eyes. Whilst Billy Bob may have been carrying less than a full load upstairs, he made up for his lack of mental skills in stature. He cut an huge, ogre-like figure, but Cissy wasn’t afraid of the boy father often called, ‘shit for brains.’

‘I see your titties, Cissy,’ Billy Bob was delighted. His face looked like it did on harvest day when Harris the Grocer gave him an apple or orange. ‘Can I have another look. I’m telling lessing you give me another look.

It was then that Cissy did it. Without thinking, in anger, driven by instinct, she grabbed a spade, swung it wide, and brought it down on Billy Bobs head. His head split open and briefly he looked at her, surprise in his eyes, but then he collapsed as blood and gore burst from his head.

That was Cissy’s biggest heebie jeebie. She had murdered her brother, hadn’t mean to, not really, but dead was dead. Her father had come into the barn at that moment. He looked first at his dead son, and then at his daughter who was still holding the murder weapon. Cissy had expected him to beat her within an inch of her life and then drag her off to the police houses, but instead he took her in her arms and hugged her tightly, all the while whispering soothing words.

That night father had buried the boy beneath the old oak tree on the rise above the farmhouse. Later Cissy would hear him telling friends that Billy Bob had gone off to live with relatives in London. Mother covered up too, but the guilt brought on the heart trouble that eventually killed her. And for years following that incident in the barn Cissy found herself giving her nubile young body to her father whenever he wanted it. Once she had gotten pregnant, but a bottle of strong spirits and a scolding hot bath had finished that.

‘Damn the heebie jeebies,’ Cissy said. ‘They’s nothing see. Jus’ memories is all.’

4

-

The evening, Cissy watched her usual television: Coronation Street, Brookside and an episode of Frank Parade Investigates. That took her up to ten, well past her usual bedtime and she was suffering for it. She felt dog tired, drained and moody.

She went to the kitchen and put the, still warm, kettle onto boil. A day that ends without tea is a bad day indeed, her mother used to say. As she waited for the kettle to boil, Cissy watched the steam rising from the spout. It curled upwards, making patterns in the air. At first they were indistinct, more imagination than substance, but then Cissy saw Billy Bob’s face appear within the steam.

‘I see your titties, Cissy,’ the steam brother said. ‘And his cocky. Ah, look at his cocky.’

Cissy pounced at the kettle and switched it off. Billy Bob’s image was sucked back into the spout like a genie to a lamp. She looked around the room and then at the puddle on the floor. Her bladder had given away again, something it was doing more and more lately, and as she looked at the pool of urine her father’s face started to form in its surface.

‘Don’t you worry Cissy. I’ll keep your secrets, just between us,’ it said, the word bubbling within the piss and sending out ripples like an echo. ‘You mustn’t tell that Daddy comes into your room, Cissy. But you like it. I can tell you like it.’

‘Heebie jeebies,’ Cissy screamed and ran her foot through the urine, smearing her father’s image. ‘Heebie jeebies, nothing more.’

But the heebie jeebies persisted, and Cissy knew that she had to get out of the house, had to get away. They were here to stay, somehow she knew that and what’s more, she knew that to do. She went to the hall and grabbed her coat, and then went outside. Once on the porch she buckled over and coughed a globule of phlegm onto the yard.

‘Heebie jeebies,’ Cissy gasped. ‘They’re here for good now, gull. They’ve come to take you. It’s time, gull. You know what that means.’

She did indeed. It meant that death was even closer. The pain had intensified lately, and she was finding blood in the sheets of a morning. Her bladder had become a random animal, shedding its load without warning, and her lungs felt as if they were constructed out of glass-paper. She had no real quality of life and she found that there was nothing more to fear from death. She welcomed it but she would be damned if she’d take her heebie jeebies to the grave with her.

She had to banish those ghosts. And that meant crossing the divide, leaving Gilfach Goch and curling up her toes in Blackmill, away from her sins and fears. That way, she was sure, would release her from the nightmares of the past.

The heebie jeebies, Cissy had concluded, were a part of Gilfach Goch. They were as much a part of the area as the coal scarred mountains. The trouble was that crossing that bridge – a mere quarter of a mile – had become an insurmountable challenge to Cissy. The divide seemed to repel as garlic would a vampire. There was no sense in it. It just happened.

‘Rubbish, Cissy gull. You’ve got to cross that bridge and you’ve got to do it tonight. Don’t be a victim to your past, forever. Do it...do it, now.’

Gilfach Goch, that silent brooding village, stood like a lecherous whore laughing at the people who made their homes within its cancerous womb. Gilfach Goch was not so much a place as an entity formed out of tainted land. No one lived here. They existed.

Cissy was surprised at the articulate thought and she shook it off and headed for the great bridge.

5

-

When she had been a slip of a girl, Cissy had been able to run the half-mile from the farmhouse to the bridge, but now she couldn’t even walk the distance without stopping. And stop she did, several times, before she found herself standing on the road before the bridge.

She looked at the bridge but didn’t see it as it was. Rather, she saw it as it had once been: constructed solely from wood with huge supports so that it could support the industrial trucks that once rolled in and out of Gilfach Goch, carrying the coal that fed, clothed and ultimately poisoned the area. Now though, it was all steel girders and concrete, its surface smooth with cat’s eye running down the middle. It didn’t even look like a bridge these days, but a road magically suspended over the river.

Cissy took a step onto the bridge and a mild electrical jolt seemed to run up her leg. Immediately she saw the image of Billy Bob floating in the air before her.

‘You can’t leave us, Cissy,’ Billy Bob told her. ‘You can’t go on. You must stay with us until the end. And it won’t be long, will it? Look at you; you’re riddled with cancer. You titties are flat and deflated like punctured tyres on your stupid stomach.’

‘Get away,’ Cissy ordered. She placed her other foot upon the bridge. She was now out of Gilfach Goch, standing on the divide between communities. She took another step, now gone further than ever before. Cissy smiled. She was going to die, there was no question about that. But she was leaving her heebie jeebies behind. They were not coming to the grave with her.

Then Cissy saw her mother standing before her. Mother had always been thin, cadaverously so, but now she was so much worse. Her skin was drawn in and hanging on her bones.

‘Go back, Cissy,’ the ghost shouted. ‘You’ve got to answer for your sins. You didn’t just kill Billy Bob, but me, too.

‘No.’ Cissy placed her hands over her ears, but the words were not aural and they appeared fully formed within her mind.

‘You killed me, too,’ the ghost persisted. ‘Not directly but it was the grief over Billy Bob that claimed me. And you’ve laid down with your father. You’re an evil girl, Cissy. You can have no redemption.’

‘I’m crossing,’ Cissy howled with determination and walked straight through her mother. ‘I’m going.’

But crossing was the hardest thing she had ever done. It wasn’t just the visions that tried to drive her back, but her own inner fears. It was as if she were suffering from agoraphobia and Gilfach Goch was more than a village, it was her home, her safety.

‘Come and hold my cock,’ a vision of her father, naked, and aged somewhere around his mid-Forties appeared on the air. His penis was erect and as Cissy looked at it, its single eye winked at her. ‘Come and hold it, Cissy. I’ve kept your secret. You owe me.’

‘Owe,’ Cissy screamed, tears running from her aged eyes. ‘I owe you nothing. I’ve paid in spades. If it weren’t for you and your stinking perversions I’d have married. I’d have made a life for myself.’

And now the three of them were there, floating on the air, and they had been joined by Mort the Grocer.

‘Where’s me eggs?’ Mort asked. ‘Thief! Robber! She stole my eggs, everybody.’

‘Bitch.’ They all screamed as one. ‘Bitch. Bitch. Bitchbitchbitch.’ The word became one long verbal snake.

Cissy kept walking, putting one step before the other. Her chest felt as if it was on fire, but she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of coughing. She had to keep moving, reach the other side.

‘Walk,’ she told herself. ‘Walk, one foot and then another. Walk.’

Until, she had finally done it.

The heebie jeebies vanished, leaving the faint trace of ozone behind.

