Bone Breakers (A Stanton brothers thriller) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  About the Author

  Copyright page

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  MARTIN STANLEY

  Bone Breakers

  All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

  Spike Milligan

  To all those who enjoyed the Stanton’s previous adventures in The Hunters and The Greatest Show in Town - this delightful and charming tale is for you.

  I would like to thank Dan Sollis for his generous time and patience in reading and assisting with the editing of this book. He saw flaws that I was blind to, and made suggestions that have ensured that what you are reading is a far better piece of work than it was when it was first written.

  Martin Stanley was born in Middlesbrough in 1972. He was educated in Teesside and later in Bristol, where he studied graphic design.

  In addition Bone Breakers, he is also the author of The Hunters, in which the Stantons made their first appearance, The Gamblers, a dark and violent noir tale set mostly in Bristol, and The Greatest Show in Town, which includes several Stanton brothers short stories.

  He lives, works and socialises in London.

  You can find him hanging around online at his blog http://thegamblersnovel.com, where he reviews books, talks crime fiction, and occasionally posts up short stories. He also has a Facebook page TheGamblersNovel. And you can also find him Twittering about random stuff here.

  If you wish to contact him personally (to boost his fragile ego and congratulate him on writing something you enjoyed, to ask him stuff, tell him stuff, or just to stop by and chat) please email [email protected]

  Bone Breakers by Martin Stanley

  Copyright 2013 by Martin Stanley

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The basic geography contained in this book is more or less accurate, but the locations, buildings and businesses are either used fictitiously or are products of the author’s imagination.

  Cover Design: Martin Stanley

  Cover Image: jazavac/Fotolia.com

  All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this and did not purchase it then please remove it and purchase a legitimate copy from Amazon. The author thanks you for respecting his wok in producing this book.

  1.

  Terry Albright leaned across the counter and put a hand to his face like he was sharing a secret.

  “Think you should close the shop, Al.”

  Al Drury’s thin face paled and his bottom lip began to tremble. He ran both hands through his oily, grey hair, just to stop them from shaking, and approached the counter with a servile smile that took all his effort to hold in place. He sneaked a glance at his son, who was cleaning the area around the doner kebab spit.

  Danny responded with a slow shake of the head and a defiant expression.

  Al’s smile wavered, but just about managed to cling to the hairs of his moustache. He wanted to look brave but his trembling gave him away, so he clasped his hands together and lowered them below the counter.

  “I’d like to help, Terry, really I would, but I just can’t risk it.”

  Terry’s jowly face stiffened but remained otherwise expressionless. “And that’s your last word on the matter?” he said.

  “Gotta think of the future.”

  Terry grinned, but his eyes were as lifeless as dark stones.

  “What makes you think you have a future?”

  The last hint of colour seeped from Al’s complexion, and his smile melted like butter beneath a blowtorch.

  Terry turned and exchanged looks with two broad-shouldered men sat at the solitary table in the corner of the shop. They made a lot of noise as they got out of their chairs and came in close behind him with their fists tightly clenched. It was hard to tell whether they were shuffling their shoulders in readiness for violence or because they were uncomfortable in their ill-fitting suits, as bouquets of perspiration flowers bloomed on their shirtfronts and sweat patches darkened the fabric around their armpits.

  Al tried to cool things down by smiling again, but it took so long to arrive that it looked crooked and idiotic. “If I lose this place I lose it all.”

  “No, you just lose this place,” Terry said. “If you lose your health you lose it all, understand?”

  Al gave his son another glance.

  “Swear down, if you give him the eye one more time I’m gonna fuckin’ smash your face into the counter. Last time I looked it was your name in neon, not his, so stop asking his opinion. It’s a simple fuckin’ proposal.”

  “Not if we get caught,” Danny said.

  Terry kept his eyes on Al. “Don’t remember inviting you to this conversation, Daniel.”

  “You’re in our shop.”

  “Our shop? Our fuckin’ shop?” Terry said. “Where’s your part of the sign? Last time I looked it read Al’s Kebab’s – not Al and his faggoty fuckin’ son.”

  Danny looked just like his father, minus twenty years of stress off the face and hair and with twenty pounds of muscle on the frame, but that was where the similarity ended. The expression on his face was anything but servile and prison tats came past the sleeves of his overall, covering the tops of his hairless hands. He leaned in towards the counter, unafraid of Terry. “I’m family.”

  “You’re a cunt.”

  Danny paused momentarily and his lips pursed. Then his black eyes glazed over and his hand tightened around the cloth he was carrying. He glared at his father and turned back to the task of wiping down surfaces. A faint mutter drifted from him.

  Terry cupped a hand around his right ear. “Got summat you wanna share?”

  “Not with you.”

  “Better stay that way, too, ‘cause I’m sick of your voice.”

  Al leaned in, trying to break the tension. “Come on, Tel. Be fair.”

  “Tel? Tel?” he said. “Since when were we that fuckin’ familiar?”

  Al cringed and jerked back from the counter, as if expecting a slap in the face.

