The Secrets of Pain

75

Jane tasted cobweb and dead flies.

Came with the voice. The soft, ashy voice from the yard at the Swan. The mottled accent of a man from the Birmingham area who’d been living round Hereford for a long time.

‘I’m cool,’ Cornel said.

‘And this is all your work, is it? I’m impressed, mate.’

Kenny Mostyn. The famous Kenny Mostyn, of Hardkit. Had he followed them? Jane didn’t see how he could have, which meant he’d probably been nearby all along, and Cornel couldn’t have known that or he wouldn’t have laid down his sleeping bag.

And yet Cornel didn’t sound in any way dismayed. He sounded, if anything, pleased. Up for it. Cocaine. Good old Charlie.

Cornel said, ‘Seen what’s left of your idol, Kenny?’

Kenny sniggered. He’d switched off his flashlight, put it down somewhere. It was only the lamp now on the half-smashed altar.

‘Dust,’ Cornel said. ‘He’s dust.’

‘And that makes me feel gutted, does it?’

Cornel didn’t reply. No indication of either of them moving. Then there was another scornful noise in Kenny’s throat.

‘Know what, Cornel? Yow… are a wanker.’

‘And you are gonna…’ in the pause, you could hear Cornel’s rapid breath, could imagine his long body quivering ‘… gonna regret that, Kenny. Gonna regret a lot of things before too long.’

‘Found the petrol, Cornel.’

Huh?

‘Torch the place, was that it? On your way out?’

‘Fire’s good,’ Cornel said. ‘Fire destroys DNA.’

Another pause, then Kenny’s voice had changed its tone, somehow.

‘What’s that in your hand, mate?’

‘This?’ Cornel’s gleeful indrawn breath was overlaid by a crisp ratcheting sound. ‘What it is, to be exact, Kenny, is a Glock Gen4 Safe Action. Safe… Action. I like that, don’t you? Safe.’

Cornel’s voice all gleaming with excitement, like a kid with a new Xbox, but Jane knew what a Glock was. One of those brand names you didn’t forget. Oh, for God’s sake… She was frozen with the reality of it. This was what he’d had in his hand? What he’d had in his rucksack with the wire-cutters and the lump hammer?

Kenny wasn’t fazed.

‘Where’d that come from, Cornel?’

‘Got it in London weeks ago. Two and a half, cash, with four clips.’

‘Yow was robbed. Had a go on it yet?’

‘Saving it,’ Cornel said. ‘For somebody who told me to come back when my balls had dropped.’

Kenny laughed. It didn’t sound faked. Cornel didn’t join in.

‘You just laugh while you can, Kenny, ’cause your brains are going on the ceiling. How’s that sound? Mate.’

‘Childish.’

‘On your knees, I think.’

Jane stiffened. Kenny’s voice came back merely quizzical.

‘On me knees, to yow?’

‘See, if this was a shotgun, I could blow your head clean off at this range, but a head shot with a handgun’s riskier, so if you stay on your feet I’ll have to go for the body and that could take a bit longer, and a lot of pain. Make sense?’

Oh God. Jane was hugging herself tightly. He was kidding, right?

‘Best for you if you kneel down and close your eyes. Eh? Mate?’

What did you do? What could you do when he was, quite plainly, preparing to go through with it? What did you do? Which of these was the least-bad guy? Which of them wouldn’t rape you? What was the right thing to do?

Very quietly, Jane stood up, her hair brushing the curved metal where wall became roof. The air was fogged, the light meagre from the single smelly lamp on the altar and the torch between Cornel’s feet directing a beam too narrow to reach her.

Kenny Mostyn stood in the gulley, his back to her. A shortish, dapper-looking guy. He wore a leather jacket and a watch cap, and his jeans were tucked into leather boots.

While Cornel… Standing on the concrete bench with his legs apart and both hands swaddling the grey pistol, Cornel just looked demonic in a ravaged kind of way, with his sagging, fleshy mouth, his hair spiked with sweat. Like a big puppet, some mindless voodoo doll being worked by someone else.