Cissy sat by the side of the road and looked at the village of Gilfach Goch in the distance, the lights of the houses twinkling like satanic eyes in the velvet night. And she felt better than she had in a very long time. It was Gilfach Goch that had sown her cancer and polluted her blood, but she had escaped its grasp. She was still going to die but it would be on her own terms.

It started to rain. At first, soft droplets, but then it became a torrent and each side of the road was torn up. Cissy smiled. She would be dead by morning if she stayed out in this rain.

She didn’t care.

Cissy laid herself down on the cold ground and closed her eyes. Now she was ready to meet her maker and face whatever judgement should befall her. But she was thankful that Gilfach Goch would have no say in the matter.

Cissy relaxed.

Cissy slept.

Cissy died.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, The Tarnished Star, a western under the Jack Martin name, is available by Robert Hale LTD. You can find Gary and more of his writings at The Tainted Archive.

A Twist Of Noir 155 - Gary Dobbs

RHONDDA LOVEBITE - GARY DOBBS

1

He’d found them at last.

Stanton lay back on the bed, staring at the damp walls and twirling the business card over and over between thumb and forefinger. Round and round it went, incredibly fast so that the text upon it became a blur.

He’d had years of practise.

Sitting around with nothing else to do but twiddle his thumbs.

The place was a shithole. The wallpaper stained with damp, was curling the edges. In one corner, a strip had come loose of the wall and was being held up by the cobweb it had fallen into. The door frame, once a brilliant white, was stained yellow by years of nicotine and the floor was littered with empty beer bottles and crisp packets.

Stanton didn’t give a flying fuck, though.

He didn’t see none of it.

He was looking into the past, far into the past...

2

Five years ago, in fact.

Everything had gone to plan, better than any of them expected and Stanton grinned like an idiot as he passed the bottle around.

High-grade Scotch with a kick like a pissed-off mule and yet Cathy took it from him and mouthed it like it was nothing but water. She took more than her fair share and passed the bottle to John, who laughed as he threw a handful of twenties into the air and allowed them to come fluttering down around him like expensive confetti. He, too, took a swig but he couldn’t handle it and he doubled over coughing.

‘I need a piss,’ Stanton said.

‘Too much information,’ Cathy said and lay across the sofa and snatched the bottle back from John.

‘Don’t go running away with all that money,’ Stanton joked.

The wisecrack didn’t get a reply and, for a moment, Stanton thought that he detected a guarded look between John and his (Stanton’s) wife. No, he pushed the thought from his mind, telling himself if was the drink, coming after such an eventful day, playing tricks with his mind.

Stanton smiled and went through to the toilet, which was at the back of the flat. He unzipped and pissed out a tanker truck full.

He couldn’t believe everything had gone so well. He’d hardly slept last night for worry and yet the job had gone off without a hitch. Too fucking easy, if the truth were told.

The post office on giro day – hit it fast and hit it hard, get in there and scare the fuckers straight before that had a chance to react. Keep them scared so they wouldn’t react. Might have to rough someone up to achieve that terror, maybe bust a nose or break a jaw. The thing was not to use the shooters if at all possible, well other than as crude but effective clubs.

They’d done that, sure enough. As soon as the head postmaster opened the store, Stanton had jumped out of the alleyway and smacked the man in the nose with the butt of his shotgun. The heavy walnut grain smashed the man’s nose and sent him staggering backwards, clutching at his meshed up snout. John had come in immediately behind Stanton. Wearing a ridiculous Homer Simpson mask and, waving the shotgun about, he looked scary enough.

Homer’s gun went straight to the woman behind the counter, daring her to make a move.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Stanton yelled, his own words muffled beneath the stocking he wore. Cathy, for a laugh, had written in black marker, “MAD FUCKER”, so that when he wore the stocking, the words could be clearly read on his forehead. She’d said it’d serve two purposes – one, it would scare people even more and two, it would take their attention away from his face. All they would remember would be the words. Stanton thought that kind of made sense and figured it couldn’t do any harm, just as long as she didn’t put his name and address on it.

Homer stamped on the cowering postmaster, a kind of shorthand that reminded him his broken nose would only be the start of his problems. If he didn’t shut the fuck up, that is.

The postmaster didn’t exactly “shut the fuck up” but his cries became whimpers and that seemed to satisfy the Homer thug somewhat.

‘There,’ Stanton yelled. ‘Put the money in a posties bag. All of it - we know what’s here so don’t fucking hold out. Come on.’ He pointed the shotgun directly at the pretty girl behind the counter, sighting up square in the middle of her face.

Homer kicked the postmaster once again as if to punctuate Stanton’s orders.

The woman did as she was told. She opened the safe and stuffed everything into a large postman’s sack. And then, without prompting, she went to the other safe, the one hidden below the counter and likewise transferred its contents into the sack. Next, she emptied the tills, all of them and poured everything into the sack.

‘Good,’ Stanton said and took the sack from her. He turned on his feet and nodded for John/Homer to follow. They were almost out of the door when John pulled back.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said and went up to the counter, pointing his gun at the woman, who was on the verge of hysterics. For one awful moment, Stanton thought John was going to blow the woman away for the fun of it, but then he snarled, ‘Give me a book of fucking first class stamps.’

The woman handed a book of ten stamps over.

‘Thanks,’ John said. ‘Let’s go.’

Once outside, they ran down the alleyway to where Cathy was waiting in the tuned-up Subaru. And from there they made their getaway before the alarm was raised.

Stanton finished what he was doing, gave his knob several shakes and left the toilet. He immediately went back in as something hard hit him in the jaw. He went down and tried to lift himself but someone hit him again and again. The moment before he passed out, he saw John standing over him, a baseball bat in his hands, and Cathy grinning as once more the bat came down towards him.

3

Stanton got off the bed and pushed the business card into his jeans. He went to the wardrobe and fumbled about beneath the pile of clothes and pulled out a 9MM Glock. He’d had the piece some time but had yet to use it. It was fitting that he’d christen the thing on his lying cheating wife and her wanker of a boyfriend.

Stanton pushed the gun into his waistband and pulled his jacket on. He wouldn’t be coming back to the stinking bed-sit again after tonight but he didn’t take any of his belongings with him. It was all worthless shit in any case and there was nothing to identify him amongst the tat.

He opened the door and closed it behind him for the last time.

As soon as he’d settled a few scores, Mr. Stanton was going to chase the sun for a change. It was pissing down and the Rhondda looked even greyer than usual as he drove the battered mini down the valleys and towards the A470 that would lead him to Cardiff.

All those years ago, after his wife and her lover had beaten him to a pulp and, leaving him for dead, run off with the proceeds of the post office blag, he had drifted in and out of consciousness, at times feeling he was more dead than alive. He’d been like that for a couple of days before he felt he had the strength to get to his feet. He’d done that, each nerve ending in his body seeming to scream out in agony, as he pulled himself up. He’d stumbled through to the living room and looked into the mirror at John and Cathy’s handiwork.

He’d been in a fucking mess – a bigger mess than the economy after too many years of socialism. His nose was gone, replaced by a painful-looking crimson sponge, there was a huge dent in the back of his head and when he felt it, he’d winced as his fingers found where parts of his skull had crumbled. It was probably only the congealed blood around the wound that had saved him. One of his eyes was swollen shut and there was a rip at the corner of his mouth so that parts of his lower lip hung loose.

He wasn’t sure but he thought he’d passed out again then because, the next thing he knew, he was back on the floor and his brother, Steve, had been kneeling over him, his eyes showing concern and revulsion.

Stanton shook the memory from his mind and came down the gears to negotiate the roundabout at Pontypridd that led onto the slip road that in turn led to the A470. He pulled out into the middle lane and hit the car radio on, tuning into one of the oldie stations. He floored the accelerator as Devil Woman blasted out of the speakers. The sound system was probably worth more than the fucking car.

He caught his reflection in the rear-view mirror, the scars a constant reminder of the past betrayal. He’d spent several weeks in hospital, refusing to say who had done this to him. The doctors had worked miracles repairing a fractured skull, telling him they were amazed he’d survived such brutality. They offered him plastic surgery to put his face right but he’d refused. Just as he refused to talk to the police when they came calling, which they did several times before realising they were wasting their time and left him alone.

