Timlin Sharman and other Filth

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84344-694-1
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 13, 304 Seiten

Reihe: A Nick Sharman Novel

They had so much on Sharman that he couldn't move without their say-so. Stuff he'd done for himself, and things he'd done for them, too. His name was ruined on both sides of the fence. So they came up with one more job, the big one. When he found out they'd snared him in a honey trap, he was ready to kill...

In over twenty years as an author, Mark Timlin has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles on diverse subjects for various newspapers and magazines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Timlin, Mark

Leseproben

AI NO CORRIDA

This is the first short story I ever wrote. It was originally intended for a collection by a bunch of crime writers gathered together under the umbrella of Fresh Blood, which was also going to be the title of the anthology. Unfortunately, in a classic ‘piss-up’ and ‘brewery’ scenario, nothing ever came of it, and eventually the story was published in 1992 in Constable New Crimes 1.

It’s actually an extract from the original manuscript of my first novel, A Good Year For the Roses, and explains why Sharman left the police. Eventually, some kind editor pointed out that, if this was how Sharman left the force, he’d’ve ended up in jail for twenty-five years, so I changed it. But I still liked the idea and kept it in a drawer until I could use it. So in a way it is a Sharman story, and reminds all us writers never to throw anything away, because one day it could be worth a bob or two. ‘Ai No Corrida’ is a hefty hunk of eighties disco funk by Quincy Jones.

It was the kind of midsummer’s night that never really gets dark. Some memory of the day remains in the sky until dawn, and the city shimmers like the skirts of a girl’s white dress seen out of the corner of your eye as she vanishes through a closing door.

Any mist was burnt off by 5 a.m. I was in an all-night drinker in Peckham with Eddie. The place was quiet. Just us and the barman, who wanted us to go but was too scared to throw us out.

Even though the curtains were tightly drawn there were enough cuts and holes in the material to allow a few rays of the early sunlight through. They lay like gold coins on the filthy carpet. I saw Eddie watch them move slowly across the floor. He checked his watch and, with one smooth movement, leaned down and picked up the black leather bag that stood next to our table and flicked it in my direction. I caught the bag one-handed.

‘Time to get changed,’ he said.

I headed for the toilet. On the way I picked the raincoat I didn’t need for the weather off the coat rack. Inside the gents’ there was just one filthy stall. It stank of old shit and vomit overlaid with the sharp tang of urine and the sharper smell of cheap bleach. The floor felt sticky underneath the soles of my shoes. I stripped naked in the confined space, folded my clothes neatly and piled them on the closed toilet seat. Then I removed the outfit that was in the bag. Eddie had done me proud. I struggled into a clean jock-strap. Then pulled on a lilac satin running vest and tight black shorts. There was a new pair of white tube socks, still in their plastic bag, and finally a pair of Nike trainers with thick rubber soles. I put the suit and shirt, boxer shorts, socks and plain black loafers that I’d been wearing previously into the bag and zipped it up. I pulled on the raincoat and went back to the bar. ‘I’ve always admired your legs,’ said Eddie when he saw me.

‘Shove it,’ I replied, with what felt like a sour look.

‘Lighten up and have a quick one,’ he said. The idea made me want to puke. We’d been up all night, drinking and smoking too many cigarettes and snorting too much coke so that we’d stay awake. My throat was numb but I could feel the rawness underneath and my eyes felt as if they were full of ground glass.

‘No more. I’ve had enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it if we’re going to.’

‘OK,’ he said.

So we did it.

That’s how it began. But it seemed to have begun so many times. So maybe that was just the beginning of the end.

It had really begun a few weeks earlier when Eddie found the girl.

The pair of us had been temporarily seconded to Kennington Nick Crime Squad. There had been a spate of queer-bashing in Kennington Park, which had culminated in a double murder on spring Bank Holiday Monday.

