Waging War To Shake The Cold Read online

  She sighed loudly.

  Well bang goes that interview.

  She’d been looking for a new job for a while and this one sounded perfect: good money; reasonable hours; no pressure.

  The puncture had put paid to her chances though. Oh she’d called them on her mobile, of course, to explain what happened and why she wasn’t there on time, but she could tell from the guy’s voice he probably didn’t believe her story; and she already knew there would be a line of other candidates waiting to snap the vacancy up. She’d offered to come later, or reschedule for another date, but he’d fobbed her off and said he’d be in touch next week sometime.

  Bloody typical, just my luck.

  She hated being helpless like this. No one stopped to help even though she’d been there for ages messing about with that bloody wrench and jack.

  The traffic just pounded past impassively.

  I bet someone would stop if I was twenty years younger and wearing a mini-skirt.

  She drifted into a brief fantasy involving a well-muscled young man pulling up in a fast car and changing the wheel in a jiffy. He looked at her meaningfully when he finished, and she’d coyly said, “How can I ever repay you…”

  She giggled at the absurd image and shook her head.

  Men. They are all a bunch of useless sods. So bloody predictable. All you have to do is hang a little bit of flesh out there and they’ll take the bait, every time. Look at that nice quiet Frank Thomson, such a nice boy the one minute and then trying to grope that little Vanessa Denholm, a girl half his age indeed, the next.

  And then there was Danny Franklin who she'd caught red-handed at the last Christmas party with that trollop Georgina Simpson from reception, and her already sleeping with Nick Crossan. And what about Stuart Johnstone who was clearly at it with Renee Carter in accounting – both of them married. Almost every lunchtime they were off out somewhere or other, coming back with their hair all messed up and grinning stupidly at each other. They must think everyone else in the place was an eejit not to notice.

  This was why she wanted out of there: there was far too much of what her mother called “smutty shenanigans” going on.

  Smutty shenanigans aren’t the worst of it though Mother, oh no. Mr Crossan has been up to something much more naughty than his sordid little fling with Georgina.

  She absently fingered the leather cover of the journal which she removed from her bag to read and pass the time while she waited.

  It was now sitting on her lap, her thumb firmly holding her place as she looked out the window at the rain-soaked motorway. It’s all in here, she smiled.

  As well as being a big reader, she developed the habit of writing a diary as a child and had never lost it. As she withdrew from Norman’s mad and increasingly violent world, it became ever more important for her to build a safe haven of her own, a private place, and she poured everything of her secret self into the pages of her journals.

  There was a box in her bedroom full of them, each indexed by year, and in the dark of winter she would often read through them, smiling and crying in sympathy with the twists and turns of her life, as if it were a best-selling novel or a long-running soap opera.

  She often thought of herself as the invisible woman. People would talk amongst themselves, or on the phone, almost as though she weren’t even there, so consequently she became privy to some spectacular secrets.

  As the years passed she began to live more and more of her life by proxy, lost in the follies, dreams, and ambitions, of those around her who always seemed to be more interesting, more engaged, more… alive… than she was.

  Smiling again, she thought of the problems it would cause if what was locked away in this particular little volume were ever to see the light of day.

  There would be hell to pay, and make no mistake.

  She had taken precautions. She didn’t want any problems when she handed in her notice, and she certainly didn’t want any comeback afterwards. She’d seen Nick make trouble for folk who had left the company before: sending bad references to their new employers and delaying payment of wages owed. He was a very petty man at times.

  So, just as an insurance policy of her own, she had meticulously copied down the details of some of the more discrete transactions Mr Crossan handled personally with his clients.

  Numbers, dates, accounts, everything. She wasn’t certain these were in any way what might be thought of as dodgy dealings, but she knew that since they were handled personally by the boss, and that the clients were certainly a lot more colourful than the normal run of the mill client, something was different about them.