The only person who knew who had done this to him, besides himself and those responsible, was his brother Steve. And Steve wouldn’t say anything to anyone – he knew the scores. The Stantons sorted their own shit out.

Stanton didn’t even bother looking for Cathy and John. He was sure they’d thought he was dead, or close enough to it, when they’d left him. And then when they realised he wasn’t, they would have run and hid, gone as far away as possible. There was no point in looking. Revenge wasn’t a good enough motive for travelling all over with no chance of success.

Not when he had a living to make.

And so he’d gotten on with things. He’d almost forgotten about them, or at least the memory wasn’t so fresh each time he looked in the shaving mirror. Until Steve had come around last night and told him he’d found them. He had their address written on the back of one of his business cards and he handed it over to his brother.

Stanton grinned as he made a right on Cathedral Road and started out towards Cardiff’s suburbs. He’d thought Cathy and John would have been over in Spain or even further afield but all the while they been living in Cardiff. Or at least they were there now and from what he’d gathered they’d done well for themselves and owned a string of properties, which they let out to social security cases, getting the rent from the benefit agency. Maybe they’d used the money from the post office blag to get themselves onto the property ladder.

Fifty grand would have done it five years back.

After a few more miles, Stanton took a left, followed by a sharp right and parked the car up at the end of the street. So this was where they lived – he was impressed. It looked a nice area and he doubted there’d be any social security cases living around here.

He checked the Glock and then walked down the street, picking out the door numbers as he went.

4

Cathy was in the kitchen, shouting that she was cooking when the doorbell went but John knew she was probably hitting the wine back at the same time. These days she always seemed sloshed but then he supposed he should count his blessings. At least she was clean of smack. They both were, the addiction long been purged from their systems.

‘I'll fucking get it then,’ John yelled, annoyed. He had been playing on the X-Box and he tossed the control pad aside and, with a groan, got to his feet.

‘I’m coming. I’m coming,’ John mumbled. Whoever it was at the door, they were growing impatient.

John opened the door and his mouth fell open in shock. He was looking into eyes that had long since died, inhuman eyes.

Before he could react, Stanton grabbed him and pulled him towards him. ‘You fucked my wife,’ he said and brought his head back and then suddenly butted John between the eyes. ‘That’s a Rhondda lovebite.’

Stanton stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. He kicked John in the gut, winding him and then grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him into the living room. With his free hand, he took the Glock from his waistband and allowed it to hang loosely in his hand.

Cathy came into the room and the look of shock on her face as she recognised Stanton was perfect. Her hands came to her mouth but she didn’t scream and instead just stood there.

‘Hello, love,’ Stanton said and then lifted John up a bit and brought the Glock into line with his face. He smiled and then shot John square in the head, allowing his lifeless body to fall onto the nice white carpet that Stanton had, in a roundabout way, paid for.

Stanton had paid for everything here, for their entire lifestyle.

Cathy looked first at her husband and then at her dead lover. She shook her head in disbelief but still no words came from her lips.

Stanton lifted the gun, took aim, and fired.

With that, he turned on his feet and walked from the room.

Finally, he had closure and a new life beckoned.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, The Tarnished Star, a western under the Jack Martin name, is available by Robert Hale LTD. You can find Gary and more of his writings at The Tainted Archive.

A Twist Of Noir 089 - Gary Dobbs

HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN - GARY DOBBS

Originally published at Thieves Jargon

‘When you live with death on a professional basis, it gives you a fresh perspective on this thing called life,’ he said and stepped over the corpse, careful not to pick up any of the gore on his shoes. They were expensive, the Italian leather brogues, but that wasn’t the point. They had genuine style, looked good, and blood and whatever that grungy stuff pumping from Elton John’s smashed forehead was would spoil the aesthetic value. Brain, sinew and splintered bone would not compliment the tan leather.

He liked to look the part and he brushed his hands down the creases of his trousers, almost sharp enough to cut yourself on, before leaving the room, closing the door behind him.

This was a big house and he had much to do.

No rest for the wicked!

Outside the door, he found himself in a long hall. He removed the small earpieces and listened for a moment. Silence...nothing but silence. Good. It meant that the muted thud of his pistol hadn’t been heard above the music coming from elsewhere in the massive house. It would make his job much easier. Better to remain undetected for as long as possible.

He replaced the earpieces and pressed random play on the I-Pod he carried in his breast pocket. A wonderful gadget that housed almost his entire CD collection in its memory. Rock music filled his head and he smiled as Hendrix rasped into Hey, Joe.

Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?

He smiled again. Strange how the computerised gadget seemed to select a tune that was somehow related to whatever he was up to at any given moment. Like the other night when he was getting head from Tammy, the attendant at the all-night garage, the damn thing had gone from Eva Cassidy to James Brown; an artist eminently suited to having the old cock sucked to. That was stupid, he told himself. Coincidence is all and there’s no time for fancy thoughts. This is a job. Calls for professionalism.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

He didn’t move until Hendrix had faded out, replaced by The Police; Sting bemoaning his loneliness in his distinctive, high-pitched cadence. He continued along the corridor, seeking his target. He moved slowly, steadily, his face impassive - he might as well have been a machine.

The job had come to him in the usual way. He had been contacted by a mutually trusted go-between, the contract dished out, a down payment made. The target’s name was Max Klein, some sort of big shot in the record industry, a billionaire with a penchant for young boys and strong drugs. The guy had fucked about with some boy whose father knew someone who knew someone else with big contacts. The indiscretion was enough to warrant a termination order going out and Traine had been handed the job. Traine was after Klein and the hitman may as well have had Canadian blood running through his veins because, like the Mountie, he always got his man.

Sting went, replaced by Black Sabbath. The heavy beat drove Traine forward. He had come in through the cellar entrance, after negotiating the surprisingly lax security at the main gates and remaining hidden for the length of the gravel drive. Anyone else would have carried out the contract at another time, when it was quiet, and not in the middle of a large party Klein was throwing to celebrate a number one single by his new, ever-so-young, wife. Traine, though, liked a challenge, and he knew that if he carried out the hit in the middle of this celebrity party, this grand show business shindig, and escaped to kill another day, which he had no doubt he would, then his legend would grow even further.

Rep was all important in this line of work. It was money in the Swiss bank.

It had been weird, almost surreal to find aged crooner Elton John in the cellar. What he had been up to, Traine had no idea but no matter. He had taken a slug between the eyes, his head opening up with more multi-coloured splendour than any of the singer’s flamboyant costumes had ever managed.

Candle in the wind, indeed. Your brains were blown out long before your legend ever was.

At the end of the corridor, Traine found himself with a choice. There were doors both left and right and, after removing his earpieces, he stood rigid for a few moments, listening, deciding.

Left it is, then.

He opened the door, another corridor, this one wider, obviously leading up to the main section of the sprawling Wessex property. He quickly closed the door and then opened the other - no harm in checking before moving up into the house proper. Nothing, a storeroom.

Left again, then.

Eminem started hip-hopping through his brain as he carefully walked the length of the corridor, the pistol, a silenced Walther, held rigid, ready to spurt death at any moment. Another, an automatic whose origins no munitions factory in the world could claim, was nestled snugly in the Smith and Burns holster beneath his left arm.

He covered the distance of the corridor without incident and then opened a large oak door at the far end and stepped out into the house proper. He removed the earpieces, stopping Eminem, and stood, getting his bearings. Directly in front of him were two huge doors and he could hear laughter, talk and muted music coming from behind the ancient wood.

He had found the party.

He replaced his earpieces - still Eminem, and removed the automatic from its holster. He kicked the doors open, a gun held in each hand, and saw countless shocked faces turn toward him. It was like a who’s-who of the music industry - all the big players were at the party. He saw Mick Jagger standing next to a tall, very young blonde, two of the Spice Girls were staring directly at him, next to them was Barry Manilow. And there, amongst the famous faces, he saw Max Klein - the target. The guy was standing there, a terrified look on his face. The champagne he had been pouring was running over the carpet like liquid gold.

