“Got it…” murmured Ollie, black rage warring with an even blacker fear inside him; he knew this couldn’t end well; whoever that was, he held all the aces. And why did he sound so maddeningly familiar? As he replayed the man’s words again and again, a chord of memory struck; he’d called Carol and Izzy ‘pretty little cunts’; someone else had called Izzy something like that once; someone he knew, someone he’d had to deal with…
And then it struck him, a single, electrifying moment of clarity and perfect recall: Tommy Millsom; he’d sneeringly called Izzy that just seconds before Ollie had hammered that art-deco cocktail shaker up where the sun never shines and given him a permanent waddle…
Ollie’s mind raced now he knew who he was dealing with; granted, he wasn’t a criminologist, but then Tommy Millsom wasn’t exactly a criminal genius, either; he was a spoilt mama’s boy with too much money and not even the brains God gave bastard geese in Ireland; somewhere in this there was an edge, if only he could figure it out…
*
The first thing Ollie saw when he came through the barrier at White City Underground station was a familiar face; as far as Ollie could remember, his name was Will, or Phil, or something just as forgettable, and he was one of Tommy Milsom’s fawning little lickspittles, the kind of creep who looked in his handkerchief when he blew his nose in case anything edible had shown up; all Ollie remembered about him was that he’d been one of the cringing, smirking little acolytes who was going to fuck his sister after Tommy had finished with her, and the way he’d cried then shit his pants when Moxie had held him up off the floor with one huge hand wrapped around his skinny neck while waiting for the signal from Ollie to punch his face down his neck-hole and yank it out of his bottom.
He wasn’t cringing now; now he had a greasy, triumphant smile on his acne-blasted face; it took all Ollie had to restrain himself from grabbing the scabby little weasel and squeezing his big, nasty grin of triumph into a small, silent scream of pain; as far as Ollie was concerned, when this was over, there stood yet another twerp who was going to find out what happens when you hammer a Size 12 fire extinguisher into a Size 2 asshole…
“Don’t you try any funny business, we’ve got your two sluts, anything happens to me and they get it!” whined Will-or-Phil. Ollie kept his face carefully expressionless, and his voice even and un-stressed when he replied.
“They’re not sluts, or anything else, they’re my family; remember that. Now let’s just get this over with, OK? Whatever goes down here, I’m taking my sisters home, and you better hope they’re fine, because I swear, if they’re not…”
He trailed off meaningfully, and Will-or-Phil quailed at the set expression and even tone, more scary in their way than any number of screamed threats.
“You don’t scare me!” he blustered, but the tremor in his voice and the quaking of his knees gave the lie to that; he remembered vividly what had happened last time, the things Ollie could do when he was angry enough to snap, and for the first time since this had all begun, with the terrifying reality of an angry, tooled-up Ollie standing in front of him, menacing and ready to rock and roll, he began to wonder if perhaps it might not be such a bad idea to slip around a corner and leg it away sometime very soon; there was no reason to wait for Ollie to cripple him just because Tommy Millsom wanted his revenge; fuck Tommy, there were plenty of other girls out there…
Ollie watched all this flit across Will-or-Phil’s face and grinned to himself; if he had one less maggot to squish it was no bad thing…
“Just follow me, OK? Once Tom… I mean my friend gets what he wants from you lot, you can go, just don’t try anything, we’re not scared of you!” he quavered, once more giving the lie to his words.
Ollie followed the trembling youth as he threaded his way through a maze of pre-fabricated work sheds and tool-stores, finally stopping at a low-roofed building, the faded sign showing it had once been an auto repair shop. The place looked like the kind of B-movie set where the bad guys were supposed to be lounging around inside, smoking, and making lumbering witticisms; what wasn’t movie-like was the screeching and sound of things breaking coming from inside. Ollie grinned; it sounded like Izzy was in a fine old rage, and thoroughly enjoying herself, if the bangs, screams, screeches, bonging sounds, and occasional thudding noise of metal on flesh were anything to go by.
Will-or-Phil looked like he’d just dropped a load in his shorts at the sounds of mayhem, and Ollie’s knowing grin immediately made him feel like dropping another one; the sound of bloody murder drained the colour from his face and even Ollie saw his knees begin knocking. Ollie grinned sardonically and indicated to the trembling youth to slide the door open. He did, reluctantly, and screamed as a body came hurtling through and rolled across the alleyway, out cold, a purple goose-egg on his forehead with a dent that looked to Ollie exactly like the imprint of a monkey wrench.
The inside of the garage was indeed like a scene from a slapstick movie; another youth who looked vaguely familiar to Ollie was slumped over on the ground, moaning softly, with his bare backside propped in the air, his pants around his knees, and what looked like a wheel-brace jammed into that place normally only thought of as an exit, both his eyes blooming with a beautiful pair of purple shiners, and a distinct bend to the left in his red and swollen nose. Izzy was stalking another pimply youth, broom handle in her hands, blood streaming from his nose as he dodged around crying and trying to avoid the big stick she kept hitting him with, and Tommy Millsom was covering-up and frantically backing away as Carol repeatedly belted him with a pry-bar, until he stepped on thin air, legs working like Wiley Coyote going over a cliff and toppled head-first into the deep inspection pit with a brief yell and a satisfying thud.