  Not that she was going to use the information as any form of blackmail or anything like that. She simply wasn’t that type. The only person she had ever shown any of her journals to was Brenda. Brenda seemed to understand why she’d kept them and why she was so meticulous about it. Brenda even knew what was in this one and had told her never to show it to anyone.

  “Maureen, you shouldn’t even have this stuff,” she’d said, but she hadn’t told her to throw it away either. Brenda just seemed to understand.

  For the first time in a long while she was beginning to hope that maybe, just maybe, she could start again with someone new, even though it was all a little bit unconventional.

  My mother definitely wouldn’t approve, that’s for sure, but it’s my life and my own to live now.

  The loud “waaaaaaW” of a horn interrupted her reverie.

  She craned round in the passenger seat searching for the source of the noise, just in time to see a huge truck sliding about the carriageway roughly a hundred yards behind her.

  Everything slipped into slow motion.

  A small pick-up swerved and she could see the driver cursing as he fought the wheel to prevent his own vehicle from skidding. A family saloon car spun across the road to get out the way. She saw clearly the white face of the driver and the woman passenger beside him screaming silently and reaching round to grab for the baby-seat where an infant was looking right at her in wide-eyed surprise, its little mouth a perfect “Oh” shape and its small hand pointing awkwardly.

  “Oh my.”

  The trailer of the lorry angled back round, heading for the central reservation, the driver fighting the wheel ineffectively. It clipped a small car as it did so, spinning it wildly into the barrier where she saw the airbag deploy before the truck obscured her view.

  The impact kicked the trailer round again almost into a right angle, closing off the road entirely as it swung into the hard shoulder, horn blaring loud and menacing as it closed on her. Finally, in an ache of inevitability, it caught her car side-on with a deafening crash and hurled it into the air.

  There was a weightlessness and her vision was temporarily obscured by the shattered windscreen. Rain came in through the hole and it was wet on her face. The sky and ground revolved around one another as though she was seeing it from the inside of a giant washing machine.

  The grass came up to meet the bonnet of the car and she was thrown out of the passenger door, arms flailing, desperately clawing at the air, trying to control her flight. She didn’t - perhaps couldn’t – scream as the darkness closed in.

  Chapter 5

  Kats watched helplessly as the jack-knifed trailer scooped up the stationary car and hurled it onto the embankment, rolling it over and over. He may have screamed, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Eventually everything came to a screeching halt of twisted metal barrier and shredded rubber. The cab was lodged in the central reservation and the trailer was blocking the entire carriageway. His breathing came in huge shrieking gasps and he patted his body all over, a habit from his combat days, to make sure he hadn’t been hit.

  No blood. There’s no blood. Nothing hurts. I’m okay.

  He threw open the cab door, jumped down, and ducking under the body of the trailer, ran back along the road.

  It was carnage. The BMW was in the distance, trashed against the central barrier, and cars were s
tacked up on the motorway behind it. Vehicles on the other carriageway were slowing to see what was going on. The rank acrid smell of burning rubber hung in the damp air, and steam was rising from the various wreckages, drifting lazily like battlefield smoke.

  He noticed there had been several more shunts in the melee back there. People were starting to get out of their cars, stumbling dazedly towards each other. He could see DJ dragging someone from the back of the Beemer. There was a pick-up truck and a small family car on the motorway verge, both at drunken angles to one another, and a white Ford Fiesta smashed into the central barrier, airbags deployed, the driver waving a bloody arm feebly.

  He looked around for the car he’d hit on the hard-shoulder. It was now on its roof halfway up the embankment, the rear tyre spinning ineffectually and there was a woman lying about thirty feet away from it in a crumpled heap with her head twisted at an improbable angle, covered in blood.

  “Bloody hell, no!”

  He ran, hoping he was in time. Kats had seen people mangled up after a contact in Iraq and they had looked in better shape than she did.

  She lay partially on her side; her head forced backwards so she was almost looking at him upside down as he approached her.