Traine smiled as The Beatles filled his head.

Helter skelter, when I get to the top, I go back...

He opened fire. Seven from the Walther, thousands from the automatic, making sure he took the security men, who came running at him, trying to draw their weapons, first.

Chaos.

Death gatecrashed the party.

He saw his target go down, the bullet tearing into his throat, throwing his head back violently as the bullet exited out of the newly-formed hole in the back of his skull, but before that, he had the satisfaction of taking one of the Spice Girls’ heads off, blowing a hole straight through Barry Manilow’s chest and totally obliterating Gareth Gates’ face.

This was like some surreal acid trip, a mad celebrity shoot-em-up video game, he thought as he blasted an hole through Sting’s face, sending the singer forever into fields of gold. Chris Deberg screamed and made a frantic dash for the far door. He made too good a target and Traine got him as he tried to climb over a lady in a revealing white dress. The slug took the singer midriff, sending his guts spilling over the lady who instantly became the lady in red, courtesy of the singers innards.

He ceased fire, closed the doors on the carnage. Apart from the lady in red, there wasn’t a person left alive that he could see. His legend was assured. He turned to leave but tensed when he heard footsteps coming towards him.

‘Fuck me!’ Paul McCartney said as he came tearing around the corner and found himself face to face with the big man with the gun. He was holding a tray of vegetarian sausages, which he tossed ineffectively at the hit man.

Traine smiled, ignored the soya sausage on his shoulder, and raised his gun, debating whether or not to let Macca live. He quite liked The Beatles but all that had been yesterday and since then, the Liverpudlian had committed many crimes against music.

‘This is for the fucking frog song,’ Traine said.

He fired.

McCartney was thrown backwards. The bullet entered the front of his head and erupted from the back with a crimson burst of shattered skull.

‘Bom, bom, fucking bom.’ Traine said, stepped over the one-time mop top, and quickly left the building, walking away into legend.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, a western under the Jack Martin name, will be released on June 30th by Robert Hale LTD. You can find Gary and more of his writings at The Tainted Archive.

Interlude

Just to call attention to one of our authors. Gary Dobbs, author of three excellent stories that you can find here, is reading one of them (originally titled Rhondda Lives, now retitled Rhonda Noir) over at CrimeWav.

If you haven't, go check it out already. If you already have heard it, hear it again.

A Twist Of Noir 060 - Gary Dobbs

THE WAY TO A MAN'S HEART - GARY DOBBS

1

Of course he knew that killing and then consuming one's wife was frowned upon in polite society; indeed in the eyes of the law it was positively forbidden and could bring grave consequences. But all the same, he thought of maybe adding a little seasoning, as he chomped down on another finger.

Marge, the wife, was surprisingly succulent. In life she had been a tough old bird but roasted and the simmered in a little red wine she was tender, her meat had the consistency of a good ham. He swallowed another chunk, thinking it may have come from the breast area and washed it down with a glass of Californian Merlot.

There was a knock at the door.

Startled, he looked up and wondered who it could be. He didn’t usually receive visitors and he figured that if he ignored whoever it was they would go away. He forked another piece of the pale meat into his mouth and frowned when the knocking sounded again.

And again.

And again.

Grumbling, he took his plate, which still contained several slices of his wife, a few boiled potatoes and a rich gravy and placed it in the cupboard out of sight. He downed the remainder of the glass of wine and went to answer the door.

2

It was a woman, middle-aged and frumpy-looking. She had dark red hair styled in one of those beehive jobs that were a few decades out of style. Despite the warm weather, she wore a thick woolen coat and had a newspaper tucked under her arm. It looked as if she took her style hints from a forty year-old fashion magazine.

‘I’m Rose Moore,’ she said and held out a hand.

He shook it and then had to bring a hand to his mouth to allow out a gentle burp. ‘Excuse me.’ Succulent or not, Marge was sitting heavy on his stomach.

‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

‘I’m here about the room,’ she said.

‘Room?’

‘Yes. In the paper.’ She held the newspaper up for his perusal and jabbed a podgy finger at the advert.

‘Let me see that.’ He snatched the newspaper from her and started at the advertisement.

Stupid bloody paper!

They’d run the advert a fortnight earlier than agreed. He didn’t know what this country was coming to – it was something when a copy editor couldn’t follow a basic set of instructions. The advert was to run from the seventeenth until further notice. Which he’d figured wouldn’t be too long since the room would be taken quickly, his house being in such a desirable part of Cardiff and within walking distance of the city centre.

‘I’m from the valleys,’ she said as if that explained everything.

He mumbled something in reply. He still couldn’t believe the balls up the newspaper had made.

‘Yes,’ she went on. ‘I’ve just taken a job managing the bookshop on Queen’s Street. I’m looking for somewhere nice but not too expensive.’ She looked around her. The fact that they were so close to the wide-open areas of Bute Park met with her satisfaction.

‘Well,’ he said after making a mental note to telephone the newspaper’s advertising department and play bollocks. ‘I’m afraid...’

It was too late. The frumpy woman had already pushed past him and was in the hallway looking around. She seemed to be regarding the flock wallpaper with a certain amount of distaste. Which was odd because the pattern was a close facsimile of her coat.

‘Is this the living room?’ she asked and pushed open the door and walked into the room.

He looked up and down the street and then closed the front door and went after the dammed woman. He could hear her talking to him as if he were in the room with her. He went through to the living room just in time to see the woman run a finger over the television set and examine it for dust.

‘Course,’ she said and turned and smiled at him. ‘You can’t expect a man to keep a house spick and span all on his own. This is reasonably tidy but it needs a woman’s touch. You do live alone, don’t you, Mr…?’

‘Kipling,’ he said. ‘Stanley Kipling. Yes, my wife left me. I don’t know where she is.’

‘Well, Stanley,’ she smiled. ‘Do you mind if I call you Stanley? Can’t go around on formality when we’re going to be living together, so to speak. You can call me Rose.’

‘Well, Rose,‘ he said but once again the woman cut short his words and came at him like junk mail. She had the air of someone who was used to most conversations being one-sided.

‘I’ll move in immediately,’ she said. ‘One month’s rent in advance is the norm. I’ve got my taxi outside and I’ll just get my bags.’

With that, she left the house in search of her cab, leaving Stanley thinking that he still had two legs, an arm and a good section of torso to eat and a pile of bones to crush before all signs of his late wife were eradicated forever.

This wasn’t good at all.

3

Stanley felt as if he was an observer in his own life, a third party standing on the sideline while absurdity was piled upon absurdity. He was a voyeur in the ballad of Stanley Kipling.

The woman who called herself Rose had made herself at home and was sitting in front of the television, knitting and watching an episode of Frank Parade Investigates. On the screen the aftermath of a brutal murder was played out but Stanley couldn’t concentrate. All he could think of was how he was going to get the rest of Marge from the freezer and into his stomach without this damn woman finding out.

He hadn’t meant to kill Marge, it hadn’t been pre-meditated or anything like that. If anything it had been a bizarre accident and maybe he should have telephoned the authorities immediately but he’d panicked and set about getting rid of the evidence.

And, by the time he had started to think clearly, he had already taken off the head with a power tool. Once that had been done, there had been no going to the police – he couldn’t say he had killed her on accident and then proceeded to remove her head and boil it.

No, it was too late.

Maybe if he’d gone to the police immediately, explained that he hadn’t meant to kill her, that she had struck her head on the side of the fire grate when he’d pushed her, then maybe, just maybe he would have escaped the full wrath of the law. That would have been the sensible thing to do and the law would have seen that it was a freak accident, a million-to-one chance. But as soon as he saw her lying on the floor, staring up at him with sightless eyes, knowing that she would never get up again, his mind had tripped into some sort of madness. And in the grip of that mania he had dragged the body out to the shed and started to cut her into little pieces with his power tools.

At first, he’d intended to bury her far from home – a section here, a bit there, maybe even dump some of her in the sea but he knew that one day some part of her would be found and that the forensic whiz-kids would be able to identify the person the remains belonged to.