Then, a gay man who jogged around the park every morning looking for talent and combining his two favourite sports, sex and running, literally had to run for his life when he approached a young guy sitting on a bench. The young guy turned out to be carrying a flick knife, and had a friend with another, hiding in the bushes. When the jogger made his intentions clear the friend came at him and slashed his arm so badly he had to go to hospital. If he hadn’t, I doubt whether he would have reported the assault. Eddie and I interviewed him. I think he talked because he realized that his sexual predilections didn’t bother us. Eddie didn’t care that he was gay. I don’t think that Eddie cared that much for sex at all. He had another love in his life. As far as I was concerned, the more guys that were gay the better. All the more women for me. We moved in mob-handed for an undercover operation. I wasn’t known locally so I was the mug who got dressed up as the decoy. I’d been pumping iron all winter and looked pretty fit, even if I do say so myself. I was supposed to be a gay jogger. All pastel running gear with tight shorts and a butch haircut. I drew the line at growing a big moustache but did look the part when I was all dressed up, as the rest of the chaps took much delight in telling me.

The idea was that I’d cruise around the park as if I was looking for early-morning trade. If the bashers were around and took the bait, the squad would leap out of the undergrowth and nick some bodies. If I collected a spank, too bad. It was up to me to duck and dive until the lads appeared. I spent four mornings poncing around the park like a prat. The fifth morning, the Friday, things changed. I was swanning around like I was looking for some swift buggery in the bushes when Eddie crashed out of a small copse of trees looking as grey as last week’s shirt. I swerved in his direction, picking up speed. He grabbed my arm when I got close. ‘Back there,’ he said, in a gagging kind of voice that I hadn’t heard from him before. ‘I’ll get the others.’

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘Take a fucking look,’ he said. ‘And stay with her. I’ve called an ambulance on the R/T.’

I pushed my way through the undergrowth and found her. She could have been any age, but I later found out she was fifteen. Poor little bitch. She’d been raped, beaten and left. Some of what had happened was obvious. Some I guessed, and some I found out over the next few days from the doctors at St Tommy’s. She’d been pretty well hammered. At first, in that shady clearing, I thought she was going to die on me there and then. There was a lot of blood. More than you’d think could possibly be contained in her small white body. When the doctors got through with her, their reports showed that she’d been the victim of a multiple rape, perhaps by as many as five or six men. Portions of her hair and scalp had been torn from her head. She’d been punched and beaten around her face and head, which resulted in a broken cheekbone, two breaks to her nose, severe bruising and lacerations around both eyes, a broken jaw and the loss of most of her upper front teeth. One arm was dislocated. Both her breasts had been savagely bitten and her right nipple had been hacked off. Her vagina had been chewed raw. Some of her clothes had been torn off, the rest had been cut off with a saw-edged knife. Someone had carved the letters SKAG on her stomach. One finger had been chopped off with the same knife to facilitate the removal of an antique gold ring, too small to take off by more reasonable means. Her panties had been stuffed in her mouth to act as a gag. There was a quantity of semen on her face, in her hair, inside her vagina and over her thighs. At first all I could see as I bent down beside her were her two black eyes, one totally, one partially closed. I gently eased the flimsy material from between her lips. Her battered face was covered in blood and come. She moved the hand with the stump of a finger to try and hide her damaged cunt. She was either having a heavy period or haemorrhaging badly. By the time the ambulance arrived, bouncing across the grass with its siren yelping, and the attendants were carrying her to it, the rest of the squad had gathered round. There were some hard men watching her taken away, but more than one excused himself to throw up behind the trees. Me included.

The uniforms found the rest of her clothes, her nipple, her finger and seven teeth in the grass when they came in to do a close search. One morning, in the canteen, some joker called it a fingertip search, within Eddie’s hearing. If I hadn’t stopped him, Eddie would have killed the bloke. No one called it that again. At least not when we were around.

Eddie and I went with her to hospital. I held her good hand. About halfway there she opened her less damaged eye and said, through lips swollen to the size of sausages, one word. Beneath the scream of the siren it sounded like ‘Dago’.

‘What did she say?’ asked Eddie.

‘It sounded like Dago,’ I replied.

‘Christ, I should have known. This has got that little posse’s mark all over it.’

‘You know him then?’

‘You mean you don’t?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You’re lucky.’

‘Sounds like it. Who is he?’

‘I’ll tell you about him later,’ said Eddie. ‘The bastard’s gone too far this time.’

‘We’ll get him,’ I said.

‘Bollocks,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll never get him for this or anything else.’

I didn’t reply. We just sat in the back of the hot ambulance and didn’t say any more.

Later I checked on Dago in the files. He and his little crew were a collective pain in the arse to the local force. With his mate Maggs he ran a gang of hotshots who lived on the Aylesbury Estate, SE11. It was one of the nastier corners of South London. A part...