  Her face was caked in a mixture of fresh mud and blood, and her eyes stared glassily at him. Her dress was torn and stained from the impact. He lifted her wrist and felt for a pulse, confirming what he already knew.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!” This took things to a new level. It wasn’t just a spat between him and DJ anymore.

  She was holding a small leather book tightly in her left hand and Kats looked at it for a few seconds before deciding he wanted to know who she was. Bending down he slid it from her limp, slightly podgy fingers.

  He looked around wildly when he heard the first siren. The folk in the other cars were still focussed on helping themselves, or those nearest them, and no-one had come close to him yet.

  “Time to go Kats.”

  He ran up the motorway embankment, hopped over the fence into the adjacent farmland and headed for the stand of trees he could see in the distance. Almost there, the whop-whop-whop of a chopper coming over forced him to dive the last few yards, landing in a patch of damp brambles, thorns tearing at his clothes and bare patches of skin.

  Not that the chopper crew would be looking specifically for him of course, not yet anyway, but he didn’t want any connections to be made too soon, and he especially didn’t want any rough IDs to be put about from any visual sightings of a man leaving the scene. The cops would find the tracks where he’d crossed the corn field soon enough and then they’d know the driver of the truck was alive and well and clearly on the run.

  He fumbled in his pocket, and hands shaking, punched in a number.

  “Isa… gran… it’s me, Kevin.”

  “Aw son, it’s great tae hear from ye so it is. When are ye coming round for yer dinner? Ye said ye would come round this week...”

  “That’s why am callin’ ye Isa, I canny make it this week. Somthin’ has come up, I need tae go away for a wee while.”

  “That’s awfy sudden Kevin. Is it a job?”

  “Aye, it’s a job. Look, I cannae talk right now,” he was covering the mouthpiece as best he could to hide the far-off sounds of the sirens. “So I’ll call you in a day or two awright? Just wait till ye hear from me okay? And don’t worry.”

  “Why would I worry Kevin…” she was saying, but he hung up.

  He punched his phone again.

  “Linda, it’s me, Kats. Look am goin’ away for a while and ye have tae look in on Isa.”

  “Why me Kats? It’s always me. You said you were home for good and you would take care of her.”

  “Aye, I know, but this has just come up.”

  “Aye aye, there’s always somethin’ with you isn’t there? Just as long as you’re awright Kats, the rest of us can just swan along doin’ whatever we have tae do tae clear up after your mess.”

  “Look Linda, this isnae the time.”

  “Ach it never is with you Kats. It wis the same when dad died. Where were ye then?”

  “Linda, shut the fuck up and listen. I’m goin’ away for a wee while, I cannae help it. You have tae look out for Isa. Right? She’s no’ able tae do for herself anymore. Are ye listenin’?”

  The line was dead.

  Chapter 6

  He phoned Pete immediately after Linda hung up on him.

  “Sit tight Kats – I’ll send Carole up to get you. It’s too late for her to leave today so it will be tommorra o’rite?”

  He decided to spend the night outside rather than risk booking into a cheap hotel or B&B. That was no big deal though, nothing he hadn’t done before in the Army. He found a hay barn on a remote farm and bunked in there, therefore avoiding being completely soaked in the continuing deluge. He couldn’t light a fire, obviously, but he managed to get under a bundle of loose straw which helped dry his sodden clothes and keep him warm.

  As dawn broke he heard a commotion and opened his eyes to see a large dog fox hunting rats. The animal had cornered one in the straw below him and he watched silently as it flicked its ears to locate the rat’s position in the loose straw before leaping into it and drawing out the struggling and screaming rodent.

  Kats smiled his approval; he hated rats with a passion. They were an ever present annoyance in just about every army base he’d been stationed on, and he and the lads took great pleasure in practising their sharp-shooting on them with .22 air rifles.

  Lots of money could be won and lost on the side-bets, and tournaments were regular features of camp life. They’d even had a huge ostentatious trophy made, called the Company Rat Assassin’s Prize. The CRAP award.