He’d watched enough CSI to know that.

Now Stanley had an addiction. Not drugs or alcohol, not even a secret stash of pornographic books - nothing so commonplace, so vulgar. Stanley’s desire was for the “True Crime” books that filled the bookshops.

He read at least two a week, every week. It was one particular story about a Russian serial killer who ate his victims that had given him the idea. If he ate Marge, all of her and then crushed the bones in his vice and sprinkled the fine powder over his garden as compost, then he was sure he’d never be found out. Marge never had many friends and was pretty much a home bird. If anyone did enquire about her, he would say they’d had an argument and she’d left him. He didn’t know where she’d gone and wasn’t expecting to hear from her.

And everything had been going smoothly until this damn woman turned up from the valleys. She’d only been here a few hours and already she had made her presence felt. In a few more weeks, all signs of Marge would have been gone but, as it was, he still had a good section of her in the freezer.

‘I think a cup of tea,’ Rose said, breaking his reverie. She placed her knitting on the arm of her chair and stood up.

‘No. No.’ Stanley jumped from his chair. He couldn’t have her rooting about in the kitchen. ‘I’ll make it,’ he said.

‘Nonsense,’ Rose smiled. ‘I’ll do it. One of the benefits of having me here Stanley is that I’ll cook for you. I do so enjoy cooking so it’s no chore. I’ll make the tea. The sooner I get used to where everything is in the kitchen, the better.’

‘No!’ Stanley positively screamed and ran to the door. He threw his weight across it and stood there, blocking her way.

‘Out of my way, silly,’ Rose said. ‘No need to be embarrassed with me. Is the kitchen a mess? Is that what you’re worried about?’

Stanley nodded, meekly.

‘You’re such a silly sausage.’ Rose clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Silly man,’ she said and pushed him out of the way and went through to the kitchen.

Stanley ran after her.

4

‘Oh my,’ Rose said and pulled the plate from the cupboard. She looked at the half eaten meal and then scraped it into the pedal bin. ‘Men really have no place in the kitchen.’

‘My dinner,’ Stanley said. ‘I forgot about that.’ There had been a few slices of Marge on the plate but thankfully none of it had been recognisable as human.

Rose clucked her tongue again. ‘Men,’ she said. ‘Honestly. We’ll have a nice cup of tea and then I’ll cook you supper.’ She had already washed the plate that had contained the half-eaten meal and now she rinsed it under the cold-water tap.

‘No!’ Stanley screamed and then smiled when he noticed the woman was looking at him strangely. ‘I mean, I’m not hungry. That’s why I hadn’t finished my dinner.’

‘Nonsense,’ Rose said and put the kettle on for the boil. ‘A man needs three solid meals a day.’

‘I’ve eaten,’ Stanley protested.

‘That little thing?’ Rose pointed to the bin that contained the remains of his meal. ‘That’s not eating. Don’t take this wrong, but that meat was under-cooked. No wonder you couldn’t finish it.’

Stanley stared at her, open-mouthed. No matter what he said she was going to do pretty damn well what she pleased. There was no talking to her. This morning, he’d never even heard of this woman and yet here she was acting as if she’d been here forever.

Rose poured two cups of tea and then, without asking, sugared them both. She handed one to Stanley and took a gentle sip of the other. ‘That’s better,’ she said.Stanley sipped his tea. He had to admit it was a bloody fine cuppa. She’d used his tea bags, the only brand he ever bought, and yet this tasted better than any tea he’d ever tasted before.

‘Right,’ Rose said. ‘I’ll do some shopping in the morning and you can deduct it from next month’s rent. For now, I’ll throw something together.’

Stanley nodded, defeated and took another sip of his tea.

‘Now let’s see what we’ve got here,’ Rose said and, before Stanley could react, she had thrown the freezer door open and was peering inside. She pulled out the top drawer, which contained mostly fish products. She didn’t fancy that and so she closed the drawer and opened another.

Stanley groaned and drained the last of his tea. It was too late now and the woman was staring down into one of the drawers that contained several portions of the frozen Marge. She pulled out a joint that Stanley thought had come from Marge’s thigh. She looked at it carefully, turning it over and over in her hand. ‘What’s this,’ she asked, ‘pork?’

‘Lamb,’ Stanley said and drained his tea. ‘That’ll do nicely.’ If she went further into the drawer she would discover some cuts that could only have been human. Both of Marge’s feet were in the back of that drawer.

‘For a stew, maybe,’ Marge said. ‘No, let’s have a look for something better.’ She pulled the drawer out further and then recoiled in shock when she discovered the two feet and one of Marge’s hands.

Puzzled, she looked at the objects in her hands and then bent back to look further into the freezer. She reached in and pulled out what looked like a breast, the ice-frosted nipple like a treat atop a fleshy-coloured cupcake.

Rose screamed and dropped the tit.

It was then that Stanley hit her. He grabbed a heavy pan from the cupboard and bounced it off the woman’s skull. Her head split like a melon and her feet buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor.

Stanley turned on his feet and ran out into the hall. He needed to ensure the door was locked and all the curtains drawn. He did so – running from the living room, to the dining room and then back into hall just in time to see a stunned-looking Rose stumble out of the kitchen. She was holding the side of her head and blood trickled through her fingers.

She saw Stanley and screamed and ducked back through into the living room. She closed the door behind her and Stanley could hear her dragging something, the sofa probably, behind the door.

‘No!’ he screamed. The longer he took to get into the room, the more chance the damn woman would have of smashing a window or something and getting someone’s attention.

He threw himself at the door and bounced back but it gave slightly. He sprung to his feet and pounded the door with his shoulder until it opened and he fell into the room, rolling over the back of the sofa Rose had used to barricade the door closed.

‘I’m gonna’ fucking kill you!’ he screamed, getting to his feet and glaring through primal eyes at the terrified woman.

‘No!’ she cried out. ‘Stay back!’ For some absurd reason, she had picked up her knitting and was holding out the shaggy ball as if it were a weapon. ‘You’re mad. Leave me alone.’

Stanley howled in frustration and leapt at her but she managed to sidestep him and ran from the room. She made straight for the kitchen and attempted to close the door but Stanley was already there, coming hard against the door and sending her backwards painfully against the kitchen table.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Help! Help! Heeee….lllllllll…..ppppppppp…’

Stanley grinned and, holding his hands out, fingers clawed, like a strangler from a B-movie, he moved towards her. He felt something slippery underfoot and, when he looked down, he noticed he stood on Marge’s tit. He would have found it funny had it not sent him falling towards Rose. He came against her hard and one of her knitting needles found his left eye, his momentum carrying him onto the nylon spear.

There was a burst of optic fluid as the needle pierced his eye and continued upwards through his skull and into his brain. An idiotic grin crossed his face for a moment and then he was dead.

5

‘They’d never understand,’ Rose said to herself. ‘They’d never let me keep the house, either. No, Rose, girl – you’re doing the right thing.’ She smiled and carried her plate over to the table.

She placed her hands together and closed her eyes and spoke in an even, clear voice.

‘Our father make us truly grateful for what we are about to receive. Amen.’ And with that, she tucked into her first portion of Stanley Kipling.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, a western under the Jack Martin name, will be published in June by Robert Hale LTD. You can find Gary and more of his writings at The Tainted Archive.

A Twist Of Noir 050 - Gary Dobbs

LOOSE ENDS - GARY DOBBS

1.

What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Well, it wasn’t actually that bad, stumbling from pub to pub. It was just that I was skint. Well, that wasn’t strictly true – I had some money but it had been a toss up between paying the rent and spending the afternoon on the piss. I, consummate piss-head that I was, chose to spend my time knocking back the warm beer in a pub-crawl around Pontypridd.

I knew it was my penchant for the drink that had led my life on this merry dance and left me a pathetic figure but, like all sloshers, I figured I’d quit after this one last bender.

