3. Venganza 

Anthony was blinded. At least, he thought he would be blind if the fierce, piercing yellow light wasn’t removed from his eyes. The thick cloth bag that had been over his head when he came to had been snatched off seconds before. How long had he been out, two hours? Two days? He remembered getting stabbed, the sharp pain in his leg instantly followed by the dizziness and then nothing. It could be two weeks for all he knew. He sucked in great quantities of air half expecting the bag to be replaced any second. He was seated upright, his hands secured behind his back with what felt like thin, cold wire. He couldn't feel his fingers. His eyes were on fire. Someone had put drops in them. He didn’t remember it happening but he could feel an altogether unnatural coldness around his eyeballs as if they were out on sticks in an autumn wind. Warm tears ran down his cheeks. They trickled down to the corner of his mouth and mingled with the drying blood, which then added to the stinging sensation as the salty pearls passed into the open wound. He felt somebody brush past his shoulder to the left, his eyes registered a dark shape which momentarily gave him relief from the light. He wished that his sense of smell was as impotent as his vision because the dark shape had the odour of a damp washing basket which whilst not wholly unpleasant, seemed to unnerve him even more. And he was already very nervous. His stomach had been turning somersaults since he had re-gained consciousness. His groin area ached. He had suffered a blow to the stomach and he felt sure now that something had been ruptured. He tipped his head forward and squeezed his eyes tight hoping for relief from the light. The damp smell wasn’t from the person that had passed him, but from his own body and, with his head down on his chest he caught the acrid stench of drying urine mingled with sodden clothes. His head recoiled from the smell and he fought to keep his bile down. He began to wretch, a sharp, dry wretch that ended before he actually vomited. He was dehydrated and the force of the empty retching left him on the verge of passing out again.

Anthony was a hard man. In the circles that he had moved he had been considered dangerous in the extreme. He was twenty-three. He had been raised by his Spanish born parents in a council owned tower community in the North East of England. Of course his records didn’t describe him as 'hard'. They showed that he was a criminally inclined serial offender with psychotic, sadomasochistic tendencies likely to re-offend despite all modern treatment. He joined his first street gang at the age of ten and by fourteen he was running it. He achieved the lofty position of 'Wirez' gang leader by dispatching his forerunner from behind with a weighted bat, leaving the boy to face a life with no movement in his left side and without the power of speech. The gang was famed in his home city of Newcastle for acquiring technology to order, laptops, audio equipment, chips, memory. He spent a number of years in and out of correction centres and detention homes. By the age of eighteen he had been e-tagged and bar-coded. He was confined to a low security compound in Sunderland. The tagging meant that he could not step outside the designated boundaries without alerting one of the authorities. He killed a fellow detainee during his third week in the compound. Cameras later revealed him talking to his victim in a heated way. The inmate had been found with a crushed skull and had been so badly beaten around the face that his e-tag was the only sure way of positive identification. The inquiry that followed revealed that Anthony had killed the man by head butting him over sixty times. The man’s e-tag revealed that he was dead after the second blow. Following the trial Anthony was given a life sentence with hormonal therapy. He was held in an ‘allegedly’ secure wing of a low security compound in Edinburgh due to overcrowding in the more suitable maximum-security correction rigs along the North East coast. He escaped within three weeks and never registered on the governmental tracking equipment again. He had made enough contacts over the years to know how to confuse a simple e-tag and his barcode was rendered useless with the aid of a cannibalised CD-writer and a soldering iron. He made his way from Edinburgh back to Newcastle where he called in a few favours from the ‘Wirez’. They secured a new ID chip for him and supplied him with a hand full of e-cash-cards from a number of sources. He had hoped that he could remain in the Northeast and continue his old life style in the crowded blocks and estates but it soon became evident that the authorities were looking for him. He was ‘hard’ but not stupid. He knew that the next time they would find room for him in a rig somewhere and there were always the rumours about the lobotomies. He decided to cut and run and headed for Manchester.