  “Soz, meant no disrespect. Look, Terry, me lad’s right. If we get caught they’ll close us for sure. We’ll end up in prison. I wanna help – seriously, I do – but I can’t.”

  “And that’s your final answer?”

  Al paused for a second. His left-hand came up to his mouth and he pushed the index finger between his teeth. “Yeah. I’ve got to think about our long-term future,” he said through bites of fingernail.

  Terry turned towards his men. “Gotta respect that, like. Now that’s a man of conviction.”

  His heavies shared a sly glance and nodded in agreement.

  “No wonder you’re a fuckin legend,” Terry said. “You gotta have huge fuckin’ balls to be turning me down.”

  Beads of seat trickled down Al’s foreh
ead and settled in his eyebrows. “Not being funny, like, ‘cause I respect you, but I gotta be careful. This place might not make much, and what you’re offering is fair and all that, but I hafta look out for me family.”

  “Including your crippled child?”

  “I don’t have a…”

  “Crippled child?” Terry said. “Well, not yet you don’t. I was getting all Mystic Meg on you, peering into the future and that. If you catch me fuckin’ drift?”

  Al whimpered.

  Danny dropped the cloth in the sink and took off his overall. “I’ve had enough of this shite, Dad.”

  “No, son…”

  He stepped around the counter and came to a stop in front of the big man. He leaned forward until his face was six inches from Terry’s. “You wanna threaten my sister again, cunt? Fuckin’ say it to my face, without your fuckin’ bum-boys backing you up. Come on then, if you think you’re man enough.”

  Terry didn’t bother with any posturing. Instead, he slammed a low right into Danny’s balls and followed through. Al’s son squealed and dropped to the floor, hissing as he cradled his nuts.

  Terry jerked his head in the direction of his men. “Close this fuckin’ place down, Joe.”

  The bigger of the two heavies went outside and started pulling down the shutters. They squealed like wounded animals as they came down. The other heavy blocked off the shop door and waited, watching his boss with a slight smile.

  Terry turned back towards Danny, who was attempting to get off the floor, and threw a right hook that hit the point of his chin with a thud. Danny’s eyes fluttered, rolled over white, and he landed on his arse in a daze. He looked around in confusion, as if the punch had wiped his memory clean, and tried to get off the ground again.

  Without hesitation, Terry took a step forward and kicked Danny’s face like it was a football. His nose broke with a wet crunch that reverberated off the tiled walls. Danny screamed and covered his face with his hands. Blood ran through his fingers in a stream, making fat dot patterns on the lino. The sudden jolt of pain had jerked him wide-awake. Now he knew where he was and how much trouble he was in.

  Terry dropped onto his haunches, grabbed Danny by his t-shirt and smiled.

  “Ow, thick cunt, I wasn’t talking about your skinny little slut of a sister, I was talking about you – you’re the fuckin’ cripple.”

  Danny threw a weak left, but Terry batted it away with ease and slammed a succession of combos in the lad’s face, smashing his nose into pulp and shattering his jaw and teeth. Every blow knocked a little more out of him, until the last of his fight was gone. He lay back, powerless, listening to the punches hit home with a wet crack, and prepared for death.

  Al rounded the counter with his hands clasped together in supplication. Tears glistened on his cheeks like snail tracks. “Please don’t kill him, Terry,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you ask.” He looked almost devout as he dropped to his knees, like he was praying for intervention.

  Terry looked up. His eyes were wild and for a few seconds he didn’t appear to know where he was. The fluorescent lights glistened on his blood-slicked fists. He blinked a couple of times, seemed to come back from wherever his mind had been, and looked at his bloodied hands in amazement.

  The final shutter hit the ground with a screech and the shop door opened. Joe came inside, closed the door and locked it. He chuckled when he saw the mess his boss had made. “Christ. You didn’t fuck around there, Tel.”

  Terry gasped for breath and looked at Joe. “Help me get this piece of shite up.”

  The two heavies heaved Danny upright by his arms. With each step, his head swung loosely from side-to-side like a pendulum. Terry stepped forward and slapped his face. There was a brief flutter of lids but no recognition in the swollen eyes. Terry looked at something behind the counter and grinned.

  “I can think of summat that’ll wake him up.”

  “Please, don’t,” Al said, still on his knees. He kept his head down, facing the ground, as if afraid of what he might see. Terry grabbed the shopkeeper by the jaw and tilted his head up, looking into his eyes.

  “He’s alive, isn’t he? I coulda killed the cunt, but I didn’t, which means you fuckin’ owe me. This place, Al.”

  Al bobbed his head up and down in agreement. Tears dripped off his nose and chin. “It’s yours. I’ll take your cousin on. Just let me boy be.”

  “You’re in no fuckin’ position to be making demands.”

  “Please?”

  “Don’t worry, Alain,” Terry said, patting his cheek. “Just letting ya’ lad know who’s boss around here.”

  Terry and his men dragged Danny behind the counter. They began to laugh, and egged each other on. Holding him against the rear worktop, they worked his kidneys until he came round with a cry.