Trouble is there’s always one more last bender and then another and…

The place is quiet. I’m sitting over in a corner, minding my own business, drinking what may be my fifth or sixth pint. I can’t really remember, I seem to have lost count. There’s a man in a muscle vest seated on a stool with his elbows leaning on the bar. He doesn’t look across at me, keeps his head down, staring at the bar and I decide to do likewise.

No doubt he has a story just as I have a story but no one gives a fuck.

So I don’t either.

I sink further into my seat and take another large gulp of the beer. I feel bloated now and know I’m not going to be able to hold much more of the warm Welsh beer that has the consistency of treacle and sits heavy on both head and stomach.

Doesn’t matter, I’ll move onto the top shelf then, the vodka, the whiskey and if I’m still standing after that I’d grab a kebab and stumble home. Only to start the whole thing over again tomorrow, jumping headlong into the self-destructive loop my life had become.

I’d just finished my drink and was about to stumble up to the bar when the doors opened and two large men came in. They were dressed identically, expensive suits and silk shirts, and would have been a mirror image of each other but for the fact that one was slightly taller than the other. They looked around for a moment, stared at the guy drinking at the bar, and then they both pulled shooters from beneath their long coats.

‘Tanner!’ one of them shouted.

The man at the bar turned around just in time to have his face blown off when both men shot as one, the roar of the weapons were like twin thunder claps that shook the glasses behind the bar. Blood and gore splattered onto the air. The barmaid ran out from the back room, saw the two shooters and then the dead guy who had slid from his stool and landed on his back. The car accident that had been his face looked back at her.

She screamed and continued screaming.

Then the two men coolly placed their weapons back beneath their coats and turned on their feet to leave. But as they turned I saw the shorter of the two clearly and immediately realised I was looking back into my own history. He locked eyes with me and, for one awful moment, I thought he recognised me but then he smiled and ran out of the door in pursuit of his companion.

I heard the sound of sirens as the police raced through the valley roads and I quickly left the pub.

I didn’t want to get involved.

I had too much shit going on in my own life.

2.

I think it was midnight when I got home and I didn’t notice anything strange as I unlocked the door. In fact it was only when I went through to my pit of a living room that things went tits up. The shooters from the pub earlier were seated on what passed for a sofa, their weapons rested across their laps. This time I had a closer look at their weapons – both had twelve bore sawn-offs.

‘Hello, Frankie,’ my old mate, Keri Smith, better known as Smithy, said.

‘Smithy.’ I nodded in greeting. I didn’t bother asking how they had gotten in but the question would have been redundant in any case. I knew Smithy of old and there wasn’t a lock on the market that he couldn’t pick.

‘Not seen you in that pub before,’ Smithy said. His friend, the bigger man, remained silent and just sat there, a hand caressing the sawn-off in his lap as if it was the sexiest thing he’d ever held.

‘I don’t usually drink up that end of town,’ I said.

‘Then why the fuck did you decide to go there today?’

I shrugged my shoulders and grinned at Smithy. ‘So what now?’ I asked.

Smithy shook his head.

‘See,’ he said, ‘I say you’re safe. That you won’t say anything to the filth. I say we walk away and leave you be. Agree none of this happened.’

‘I won’t say anything,’ I said. ‘And you know I won’t.’

Smith nodded. He pointed to his companion. ‘Thing is, Max here don’t like loose ends.’

The other man remained silent.

‘Is that what I am?’ I asked. ‘A loose end?’

‘Fraid so,’ Smithy said.

‘So what now?’ I asked again.

Smithy and I went back a few years. We’d been part of the same gang when we were kids. We’d shoplifted, experimented with a few of the softer drugs and moved on to a little housebreaking.

Our last job had resulted in Smithy being caught trying to fence a DVD player. The DVD had screwed him over. The police were able to tie him into a couple of other jobs and he did time. Three years, I think it was and, during all that stir, he’d never grassed on me.

When he eventually came out, I’d moved on. The first time I’d seen him since we were kids was this afternoon when he, together with his mute mate, had blasted that poor fuck’s head off.

‘I’ll make it quick,’ Smithy said. ‘For old times sake.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, feebly.

‘Not here, though,’ Smithy said. ‘Come on. We’ll go for a little ride.’

3.

I walked downstairs between them. Smithy in the lead and his mute mate bringing up the rear. I was all snug in the middle. I thought about suddenly making a run for it but I knew I’d have no chance. Either one of them would cut me in half before I covered more than a few yards.
I was a loose end and they weren’t about to let me get away.

They pushed me into the back of a gleaming BMW and Smithy got in beside me. The talkative guy took the wheel and pretty soon we had pulled off and were heading towards the valleys.

‘Our old stomping ground,’ I said to Smithy, hoping to elicit some positive response, get him thinking of the old days and all our scrapes. Maybe then he’d change his mind and convince his friend that I was okay. That they would be safe in letting me go my own way and forget any of this ever happened.

Smithy nodded but said nothing.

I looked out of the window as we passed the Esso garage on Hopkinstown Road and proceeded towards Porth.

‘Where we going?’ I asked.

Smithy looked at me.

‘It’s a shame this,’ he said.

‘Tell me about it,’ I said and then added, ‘What did that guy do anyway?’

‘The guy we shot?’

I nodded.

‘He was behind on his repayments,’ Smithy said. ‘Just enough so it was starting to feel like he was taking the piss. We can’t have people doing that. We’ve got a reputation to keep.’

‘Otherwise everyone would be chancing their arm,’ I said as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

‘Right,’ Smithy said. ‘They guy asked for it. Only we didn’t expect to see you in the pub. We’re not known in that part of town. We didn’t expect any loose ends.’

‘But you know I’m not a loose end. We were thick as thieves in the old days.’

‘That was then,’ Smithy said. ‘This is now. People change and maybe one day the filth will have you on some other matter. Maybe you’ll need to strike a deal and use this little knowledge to get you off.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘You might,’ the man at the wheel said. It was the first time he’d spoken and it shook me up. He had a voice like cancer - dark, nasty and twisted. I realised then that I was truly fucked.

‘Come on then, you cunts!’ I screamed, losing the plot. ‘What you waiting for? Come on, do it! Now! Blow my head off here in your nice new car!’

I lunged for Smithy but he brought the butt of the shooter heard against my head and I slipped into a void of pure black silence.

4.

One of them grabbed the back of my head and I felt myself being pulled out of the car and falling onto the ground. I struggled with the mist within my head, which was pounding fit to burst.

I felt bile in the back of my throat and vomited.

I tried to get up but fell back on my face.

I lay there for a moment.

‘Come on, twinkle toes,’ Smithy said and lifted me to my feet.

I felt terrible and was unsteady on my legs.

There was a category five hurricane raging within my skull, sending a tsunami of agony throughout my entire body. I looked around and waited for my vision to clear. When it did, I recognised where we were – the old railway sidings in Trehafod. There was an old mine shaft here and I figured they were going to shoot me and dump my poor battered body down there.

I felt the mute guy, who, we’d discovered, could actually talk, prodding his sawn-off into my ribs and pushing me forward. This time, he didn’t speak and merely grunted several times.

I stumbled forward into the ruins of the old wheelhouse and Smithy bent down to remove the grating that would expose the mineshaft. My head was still pounding – so badly that I thought getting shot would actually be a good thing.

Smithy groaned as he tried to slide the heavy metal grating across and he had to put his shotgun down to get both hands beneath the grating.

‘It weighs a fucking ton,’ he grumbled.

‘Help him,’ the now not-so-mute man said and pushed me forward but I was still unsteady on my feet and I fell face down onto the grating, landing with my hand only inches away from Smithy’s shotgun and trapping Smithy’s fingers beneath the grating, which provoked a deafening scream.

I figured I had nothing to lose and I grabbed for the gun, only to recoil when a roar of thunder filled the room and set my headache pounding even worse. Everything went black for a moment and I forced myself to roll over and get to my feet. A thick cloud of black smoke surrounded me and the thunder was still echoing both within my head and around the old ruins. The stench of cordite was so intense that I could taste its bitterness within my mouth.

‘Fuck,’ I said as I noticed Smithy.

