Is this too nasty for Christmas Day?

I’ve  been looking over some old notes, scribblings from a few years ago, and came across an outline for a new crime novel. It isn’t pleasant, but that’s okay, I can write ‘nasty’ when the mood takes me. I may not press ahead with this – two other projects in my head already, but I’ll put an excerpt out, see if anyone likes the idea. This is the opening of Chapter 2.

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“Soon now.” The voice was barely more than a murmur but he heard it clearly. He could always hear that voice. Even when they tried to make him into a different person, to change the type of man he was. The type of man he’d always been. Even as they were sticking the needles in his arm, he could hear the voice. The voice, deep inside his head, that spoke to him alone.

No-one else.

The voice that came from deep inside his head was the only remnant of sanity in this bloody place.

In the room across the corridor, a man screamed. The high keening wail of a soul in torment. The tattooed man ignored the scream as he ignored every other aspect of his confinement. His fellow inmates, the warders and doctors, they were nothing.

He heard footsteps in the corridor and turned to face the door. The regime never changed. Medication was the lifeblood of the system and three times a day they came. The drugs were not intended to improve his health. This facility was not interested in rehabilitation.

Only control.

The ward orderly entered the room carrying his clipboard with a cheap plastic pen attached by a length of twine. The man glanced at the clipboard and ticked a box on the sheet of paper. He held out a small plastic container containing  three tablets together with a paper cup of water. The orderly didn’t look at him and the tattooed man would have expected nothing else. Even though he had recently paid a large amount to this man, it had been purely a business transaction. Their relationship was based on fear and the tattooed man was content with that arrangement.

The money had paid for a telephone call in private. The call had been important and had been very expensive. The money was not important; he had a great deal of money. Once, he’d had a great deal more money but, even though some of that had gone now, he still had the power. The influence. When he asked for something, it would be provided.

The telephone call had been to a man now retired from his former trade and living in Spain. When the call came, the man in Spain had only one option. A refusal would swiftly bring to an end his retirement in the sun. Permanently. The tattooed man was never denied a request. Not even when that request came from a prison cell.

The orderly looked frightened. He always looked frightened when he came into this room. The rules were very clear: the tattooed man was never to be approached by a lone member of staff, but the orderly had regularly chosen to break this particular rule. His venal nature had overcome his fear and the rewards had been considerable. He always offered the medication, that was his job, but the tablets had not been accepted for the past three months and the orderly disposed of the unwanted medication when he completed his shift.

The provision of the pay as you go mobile ‘phone had been a dramatic escalation of their relationship and the tattooed man had paid a small fortune to obtain it. The call had been crucial.

Loose ends.

The man he’d called insisted on hearing his instructions from the person who was paying his fee. That was only proper. The tattooed man had paid a great deal of money and expected to get the best man for the job. He had been locked away in this place for two years, but still possessed the ability to plan the death of a person who’d once been a member of his inner circle. A person he’d trusted and who had betrayed that trust. He’d have preferred to do the job himself, but that wouldn’t be possible. They were never going to let him leave this place and someone else would punish the betrayal.

It was a matter of honour.

He’d thought for a long time that another man had grassed him to the police. A man with as much to lose as himself. He’d had the man killed while in police custody, but his informant had been wrong. The dead man had also been a victim of the supergrass, just like himself. The tattooed man had no regrets. The dead man had been a rival gang leader and he had no reason to mourn his passing. What mattered now was getting the job done and a contract had been agreed.

The only stipulation had been that the man concerned had to die in a manner befitting the seriousness of his crime.  His betrayer’s identity was confirmed and the realisation was like a dagger in his guts. A young man he had trusted with too many secrets to count. A man he had been grooming to take over from him when the time came. His former protégé had walked away when the heavily armed police kicked down the doors in the middle of the night and bundled the tattooed man into the back of a van.

It was not sufficient that the betrayer should die. His death must be preceded by an agony beyond his comprehension. The prospect pleased him and he smiled.

The orderly had been visiting this room for over a year and had never seen a smile on the face of its occupant. Some reflex prompted him to smile in return and the change in expression on the face of the tattooed man turned the other man’s bowels to water. The tattooed man leapt forward and clamped his teeth onto the neck of the terrified orderly, shaking him like a terrier with a rat. The metallic salty taste of blood and the sound of cartilage crunching between his jaws were old friends.

He reached out for the pen attached to the clipboard and waved it in front of his victim. Without releasing the grip of his clenched jaws he pushed the point of the pen inside the ear of the other man and slowly applied pressure. A bubbling roar of agony erupted from the throat of the orderly and was immediately stilled as a fountain of blood sprayed into the mouth of the man whose teeth continued to ravage his throat.

A scrabble of heavy boots in the corridor announced the arrival of the security staff. They charged the tattooed man, beating him savagely with their heavy batons but his teeth remained clamped on the neck of their colleague and the muscles of his arm bulged as he forced the pen deep inside the ear of the orderly. Even as their stricken colleague slid to the floor, the security staff continued to thrash away at the head and shoulders of the tattooed man, but his strength and resilience was immense.

The orderly had been well paid for favours granted to the man in his charge, but it had been intolerable that he should have presumed there was any trace of a friendship between them. The tattooed man did not encourage smiling. Even as he finally lost consciousness from the relentless blows to his head he felt the life slip away from the man beneath him and was content. The consequences of his actions did not concern him in any way. He was already banged up for life and parole would never be an option. What more could they do to him?