The Boat House

TWELVE

Sometimes it was hard for Gazzer to believe how stupid some people could be.

Take this one, for example; walking along the canal towpath at this late hour of the night, as if it was the park on a pleasant Sunday afternoon and life held no dangers for him at all. The canal route was dark and it was deep and it was a secret vein that ran through the heart of the city, and only the scum dropped down here after hours and expected to survive. Up at street level, on the other side of a high wall, the town centre traffic moved and the neon club lights flickered and police vans stood on street corners waiting for trouble to start. But even the police didn't come down here. Only tramps and serious drunks, and occasionally Toms seeking out shadows in which to do business when the client didn't have a car, and people like Gazzer who didn't give a shit. Gazzer was twenty two years old and had been compared in looks to a pit bull, entirely to the dog's advantage. He wore a T shirt regardless of the season of the year and kept his hair cropped short enough to reveal the half dozen tiny scars on his head where the stubble wouldn't grow. Gazzer had been seriously disappointed in love on this night. His mates had all scored and he inexplicably hadn't, in spite of the money he'd blown on all those lime green cocktails for the bleached slag in the dress with all the red spangles. It was clear that she'd been taking him for a ride, in that there was no ride in it for him at the end of the process. When the evening had ended she'd disappeared into the pub toilet and from there she'd disappeared, full stop.

Gazzer was not only pissed off, he was seriously out of pocket. He didn't mind spending the money if it brought a result, but something like this put the whole world out of balance. Never one to wallow in self pity, he'd started by mugging a couple of Indian kids in bright shirts behind the bus station and then he'd followed a Yuppie type from his bank's Cashcard machine to the stairway of a multi storey car park, where they'd had some dealings involving a Rolex and all the wad in the Yuppie's wallet. After that he'd come down and hopped through a hole in the fence where the canal ran alongside some waste ground, and now he was staying off the streets as he made his way across town and toward home ground. The Indian kids wouldn't matter, but the Yuppie type might get half an hour in the back of a police car checking the pavements and the pub car parks for some sign of his attacker.

Now this. A bonus. An innocent who'd somehow wandered down into the rat run, just asking to get bitten. Gazzer only had to stand in the middle of the towpath and wait as the man approached him. There was nowhere else for the man to go other than back, or into the canal itself.

There were yellow sodium lights down here, but most of them had been broken by kids throwing stones. Odd survivors burned like overhead beacons; there was one under the bridge just ahead, and another one about a hundred yards beyond. They showed the narrow dirt towpath, the black water, the broken windows of empty warehouses…

And the silhouette of the stranger, still walking toward him.

Gazzer flexed his fingers. They cracked like static.

The stranger stopped.

"I'd like to pass, please," he said, and Gazzer's heart soared. A foreigner. He need have no trace of conscience at all.

"Only when I get your money and your watch, fuckface," he said.

"I need money myself," the stranger said pleasantly. "May I see your knife?"

"I don't need a knife," Gazzer said, and he took a step forward to close the gap between them.

Something went wrong.

Gazzer aimed his headbutt, and the stranger moved; he tilted his own head and Gazzer's brains exploded.

That was what it felt like, anyway. Gazzer's legs went and he sat down heavily in the dirt, his nose smashed and his eyes full of tears. The stranger stood over him. He was rubbing the top of his skull just at the hairline, but seemed otherwise unaffected.

Gazzer started to rise. But the stranger reached down and took hold of his nose.

"I wouldn't," he said, as he twisted the broken cartilage and Gazzer's brains went nuclear. His arms flapped in panic, and he screamed. The scream echoed in the depths of the brick canyon.

"The bone can work its way in, you see," the stranger explained as he knelt and checked Gazzer's pockets with his free hand. Gazzer felt the roll of notes being removed from his jeans, but only as some distant background sensation. He reached for the stranger, but the stranger gave his nose another warning tug.

He screamed again.

"I've been down here half the night, waiting for someone like you," the stranger said. "You can keep your watch, I already have one of my own. But I really do need the money."

Gazzer blinked away the tears, and looked into the stranger's face. He was fair, he was young, he was nothing special; but with rare insight, Gazzer saw beyond all of that.

He knew that this was no accidental encounter. He knew that he'd fallen for bait like a fool. And he knew with certainty that the stranger would be capable of doing anything that he threatened.

Anything.

The man released his nose, and straightened.

"Thank you," he said pleasantly.

Gazzer coughed, and spat blood in a terrifying wad.

But the stranger had already turned and walked off into the night, back along the towpath in the direction from which he'd come.