He’d been shot, the blast of his mate’s shotgun having taken him in the guts, tearing flesh to shreds, chewing up innards and leaving a gaping hole. I’d been hit too but only winged; there was a wound in my left arm where a few pellets had struck and it dribbled blood. But, to be honest, with the agony in my head, this wound was the least of my worries.

I looked for the other man but I was alone. Well, apart from Smithy, that is. Or rather apart from Smithy’s corpse, that is. Where had the other guy gone? I located Smithy’s shotgun and picked it up and peered into the semi darkness for the other man.

There was still no sign of him. I figured he must have shot when I’d went for Smithy’s gun but shotguns ain’t that discerning and it had been Smithy who had taken the brunt of the blast. But where the shooter had gotten to was beyond me.

From outside, I heard the approach of police sirens and I took one final look at Smithy. I made to move but froze when I saw what had happened to the other shooter. He was on a ledge below us, laying on his back, dead. When he’d shot, he must have lost his footing on the debris-strewn floor and had fallen backwards to be speared on a jagged metal spike.

It protruded from his chest and was dripping blood onto his expensive shirt.

I laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Only moments ago, I’d been a sitting duck, death a certainty.

Now I was the last man standing.

The approaching sirens grew louder.

I turned on my feet and quickly left the old ruins and made my way unseen over the old tips and to the river road below. I knew this area like the back of my hand and I had no trouble getting clean away before the police had even reached the sidings.

Hey, I didn’t want to get involved.

I had too much shit going on in my own life.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, a western under the Jack Martin name, will be published in June by Robert Hale LTD. You can find Gary and more of his writings at The Tainted Archive.

A Twist Of Noir 003 - Gary Dobbs

RHONDDA LIVES - GARY DOBBS

Originally Published at Thieves Jargon, several years ago

What the fuck had I gotten myself into this time?

If Mickey had been able to control his bladder, then it wouldn't have come to this.

I looked at the two maniacs seated next to me - both tooled up.

"The job," I said. "Timing's important."

"I know about the fucking job," Mickey said and prodded his sawn-off into my ribs as if to illustrate the point. "Don't have to tell me about the fucking job. I need a piss. Now."

"Look," I pleaded. "We're driving a stolen van, we're armed, onour way to hold up a Securicor van at a fucking pre-designated point and time. We're going against the clock here."

"I'll only take a fucking second," Mickey screwed up his face and became meanness personified. "I'm fucking busting."

"We'll be okay," Razzer, the other fucking loony said. "The van's not made. He'll piss quick." He knew they were safe with the van.

"I couldn't give a fuck if he pisses at a supersonic rate," I snapped. He was right about the van, though - there was no way it had been reported yet. Razzer had stolen it himself only an hour ago and only then after weeks of surveillance. The owner parked it in the multi-storey at seven-thirty each morning and didn't return till well after six in the evening, sometimes later, never earlier.

"When you gotta go, you gotta go," Razzer said and shrugged his shoulders.

I sighed.

"I can't be threatening no fucker with my shooter in one hand,"Mickey said. "And my legs all bent up to stop me pissing myself. I'll look like a fucking joke."

"He's got a point," Razzer said and laughed. "Can't have him leaving no piss at the scene. DNA fuckers can find out amazing things from piss."

"Yeah?" Mickey turned to Razzer, eager to hear more.

"No," Razzer said and poked Mickey playfully in the ribs. "I'm taking the piss."

"Okay," I said. This was getting absurd. It always amazed me how hard men like these could stay calm in such crazy situations. Me, I was shitting bricks but then I had my reasons. Timing was everything onthis job. A split second could mean the difference between success and failure.

"Where?" I asked. "Where do you want to take a piss?"

"Anywhere," Mickey shrugged and then squeezed his bollocks to illustrate the point. "I can piss on the side of the road."

"Good thinking," I said. "And some copper comes along and what you tell him then? How the fuck do we explain these guns, and the stockings in the glove compartment?"

"Fuck you," Mickey said. "I'll fucking piss here." He lifted his arse off his seat and yanked his jogging pants down, pulling his cock up over the waistband. He would too - I'd shared a cell with him once, he'd had no problem shitting in front of me so this would be a doodle to take a leak here and now, piece of piss really.

"Fucking piss over me and I'll shoot you," Razzer said holding his gun up, not caring that it was now visible to any oncoming traffic through the windscreen. He meant it too - if piss started to spurt from Mickey's sorry-looking cock he'd pull the trigger, leaving a lot more DNA than the urine would.

"Fuck," I said and pulled the van over. There had to be easier ways to make a living.

I'd never worked with these two before, I didn't think I ever would again. I'd met Mickey on the inside, I'd been doing three years for holding up a post office and he'd been in for breaking some copper's nose when the plod tried to step in between him and the nonce he was kicking the shit out of. He was hard as nails and I'd quickly struck up a friendship with him. Soon after that he became my cell mate. It meant that the other cons left me alone - Don't fuck with him or you'll get Mental Mickey on your tail. No one wants Mental Mickey on their tail.

Razzer came through Mickey - I'd only met him last Thursday, in Kudos bar, but he'd been close friends with Mickey since they'd been kids so that was okay. Apparently, they'd done borstal and some grown-up jail together.

I'd looked Mickey up as soon as I'd been released; he'd gottenout two months prior to me. I'd had his address over in Pontypridd, which was only a few miles and so I set up the meeting and Mickey had brought his mate.

That was okay by me.

Three men was good - two gunmen to pull off the blag and a driver ready, engine idling.

I'd outlined the job to them. Every last Friday of the month, the Securicor van would be carrying a large cash haul from the Casino, over a million, according to my sources and I knew the perfect place to hit it. The van had to come down through the Rhondda and take the diversion caused by the road works at Porth Square - that would take the van up over the old mine road. If we hit the van in Trehaford, stopped it, overpowered the guard and driver, grabbed the cash, we would be able to make good our escape down the sidings (which were never used since the old road had deteriorated and was now little more than a dirt track) and be away before the coppers reacted to any emergency call. We'd have another unmarked car waiting, parked inside the old Squint washhouse. The other point in our favour was that the Securicor driver, Stan, was in with the deal and would dissuade the guard from being a hero. He was fifty-nine, had a dodgy chest and figured he was owed more than the meagre pension he was due.

It was easy and I planned on taking my share of the money and getting out of this life, making something for myself. It was all so very simple, nothing could go wrong except for the fact that we had to be parked up on the Tump, waiting for the mobile piggy bank at a set time. If we missed it, then the run was over for another month and Stan was due to retire next Friday so the chance would not come again.

And that brings me to - we're parked at the side of the Road in Dinas. I'm smoking a ciggie, Razzer's sitting there, looking all relaxed, not a care in the world and Mickey's over by the kerb, pissing against the wall. Nirvana's on the radio - teen spirit, one of my favourites- but I'm too nervous to listen.

Suddenly, Lady Luck turned vicious - chance of all cunting chances - but at that precise fucking moment, the community policeman came around the corner and stands, staring at Mickey as his penis directed a steady flow of piss against the community centre wall. There was never a fucking copper about when you needed one but just when.

Three weeks earlier, I'd stood in the snooker club, smiling like a loon. I'd just potted yellow to black straight through, cleared the fucking table. I scooped the twenty quid from the edge of the table and pocketed the cash.

"Anyone else want to chance their arm?" I asked, all arrogant-like. End of the day, I had the right to a little ego. I was a fucking wizard on the green cloth. As my father always said, "If you've got it, flaunt it." I was seriously flaunting.

"Maybe another time," Stan said and tapped me on my back. "Come on, I want to talk to you. You can use that twenty to get 'em in."

"Just as well," I said. I'd just seriously kicked his arse on the table and there were no other takers in the pub. Still, I was twenty quid up. We went to the bar and, after I'd gotten the drinks in, Stan directed us over to a corner table.