Izzy’s victim backed into a rusty stack of body panels, which clattered down on top of him, his panicked yell suddenly cut short as several hundredweight of scrap steel toppled on him with a loud clang. She turned and glared at Ollie, her eyes flashing as she spotted Will-or-Phil, who promptly backed away preparatory to having it away on his toes.
Ollie took his cue, and grabbed the unfortunate youth, spun him around, and planted his instep squarely between his legs, in a textbook-classic ‘instep punt kick’. Will-or-Phil hooted but his pain was short-lived because the open-handed slap to the back of the head that followed slammed his face against the nearest workbench and put him to sleep.
Carol grinned as she spotted Ollie, twirling the pry-bar like a majorette’s baton, but then she dropped it and gasped in pain as, to Ollie’s shock, James, the man he still thought of as ‘dad’, rose up from out of nowhere and yanked her backwards by her hair.
Ollie started forward, but the look of agony on Carol’s face stopped him in his tracks as James wrapped her hair even tighter around his fist, twisted her arm up behind her, and shook her, his handsome face red and contorted with rage.
“Why couldn’t you just follow orders, you stupid prick?” he yelled at Ollie, shaking Carol like a terrier with a rat. “All I wanted was the money, that’s all, now look what you’ve done! What the fuck is wrong with you, all of you, why couldn’t you lot just do as you’re told, I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt anyone, all I wanted was the money, now it’s all gone to shit!”
Ollie made as if to step forward, and James yanked Carol closer.
“Uh-uh-uh, Ollie-Boy! One more step and it’s curtains for her, got it?”
Ollie nodded, his eyes burning with rage, something James noted, which was why he kept his distance.
“Good, he finally gets it! Now, listen, all of you!” he gritted.
“Ollie, you, Carol, and Izzy are going to sign a piece of paper, I’m going to leave here with that piece of paper, Lorraine and I are going to be very rich, and you three are going to be alive. I’m taking Carol with me, when I get the money, you can have her back, it won’t matter who you tell, we’ll be long gone, but I won’t hurt her, I promise. Forget that horny idiot, Tommy, he’s yours, Ollie, but if you don’t sign, Carol goes bye-bye, Ollie goes swimming with an engine block around his neck, and Tommy and his pet chimps get to play with Izzy. Just sign and leave, I get your money, you get to live, you get Carol back, everyone wins.”
Ollie stared impassively at the man he’d once thought was his father, one side of his brain churning with furious anger that he’d do something like this to them, the other side planning, plotting, and discarding as he tried to come up with a way to get his sisters out of this alive, because he didn’t believe for once second James would keep his word; he’d come this far, and done what he’d done, something told Ollie he wasn’t going to play fair and be nice once he’d got what he wanted; once they signed that paper, they were dead, or as good as, because dead men tell no tales.
Ollie’s shoulders slumped; he was out of ideas; he couldn’t reach the man, he had no aces up his sleeves, James had won, now all Ollie could try and do was keep his sisters alive. At that moment, the one person they’d both forgotten about made her presence felt.
“Mum, duck…” said Izzy, her tone matter of fact and even, so she did. James spun around to look at her, the word “Wha…?” dying on his lips even as the rusty clutch plate Izzy spun at him like a discus slammed into his forehead, sending him flying. Carol wrenched her arm free and leaped for Ollie, who caught her and thrust her behind him, before running at James, intending to beat his ass into a pulp.
James was sprawled on the filthy, oil-soaked concrete, a large gash across his forehead and his eyes unfocussed. Ollie went to drag him upright, intending to bash the living shit out of him, but James was away with the fairies, his eyes crossed and dazed-looking. His mobile phone was on the ground next to him, and Ollie picked it up, and, on a hunch, scrolled through the texts, his face lighting up with a huge, happy grin at what he read there. Izzy and Carol watched in incomprehension as he composed and sent a text, then kicked James in the ribs.
“Oi, fucko, get up, you’ve got trouble, ‘dad’!” he gritted as James curled up from the force of the kick. “You better pay attention, it’s your balls on the line!”
James’ eyes cleared as he saw Ollie with his phone in his hand, an unpleasant grin on his face.
“So, ‘dad’, you need to listen,” grinned Ollie. “I just read all those texts in your phone from Albie Crane; really? You actually went and borrowed money from the Crane brothers, those fucking psycho dirtbags, and this was how you’re going to pay them back? I’ve got news for you, James; read the text I just sent Albie, from you, telling him what he can do, and what you think of him…!”
James grabbed the handset Ollie proffered, and read in horror the message Ollie had sent:
Don’t you threaten me, you fucked-up retard; I’m not going to pay you back, because fuck you, I don’t want to, so you pair of dickless retards can shove your threats up your arses, I’m going to the police, they’d love to get you two dicks in a basement somewhere so they can kick shit out of you. Fuck you both, fuck your threats, fuck your retard families, and fuck your money, you pair of pointless turds, so seeya never, with all my love and a large glass of go fuck yourself, James B
James stared at Ollie, his face grey with fear.
“What have you done, oh my fucking God, do you know wha…” he began, but Ollie cut him off.