Howard Linskey: The Dead

On the straight, comparatively empty stretch of road we soon caught up with the snarling boy racers. Kinane drew alongside them. This time we were on their opposite side, so it was the driver I could see on my left. His window was down and he was shouting and swearing at us. I couldn’t really hear the words over the din of our engines but it looked a lot like he was shouting ‘Come on! Come on then!’

Kinane needed no further bidding and he slammed our car to the left. They managed to miss us but it was close. The driver must have shit himself, as he simultaneously slammed on the brakes and swerved wildly onto the side of the road. We did the same thing and Kinane stamped on his brakes until we skidded to a halt, kicking up gravel and clouds of dust in the process. As soon as both cars came to a stop, they were out of theirs and starting their angry march towards us, their biggest worry that we might drive swiftly away and rob them of their vengeance.

I wasn’t too concerned about their aggression but I was annoyed with Kinane. As far as I was concerned, he could sort this mess out on his own, ‘Fucking hell Joe, you could have killed us.’ I told him.

‘No danger of that,’ he said dismissively but he wasn’t giving me his undivided attention. Instead he was watching them in his rear view mirror, ‘come on, come on,’ he was urging them. He didn’t want them to realise who they were dealing with until it was too late.

I sighed and put my hand on the door handle and clicked it so that the door was still closed but the mechanism for opening it was half engaged. The guy who was coming for my side was a little quicker than the one heading for Kinane. I watched him in my mirror and, as he bent low to lean into the window and call me out, I clicked the door handle again and pushed against it hard. The side of the window frame caught the snarling little bastard right in the face, and he shot backwards, falling onto the waste ground at the side of the road.

Kinane opened his door and climbed out. I got out just in time to see the look on the young driver’s face as he registered Kinane’s huge presence and it was an absolute picture. Normally I would have enjoyed that moment but I was too annoyed at Kinane for putting us in this position to gain any real pleasure from it. Before the lad could turn and run, Kinane snaked out an arm and grabbed his fleecy top in one gnarled fist. ‘Come here!’ he bellowed and I reckoned the guy probably filled his pants for the second time in two minutes.

Kinane must have given the lad a couple of slaps because he started yelping like a little girl and screaming to be let go. I was preoccupied by the young thug’s mate, who was crawling to his knees. He shook his head and blinked, then put his hand to his forehead and wiped fresh blood from it. He surveyed his palm, got angry again, snarled at me and tried to get up but I’d had time to pick my spot. I sent a kick Alan Shearer would have been proud of right into his chin. His head shot back then snapped forwards again until gravity intervened and he dropped face first onto the hard ground, his chin smacking into the concrete with a sound like teeth breaking. He wouldn’t be getting back up again after that.

I turned away then and set off down the road. I knew I could walk over the Redheugh Bridge then get a cab. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of Kinane’s violent retribution. Whatever he was doing to that thug, it must have been creative, because there was an awful lot of screaming going on.

I walked on as the screams continued but slowly grew fainter. Eventually, as I knew it would, a police car could be heard heading Joe’s way. I doubted his young victim had ever been happier to hear the shrill sound of its sirens.

By the time I got back my little Emma was already asleep. Sarah was at the top of the stairs when I walked in and she greeted me with a big grin but immediately placed her finger to her lips, so I’d know to be quiet. Missing my daughter was another thing I’d blame Joe Kinane for.

We lived in a house on a new development on the edge of the city; one that was built and wholly owned by the firm. The street we live in has twelve properties, a mixture of houses and flats in a horseshoe shape, making a cul-de-sac. It has a gated entrance and tall fences with CCTV cameras everywhere. From the outside it looks like a normal little residential estate with our house at the centre but nobody else lives on our street, except members of the firm, or security men on a retainer, and the gate is manned twenty-four hours a day. The only genuine civilian resident is Sarah’s best mate Joanne, who lives in one of the apartments and helps Sarah with Emma. It’s probably as secure an arrangement as I could get in Newcastle.

When I reached the top of the stairs, Sarah was leaning against the door frame looking down at our daughter, who was in the kind of deep sleep only little ones can achieve. She was tucked up in her bed, arms wrapped tightly around her favourite teddy, eyes tight shut, breathing regularly into her pillow. Every time I see her like this I think there is nothing I wouldn’t do for our little girl, to protect her and walk her safely through this world.

Sarah grinned at me. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ she asked. ‘I know I’m her mother but…’

‘She is,’ I replied, ‘everybody says so.’

And they did. Everybody, even the hardened gangsters we employed in the firm came over all smiley if they had to come to the house and saw our little girl, with her big blue eyes and the golden-blonde hair she inherited from her mother. ‘She gets it from you.’

‘From both of us,’ Sarah said, ‘she’s so cute,’ she added in wonderment. Like me, Sarah couldn’t quite believe our luck. Neither of us ever thought we deserved Emma, not after the stuff we’d seen and done, but she was here with us now and though we’d only had her for two years, sometimes we honestly struggled to remember a time when she had not been in our lives.

Just when I was feeling that all was well with the world, Sarah said, ‘You know there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about my dad and Emma. I wish he could have seen her. He’d have loved her so much.’

‘He would,’ I agreed, but I wasn’t thinking about the way that big, bad Bobby Mahoney, Newcastle’s former top boy, would have balanced my little girl on his knee and played with her. Instead I was remembering how I blew Bobby’s brains out in a derelict factory and it made me feel sick to think that, along with everything else I took from him, I had robbed Bobby Mahoney of time with his granddaughter. I’d had no choice but to kill him but Sarah didn’t know it was my finger on the trigger and I was desperate to keep it that way.

My mobile rang then and Sarah winced. I grabbed it quickly but Emma didn’t stir. I walked back down the stairs as I took the call. It was Vince, a long-standing member of our crew who kept an eye on some of our pubs and clubs in the city and Privado, our lap-dancing bar. ‘Did you know Kinane’s been arrested?’ he asked me, his tone betraying his surprise, ‘for bitch-slapping a couple of knuckle draggers?’

‘Yeah,’ I said and he hesitated before continuing.

‘Oh, right. I was just wondering if you wanted us to try and get him out of there,’ he offered tentatively, ‘you know, phone the lawyer or summat?’

‘No, fuck him,’ I said, ‘he’s been a dick, let him stew.’

‘Oh right, fine, I didn’t realise. I was only saying like, sorry.’

‘It’s alright Vince, you weren’t to know. Kinane will be out in the morning but he has to learn.’

Sarah followed me down the stairs and when I’d finished talking to Vince she asked me, ‘Are you hungry? Do you want a drink?’