  He stretched and sat up noisily.

  “Wish I’d had you on my team over there mate.” His sudden outburst panicked the fox, forcing it to flee with its breakfast.

  The reality of his situation closed in on him again and he wondered, not for the first time, how this was all going to pan out.

  Kats wasn’t an educated man, but neither was he stupid. He’d grown up in Shettleston, in the East End of Glasgow, and he had learned the hard way that to stand out academically in a tough school invited trouble. Better to be mediocre, blend in, look like one of the pack.

  However, once he’d left school at sixteen he’d found, like many of his equally smart but uneducated peers, that doors simply didn’t open for him, leaving him bumming around in dull jobs, mostly seasonal and part-time, interspersed with long periods on the dole.

  Inevitably he’d gotten into trouble with the law from time to time, minor stuff mostly, but escalating slowly and surely and he could easily have been headed for a stretch in The Big Hoose until a police desk sergeant wised him up.

  “I see a dozen useless wee wanks like you every day son. Ye think that ‘cos you’ve nae job that the world owes you a living. Ye think nobody will give ye a chance ‘cos of where ye come frae. Ye think we’re all oot tae get ye ‘cos you and all yer mates are neds. But let me tell ye whit it really is: whit it really is, is that you’ve no ambition for yerself and nae self-respect. There are a million things you could do to get yourself out of this shitheap. And yet whit do you do? Ye try yer best tae burrow right intae the middle of the shitheap in the hope ye can hide among yer pals that are already buried in it. If this behaviour of yours keeps up I’ll be seein’ ye again, in my official capacity I mean, but if yer serious about doin’ something wi’ yer life, somethin’ that will give you some pride and dignity, why not give that number a call?” and with that he’d handed Kats a card. On it was a number and the legend “East End Bad Boy’s Army – call us if you’re hard enough.”

  Kats hadn’t called right away, but when he’d almost been caught again, this time for a shoplifting venture that had gone wrong, leaving him scrabbling over a 12ft wall, inches ahead of a pursuing, persistent, copper, he’d decided that maybe a change of career was a good idea after all. He made the call.
r />   The East End Bad Boys Army was a military style youth club that was run by the desk sergeant, who turned out to be called Billy, and some other ex army palls of his. They worked with the local kids from the schemes to give them some basic personal discipline and teach them how to organise their lives around more positive goals.

  It was about breaking the cycle of peer group pressure and building their confidence to become an individual within a stratum of society that demanded everyone speak, dress, and behave the same way; a stratum of society where change was feared and to stand out from the crowd could, and often did end in violence. It was also about preventing them from signing up to a career in crime and keeping them off the drugs that inevitably fuelled those crimes.

  Kats knew all about drugs. His father had been a total smackhead and his mother wasn’t much better. He and his big sister had largely lived their own lives, despite the chaos that surrounded them daily, with addicts coming and going and crumpled heaps of humanity strewn about the floor of their home like discarded fast food wrappers.

  The only legacy it had left Kats with was an abiding hatred of narcotics of any description and total ambivalence towards his parents, so much so that he hadn’t even asked for compassionate leave when his dad died, meaning he didn't go to the funeral.

  Despite his initial misgivings he had loved every minute of The Bad Boys Army and found that it allowed him the self-respect and expression he was denied when he was in school or hanging out with the other local neds. The physical side of the programme filled out his body as well as swelling his confidence so he was no longer afraid of comeback for turning his back on the gangs, and he was also persuaded to read more and expand his mind.

  The weekly personal development challenges they set, both mental and physical, pushed him. He competed hard in everything he did, so much so that Tam, the old RSM who had set the club up with Billy, drew him aside one day and said, “Son, you’re wasted in this place. You should join up; get yourself a proper education and see a bit of life. The schemes and the gangs will do you in if you stay. Jist go for it, you’ll come back a different man.”