  And that was when they really started hurting him.

  Al clamped his hands to his ears, pressing the palms down as hard as he could. But it wasn’t enough to block out the screams of his son or the sizzle of flesh as it cooked in a deep fat fryer.

  2.

  The two men screamed like Hyenas, drawing the attention of everybody else in the pub. But this still wasn’t enough for the fat man, so he hammered the joke home further: “Swear down, took one look at the thing and sez, ‘I’m not fuckin’ eating that, like. It’s nothing but a bunch of shit and twigs’”

  One of the men laughed so hard it sounded like he was in the process of choking to death. The fact that his body seemed to spasm with every cackle did little to dispel the image. He even brought his hands up to his neck like he was clawing for breath.

  “I tells ya, I’da needed one of those fuckin’ council hedge trimmers just to find her lips. Like a fuckin’ forest, it was.”

  “Seriously, Tommo, she carna been that bad?” said one of the men, catching his breath.

  Tommo leaned in. “That bad? That fuckin’ bad? Swear down, it was like the jungles of fuckin’ ‘Nam. Think there was a family of fuckin’ gooks livin’ in there at one point. Made the silly bitch shave her twat - give it some Agent Orange - before I’d go anywhere near it.”

  “Bet she loved that.”

  “She was wetter than an otter’s pocket when she comes back from the bathroom. I mean, not bragging nor nowt but I’m a big fuckin’ fella down there, and even I slid into that hole without having to push – straight in, balls fuckin’ deep.”

  “Wicked, mate.”

  “She’s a proper slag, like. Fuckin’ loved it, she did – right dirty bitch.”

  They fell silent as a blonde girl in a figure-hugging red dress passed their table, walking towards the bar. The three men studied her as if they’d never seen a female of the species before; their eyes roving from her legs to her face and back again. She didn’t seem to mind the attention and returned their gaze, paying particular attention to Tommo. Their eyes locked, and he noticed that her irises were very green, almost emerald in colour. She had him transfixed.

  One of the men knocked his arm. “You see that, mate?”

  Tommo smiled. “Seen it. I fuckin felt it. Third leg’s still twitching.”

  He looked around the bar for her friends, but didn’t see any. All he saw were ruddy-faced, aging alcoholics with jowls that hung like wet drapes and overly loud mouths. They didn’t look like her kind of people. Another glance around revealed that she was the only woman in the place.

  “Reckon she’s prowling for cock,” Tommo said.

  The same man leaned in and said in a low voice: “What makes you say that?”

  “Take a look, Bob. You see her mates anywheres?”

  Bob turned his grey head left and right. “Don’t see any women at all.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Should make a move, mate,” the other friend said. “’Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna.”

  “Hold your horses, Steve,” Tommo said, patting his arm. “This is mine. Jus’ playing it cool, is all.”

  “Fuck cool. She needs a good ramming,” S
teve said, as his eyes explored her body.

  The girl stood at the bar, waiting to be served. Her stomach rested against the counter top, pitching her forward slightly, so that her butt stuck out. Her dress rode up, revealing a lot of creamy leg, but stopped just short of revealing the prize that lay beyond.

  “She’s doing that on purpose,” Steve said, gripping his pint glass so hard he risked shattering it.

  “Gotta be,” Tommo said, feeling the bulge growing in his jeans. “I bet she’s pure fuckin’ filth. Bet she loves it up the arse.”

  He finished his pint and waggled the glass at Steve and Bob. Normally, Tommo wouldn’t have been seen dead getting in a round, but this wasn’t a normal circumstance. He wanted a reason to wander to the bar and talk to the girl, and this provided the perfect excuse. They handed him their pint glasses, with a mutter of same again, and he walked over and plonked himself next to her.

  Her green eyes quickly took him in, then drifted back towards a fat barman chatting with a regular at the other end of the bar. The barman was clearly a lot more interested in the conversation than the world around him and didn’t react when she coughed gently to get his attention. “What does a girl have to do to get served around here?” she asked, gazing at Tommo.

  “Having a cock might help.”

  She responded with a white smile. “This a gay bar, or something?”

  Tommo laughed. “No, but there’s times when I do wonder about the clientele in here.”

  “Yourself included?”

  A momentary flash of anger tightened Tommo’s expression, but his face relaxed into a grin. “Outside of a porno film the only cock I’ve ever seen is me own.”

  She chuckled at that, then leaned further over the bar to get the barman’s attention, waving her hand in his direction, and finally sighed with exasperation. “Am I invisible, or what?”

  Tommo gave the counter top a hard crack with the bottom of his pint glass. The barman looked round and beamed at him.

  “Ow, Tony, get the lady a drink, you ignorant cunt.”

  Tony’s smile faded and he reddened. “I’m doing…”

  “You’re not working is what you’re doing. Maybe when Darren arrives I’ll have a whisper in his lug-hole and tell him that you’re too fuckin’ busy putting sweet-nothings in your boyfriend’s ear to serve paying customers.”