The Henchmen's Book Club by Danny King

Author:Danny King [King, Danny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

20.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO DILATE

The night was quiet and the weather chilly. One or two cars were veering around the town’s tight bends but there were precious few people about on the street itself. I pulled my collars up around my ears and lurched in the direction of home.

I was halfway along Station Road, just past the mini-roundabout, with the bright lights of Petworth on my back, when a black Transit van screeched to a halt beside me and flung open its doors. Two burly bruisers leapt out as I tried to flee, grabbing me by the lapels and repeatedly flapping a cosh against my head until they found the switch.

Lights out.

I’ve been knocked out a few times in my career so these days I’m able to judge just how long I’ve been unconscious by the size of the headache when I awake, and this one throbbed away like billy-o, telling me I’d only been under a matter of minutes.

My first sensations were rocking, as Bruiser-A threw the van around the twisting country lanes of Sussex, while Bruiser-B tore through my pockets. They were talking, discussing my fate as though I were a bag of compost, though I was barely able to make out the specifics because of the grinding split that ran down the middle of my senses. When I finally did manage to feel past it, I heard a third voice barking orders at the others and this one caught my attention; a female voice – harsh and authoritative, yet alluring and self-aware. I didn’t even need to come around fully to know it was Glory Days.

“Give me his cell phone. And pull his wallet apart, he may have the key in the lining.”

I groaned without meaning to, tipping them off that I’d just joined the conversation and Bruiser-B immediately reached into his pocket to sing me another lullaby, but Glory granted my brain a stay of execution.

“No, not yet. I want to hear what he’s got to say first.”

“Onnhh, my fucking head!” was the first information they got out of me, followed by an off-the-cuff observation about their heritage and what they could all go and do to each other.

Glory shoved Bruiser-B aside and laughed in my face.

“You’ll talk, just see if you don’t. Oh yes Mark Jones, you’ll talk alright.”

Bruiser-B leered at me as if his bonus depended on it, so I decided not to invite him to join book club and instead told them I wasn’t working for anyone at the moment. I propped myself up on my elbows and tried appealing to my brother Affiliates.

“You’re probably both Agency boys,” I implored, nausea all but clogging my throat. “Check the waiting lists with them, short and middle termers. I’m not signed up with anyone at the moment.”

“Agency? The Agency? I don’t hire through The Agency,” Glory Days spat. “I want lions, not donkeys.”

“We’re RS,” bruiser B informed me, meaning Regenschirm Stellenvermittlung, one of The Agency’s every growing number of petty rivals, employing mostly ex-Stasi men.

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