It seemed entirely likely that he’d forgotten Jane was here. She slid down, lifted up the lump of concrete, fingertips finding two smooth depressions, and stood up again as Kenny spoke.

‘Yow been snorting again, Cornel?’

‘Doesn’t exactly slow me up.’

‘Just don’t do anything rash, eh?’

‘Hey, you’re really scared!’ Little whoop from Cornel. ‘You’re scared shitless, aren’t you, Mr Mostyn? Now tell me you don’t deserve it – taking my money, never serving up the goods, just leading me on, sending pictures to my boss, feeding all kinds of poison up the line to London? How many other guys you do that to?’

‘Never done that to nobody, Cornel.’

‘You’re a liar!’

‘I ripped you, off, yeah, ’cause I was owed that money. Fair’s fair. And no way was you going further than raven. Not after I found out where you were from.’

‘Don’t get you, Kenny.’ Cornel was bobbing, the pistol shaking. ‘Make it quick.’

‘Sod’s Law. Just one of them things, look, just another casualty of the recession. I was likely just one of a hundred small businessmen they pulled the plug on that week.’

‘Who? What are you saying?’

‘Nothing Landesman’s don’t know about lies and false promises. Yeah, we’ll help you, you stick with us, Mr Mostyn, we’ll see you right. Until the help’s needed, then yow don’t see the knife go in, just feel it come out, and there’s your friendly financial adviser wiping the blade on his pinstripes and asking if you’ve thought about bankruptcy. So don’t yow… go talking to me about getting led on with false flamin’ promises.’

Pulled the plug. Jane remembered the phrase from the article on Savitch in Borderlife. How the bank was close to pulling the plug when Savitch stepped in to save Hardkit. So all this was…

… just a kind of scapegoat situation? Cornel paying for what some loans manager had done to Kenny Mostyn? Just a male-pride thing, a petty vengeance trip turned toxic?

The stinking air was suddenly thick with a sour alien insanity. Jane brought the lump of concrete up to her chest. It was round and smooth on one side, but heavy like a cannonball, and her arms were aching already.

‘You piece of shit! They’re never gonna get me for this. Likes of you, low-life scum made good, it could be anybody. Spoiled for choice, Mostyn.’

Cornel’s hands throbbing around the gun. Kenny shrugged.

‘I’m only human, Cornel. En’t the holy man here, just the help. You can go back to London, tell them what I did, why I did it, and no harm done, just a few red faces, and they might even remember my name this time.’

‘I’ve lost my fucking job. I’ve lost everything. You think I’m going to start again, go in as some little high-street fucking bank clerk? That what you think? On your knees, you little piece of shit. Now! On your fucking knees! ’

The whole place suddenly seemed brighter, as if Cornel was generating his own electricity, shining, his slack lips parted to reveal those gritted teeth, all his resentment and bitterness pouring down those rigid, outstretched arms, and the stink from the lamp was putrid as Kenny Mostyn, almost in slow motion, went down on one knee on the stained floor of the gulley.

No choice now. Panting so hard that she was afraid they could hear her, Jane sucked in her stomach and lifted the ball of concrete, hands underneath, thrust it up over her head, watching Cornel bringing up the gun, his long bony hands together, as if in prayer, around it. As if – for just a moment – as if he was relenting, and Jane held back, swaying under the weight of the concrete.

Then realized that, although she was deep in shadow, the concrete between her hands was gleaming palely in the lamplight, and Cornel looked up and saw it, looking for a moment puzzled, confused.

As Kenny Mostyn’s knee lifted from the floor and Kenny’s arms shot out, fingers clawing the air as if to throw himself forward. Like he was finding himself again, Cornel backed up and brought the barrel of the gun down in direct line with Kenny’s half-bowed head.

Jane pushed herself forward, and her pathetic little arms gave way and she had to let go of the concrete.