A Soldier's Tale

It had all the makings of a good night out, the beer was going down like water, the jokes were flowing, the bullshit was being kept at a minimum and the women were nice to look at. I was in a local pub back in my home town. I was on leave and I was making the best of my short spell of freedom.

I noticed a couple walking into the pub, she was rather short and a little rough looking around the edges, and he looked hard as nails, he was dressed all in black, with a top coat on,he walked in with a don't fuck with me attitude and I saw him carefully eyeing up and classifying everyone in the room.

Our eyes met, he paused, looking at me, I returned the stare, he nodded slightly as did I and he made his way over to the bar.The night carried on as it had begun, the beer kept going down and the noise level kept going up. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around and was face to face with the hard case.

"I hear you are on leave from the army" he said.

I just nodded, ready for any reaction, some folks loved the army, some didn't and you could never tell where this sort of conversation would lead, he could end up buying me a drink or we could end up battling on the pub floor

"Got something you might like to see" he said, nodding towards the toilet.

"I don't normally go in toilets on the first date" I replied "but just this once"

I walked towards the toilets, pushed the door open and squinted in the bright fluorescent lighting.Quickly I looked around and saw the toilets were completely empty except for him and me. He came towards me and for the first time, I clearly saw his eyes and I could see he was well on the way to being pissed. He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a 9mm pistol. I froze for a second and was cursing myself for being all sorts of a fucking idiot and tensing up ready to launch myself at him when he offered it to me.

"My names Bob "he said," I do a bit of collection work, getting money from people who don't like to pay. This sort of thing comes in handy" It finally clicked with me, he was a hard man but in a small town, he would have asked around about me and found out I was a hard man from the same small town, but the difference was, I had moved up a step or two. This was his way of showing off, trying to level the score.

"Nice bit of kit " I said, making sure I didn't touch it. I didn't know where it had been, I didn't know where it was going, I just wanted to make damn sure no prints of mine were on it.

"Guess it comes in handy to scare the punters" Without even thinking about it, the challenge had been thrown back at him, my remark obviously meant that if he needed a gun to back up his words, he wasn't much of a debt collector.

"Got a job on later. Want to come along? I'll see you right"

"Yea, sure, no problems"

Challenge laid out, and accepted.

As the pub slowly emptied, Bob made his way towards me, checking that I was still up for it. I had slowed down on my intake, it was too late to have a completely clear head, but I didn't want to be any worse than I already was. We walked out towards his car, without speaking his girl got in the back and he and I climbed into the front. Bob took off his coat, threw it into the back and climbed in the drivers seat. He set off, driving back towards the town centre where he dropped his girl off and then we drove towards the motorway to go and collect some money.

The wind shield wipers fought a loosing battle with the heavy rain as we drove along and he told me about the job. Some poor slob had racked up a big big bill to a local loan shark, the guy couldn't pay and that made the loan shark look stupid and caused him to lose face, something that couldn't be allowed to continue. That's where Bob came into it, he worked on a freelance basis, doing doors on the clubs as a legal job, but also collecting money for loan sharks and taking a cut for his troubles, of course, if he didn't get the money, then he didn't get the cut, so that's why he wanted me.

He had phoned once and the guy just put the phone down on him, he had driven around once, during the day to get his bearings and to speak to the guy. He was a big man and wasn't scared and basically told Bob to sling his hook, so now Bob needed a hand. He couldn't use the gun, dead men cant pay and so he was painted into a corner.

We pulled off the motorway, drove though some dark streets and then turned into a cul de sac. That was the first mistake. A car driving down a cul de sac means only one of two things, its someone coming home or its someone paying a visit to a resident. And if its late at night, and if you owe a lot of money to a very nasty man, you just might not be sleeping well at nights, and you might hear and see any strange cars slowly cruising down your dead end street.

Dead end, how true those words proved to be.

Bob pulled up outside the house, switched off the engine and climbed out of the car. He walked around to the boot, lifted the boot lid and pulled out a pick axe handle. All this time I was watching, he seemed calm; he seemed to know what he was doing.

A big mistake on my part, an even bigger mistake on his.

He walked up the path towards the door as he neared the door it looked like he was either going to kick it in or smash it with the pick axe handle, the door opened.

The victim was there.

Only he wasn't a victim any more.

A machete flashed up, and then down, Bob grunted and then stepped back a pace, he dropped his weapon and slowly, oh so slowly turned around to face me. The cut was bad, very bad. It went from his neck, across his chest and down towards his waist, the cut looked black in the street lights, so did the blood that poured out. He dropped to the floor in that boneless way that only totally dead people can ever do.

The guy looked over at me, I was plain to see in the street lights. He started to walk towards the car, blood stained machete in his hand.

I knew what he was going to do, he had no choice.

I had no choice either.

I raised the gun that Bob had left in his coat pocket and fired two shots right into the head of the guy. The first shot would have killed him, the second shot was pure insurance. Within the space of a minute, maybe less two guys that were living were now dead.

I slid into the driver's seat, turned the engine on and drove away. Burning a car will always leave a trace, maybe the fire gets put out before it destroys the car, maybe you get injured setting fire to the car, and maybe the cops catch you in the act. If you have the choice of where to dump it, an airport long stay is a good place, but if not, my choice was just as good. I drove into Manchester centre, looking for the rough areas; I drove into a seedy looking street, stepped out of the car leaving the engine running and the doors unlocked. Either joy riders would nick it, or professional car thieves would strip it down, either way it wouldn't be linked back to me.

The next day I caught the flight back to Belfast, the falls road would seem peaceful after my little R and R.