"So what's up, Stan?" I rolled myself a cigarette, took a mouthful of the warm Welsh beer and stared at the old man. He had been big mates with my old man and, after the old guy had died, I'd often bumped into him in the local. We chatted, he'd known me since I was a nipper and I kinda liked him. He was a good old guy. Of the old school. A proud, strong man. He was also as crooked as they came but then we all were in the valleys. It had always been a case of us and them in the Rhonddaand always would be.

He went straight into chatter mode - telling me about how long he'd worked for Securicor, about the crap wages, about how he was skint, reminded me of how he'd helped my old man out with money problems more than once. He went on about his bad chest, his desire to visit his brother over in Spain and of how fucking difficult it was going to be living on the pittance of a pension he had coming to him. And then came the plan, his fucking glorious plan, and he reeled me in as a fisherman would his catch.

And now, this careful, detailed plan looked in danger of blowing up in our faces because Mickey couldn't contain his bladder.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I said.

"Chill." Razzer grabbed my wrist. "Chill, man," he said calmly.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment and mouthed a silent prayer. Please God, just this once. Let this work and I'll go fucking straight. Fuck, I'll give my share of the loot to the orphans. Just get us out of this. I clenched my fists tightly and watched the copper who, in turn, stood watching Mickey.

"Chill," Razzer said again. He was starting to get on my fucking tit. What did he think we were, a couple of fucking homeboys in a Spike Lee movie?

"Chill," I said. "I'm gonna have a fucking heart attack."

Razzer smiled. "The pig's not going to do anything," he said. "He'll bollock Mickey and that'll be it. We'll be on our way in a moment."

"I hope you're right." I had a feeling in my gut and I watched as the policeman approached Mickey, who had finally finished pissing and was casually shaking the drippers from his cock.

The copper was only young, a kid really, looked like a boy scout. He said something to Mickey but we couldn't hear what they are saying. All we could do was sit there, virtually holding our breath.

The policeman smiled at Mickey, shook his head and then looked directly at the van.

My heart skipped a beat.

"Fucking chill," Razzer said. This time, there was real menace in his voice and he dug his fingers into my arm as we stared out of the windscreen. We were going to have to play this out. See what happened.

The policeman came over to the van and stood by my window. He made a motion with his hand for me to open the window. Mickey came up behind the policeman, which didn't seem to bother the copper that much. It was obvious he was inexperienced in the job, little more than a fresh, in-uniform rookie, and he had left himself wide open to attack from behind.

I wound my window down and looked at the policeman, trying to remain calm. "What's the problem?" I asked.

"Your friend says you're in a rush. He was caught short."

"Yeah," I smiled my most charming smile. "We're really sorry but he was desperate."

"I see." The policeman nodded and, for one splendid moment, I thought he was going to leave us be. There had been no harm done and it wasn't worth dragging Mickey into court for pissing in the streets, not with so much other crime to prosecute. He looked me up and down for a moment and I was aware that Razzer was sitting uncomfortably on his shooter while I had Mickey's beneath my seat. Finally, the policeman asked: "Where you heading?"

I swallowed. What the fuck had Mickey told him? What if I said the wrong thing?

The next thing, I knew was Mickey's hand coming up behind the policeman and, with one deft movement, he sent his head crashing into the wound-down window. The copper's nose exploded against the edge of the glass, splattering blood over the wing mirror.

"Fuck," I said as the copper's distorted face was rammed once again against the window with a sickening sound like fish guts hitting a sink. I saw a tooth crack clean in half and the window turned pink as the copper's face smeared blood every which way. His helmet came off and fell to the ground and then Mickey quickly dragged the semi-conscious copper around to the rear of the van and opened the door. He threw the young policeman into the van and jumped in himself.

"Get the fuck out of here," Mickey screamed. "Drive."

The copper moaned and Mickey kicked him full force in the stomach, sending the air from him in a huge, painful gasp.

"Shut the fuck up, filth."

I sped off, my mind racing faster than the drive shaft. This was not the original plan - what the fuck were we going to do with the copper?

"What you bring him for?" I yelled over my shoulder at Mickey. "What the hell are you doing?"
"He would have made us," Mickey said. "It wasn't as if I had any choice in the matter."

"He wouldn't have made us," I said. "He doesn't have a clue what's going on."

"Yeah, but as soon as the filth heard about the Securicor blag," Razzer put in, "they would have put two and two together."

"Well, he fucking knows about the job now," I said, glumly. "Top marks, Einstein."

"You taking the piss?" Razzer said and prodded me with his shooter. I had no doubt that he would have used it, blown me apart then and there, had I protested further. And, at that point, I cursed Stan, Mickey, Razzer and the whole fucking deal. Easy money, my arse; there was no such thing.

"We'll have to kill him," Mickey said and looked down at the policeman, who was rolling about in agony on the floor of the van, holding his guts. His face was just a swollen, bloody pulp.

"No fucking way," I said and looked first at Razzer and then over my shoulder at Mickey. "I don't kill people."

"We've got no fucking choice," Razzer said. "And besides, that's not people. He's a copper. It's different."

"What?" I said, finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on my driving. Things had gone to the point of everything seeming like one long terrible nightmare. I wondered if either of them would actually be capable of killing the copper, of gunning the man, little more than a kid really, down in cold blood.

"Please," the policeman's frail voice broke into the three-wayargument, but Mickey silenced him with a vicious size nine boot. The copper's face, already a bloodied pulp, absorbed the blow like a sponge.

Razzer laughed and I felt sick to my stomach and I knew at that precise moment that both were capable of killing the copper. It was nothing to them. When that guy put on his uniform, he became fair game.

"What about the job?" I screamed, trying to bring some semblance of normality to the situation. "Let's just dump him and get on with the job. No need to kill anyone and, besides, what the fuck does he really know?"

"He'll make us," Mickey said.

"Yeah," Razzer nodded. "He had a good look at us and our faces show up in a lot of police files."

"He'd fucking recognise me," Mickey said. "Fuck the job. There'll be other jobs. Up the siding now."

"The sidings, why?" I said, though I knew all too well the reason why. This was not the way I wanted it. Yeah, I was a thief but little more - basically, a chancer, the odd blag here, maybe a drug deal there but now I was going to become a party to murder. And not just any murder but the brutal killing of a young policeman.

"We can blast the fucker by one of the old mine shafts, let the body fall in," Mickey said. "End of story. Problem fucking eradicated."

"No, no." I shook my head. I didn't give a shit about the job anymore. All I wanted was to get out of this without resorting to murder.

"You want to go back to the slammer?" Razzer grabbed me by the throat but had to release me when the van swerved. "The cop'll make us and we'll be back inside. Only, this time, they'll throw away the key in my case. It's him or me and I say the copper gets it."

I cornered the van and then took a quick glance behind at the copper. The poor fucker was groaning lightly, blood looking impossibly red on the twin balloons that were his lips, obviously hovering in andout of consciousness. "He's just a fucking kid," I said.

Razzer shrugged his shoulders. "That's tough. He should have thought of that when he put the uniform on. He's filth. He dies."

I knew then it was inevitable - the cop had chanced on us and paid the ultimate price for his devotion to duty. There was no way out. He was going to die and, like it or not, I was involved right up to my neck. I slowed down slightly but drove towards the sidings erratically. All the while, I was praying beneath my breath that some patrolling squad car would pull us over and stop this madness, but no such luck. We reached the sidings and I pulled the van over behind one of the walls of the old weighing station.

"Look, guys," I pleaded one last time. "Let's not do this."

Mickey ignored me and he kicked open the back doors and, with aboot to the ribs, sent the copper sprawling arse over tit onto the hard ground. He jumped out of the van and Razzer did likewise.

I sat there, for how long I don't know, but I heard them laughing as they dragged the policeman, who was too weak to protest, over to one of the exposed shafts. I closed my eyes and kept my head bowed, praying over and over beneath my breath. Then I heard the single shot and I knew it was all over.

I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror and saw a man who had aged ten years in as many minutes and something deep inside told me that things would never be the same again. Like it or not, I had stepped up into a different league, one that I was never intended for.

BIO: Gary Dobbs writes under both his own name and that of Jack Martin. His first novel, a western under the Jack Martin name, will be published next June by Robert Hale LTD.