WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR
by NIGEL BIRD
Contents
An Arm And A Leg
first published in Crimespree Magazine 2010
Also published in Mammoth Best British Crime Stories 8 2011
Fisher Of Men
first published in Voluted Tales Magazine 2011
A Whole Lotta Rosie
first published in the anthology Pulp Ink 2011
Reaching The Summit
first published in Apollo's Lyre 2011
No Pain No Gain
first published at Crime Facory Magazine
Breakfast TV
first published at A Twist Of Noir 2011
put forward for the Pushcart Prize by Christopher Grant
Suture
first published at PulpMetal Magazine 2010
and Samples
Hoodwinked
first published at All Due Resepect 2011
included in the collection Beat On The Brat (and other stories)
Sea Minor
first published in The Reader Magazine 2009
included in the collection Dirty Old Town (and other stories) 2011
Chapter 1 of Smoke , a novella 2011
An Arm And A Leg
Cold air poured in when they opened the doors. It would soon be over. All Carlo had to do was accept his punishment and they could wake up in the morning and start over.
The ride had been at high speed and in a straight line, so they’d either gone south down the A1 or round the Edinburgh bypass. It wasn’t easy to tell in the dark, but he figured south was the more likely when he factored in the roundabouts.
Rolling round inside the back of the van, he’d been reminded of driving his wife and first-born home from the maternity ward at Little France in the restaurant’s Berlingo . Maria had been bumped around as sleeping-policemen and pot-holes took turns to attack the suspension; even with her newly stitched episiotomy, she didn’t utter a noise the whole way. Nor had Chris, the poor child, head bobbing in the seat they’d spent an age working out how to secure.
That was ten years earlier. Since then Maria had given birth to a second child and, when her patience finally wore through, filed for divorce and sent him packing from the family home and business.
If he’d kept away from the booze, he might still have been in line for taking over one of the most successful eateries in the city. He could have been sitting back counting cash and sipping orange juice while his shoulders were rubbed and he watched the Hoops put one past the Jambos or the ‘Gers. Instead he was in some God-forsaken place wondering how they were going to take their revenge.
It wasn’t long before they dropped him to the ground, his head hitting something hard and sharp.
The icy wind from the Forth cut through his jacket and the smell of the salt filled his nostrils. He guessed they were at the cement works - that’s where he’d be doing it if the steel toe caps were on the other foot.
The men standing over him took a moment to spark up cigarettes. Carlo rested his cheek upon the smooth metal rail, so chilled that his tongue might have stuck to it if he’d given it a lick. His fingers identified wooden sleepers with pebbles scattered in between and his legs found the parallel rail exactly where he knew it would be. The bleating of a goat was the last piece he needed to complete his picture. They weren’t at the cement works but the East Lothian Family Park, built to entertain the kiddies.
Sure, what he’d done wouldn’t be winning him an M.B.E., but using trains as weapons should have died out with silent movies.
These guys were animals. Perhaps the farm was the best place for this to end after all.
Tranent needed another chip shop like it needed another teenage pregnancy. When Carlo Salvino impregnated Kylie on the same night that he opened ‘the Golden Fry’, he really managed to hit the bull’s eye.
Belters they were called, the people from
Similar Books