The light blinked out. Someone was standing in front of him. Over the sour urine he caught the delicate edge of perfume. It felt wrong to him to be in so much agony and yet be able to smell such a fine aroma more suitable to a bedroom in an expensive hotel. He felt the nausea building again but before it could launch into another chest wracking surge, he felt the touch of cool damp cloth on his lips. He instinctively withdrew but quickly felt the touch again. Someone, the sweet smelling one, was patting a cloth gently around his mouth, up around his face and on to his aching eyes. He felt cool water drip from the flannel-soft material and start to soothe his eyes. Next came a straw pushed against his lips. He sucked gently at it and felt ice cold juice flood into his mouth setting off his saliva glands and taste buds in one great surge of sensations. He dribbled a small amount that stung the open sores on his face. He felt the heat from the person's body next to him, and then it was gone. The room was now empty or at least it felt empty. He tried to open his eyes, and with the bright light gone he began to make out some detail in his surroundings. He seemed to be in a large room witch was illuminated by a single light bar suspended from a cable in the ceiling. He found that he still could not focus well so he inclined his head forward and squeezed his eyes again as if trying to banish the last traces of the drops that had done the initial damage. The water from the flannel had helped. He looked up slowly opening his lids as if expecting the return of the piercing light. It didn’t come. He slowly brought his eyes into focus on a figure sitting directly in front of him. It stared back. The man, he thought, appeared to be sitting in a chrome framed chair with his hands behind his back. His head was shaven and through streaks of dark blood he could see gaunt, white flesh around bulging, black rimmed eyes. He was wearing a dark green tee shirt that was made even darker from the patches of glistening blood that had seeped through to soak the front. The man wore black trousers, again, dark and shiny with patches of blood which trickled down his lower legs and onto his bear feet. With mild alarm Anthony grasped the reality of the situation. A mirror, free standing and edged in the same chrome as the chair had been placed two meters in front of him. He snapped his eyes shut again, preferring to see nothing rather than having to face this grotesque caricature of himself. When he re-opened his eyes he half expected there to be someone in the room with him other than his reflected self. He was alone. He glanced left and right to check. He was the only person in the room. To his right was a three-meter wide window with black vertical blinds drawn open. Through the darkened glass Anthony could see dark, towering silhouettes which could only be tower block. Rain pelted the glass in absolute silence. Although the reinforced window allowed no sound in he could imagine what kind of weather conditions could drive rain in at right angles to strike the dark glass in such a way. It was a full-blown storm with `B` movie lightning. He smiled. It hurt as his lip split with the effort. He looked back at his sorry reflection. Standing between himself and his alter ego was a tall chrome lamp. It was made up of two long, highly reflective lengths of chrome pole, the top of which ended in a rind of coloured glass tubing. Anthony new that this was the lamp that had provided the intense light that had seared his retinas and, even now, had left him seeing flashing shapes at the periphery of his vision. He knew things looked bad for him on the whole but he would give anything not to have the light ring in his face again. He looked around. There was a five seat, cream leather couch underneath the wide window. The floor seemed to be made of some kind of synthetic wood with a very high gloss finish. There was very little decoration in the room and the walls were devoid of any coverings other than a thin coat of sepia paint. The walls had never been decorated and in places showed deep fractures in the plaster where the building had settled over the years. He was in a large tower block, he could tell from the cracks, remembering when he was very young watching his parents redecorate their tired little one bedroom flat. So, if he was in a tower, where was it? Was he still in town? Was he in Salford or the Circle? He dropped his head again. He could be anywhere. He didn't even know how long he had been under. He lifted his head and looked to the left. Light was coming from a doorway at the end of the wall. The sweet smelling one was in there. Was she good looking? Was she in fact a he? Could he somehow talk his way out of this mess like he had done so many times in the past? What he saw then, lying on the floor next to the illuminated doorway made him realise that he wouldn't be talking his way out. Resting against the wall on the fake wooden floor was a thick roll of black plastic. Two strips, each a meter wide had been cut from the main roll and lay spread out on the floor like glistening black rugs. Next to the roll was an aluminium, reinforced case lying open on its side. The case interior was constructed out of moulded foam with a number or indents cut in to match the shape of various implements. The implements were all in place and were clearly surgical in nature. Anthony felt the resurgence of his bile and fought to hold it back. All too often he had been on the other side of a situation like this and he knew all too well what those implements were capable of in the right hands.

He could hear voices coming from the doorway. He could pick out a high pitched voice which seemed to be doing most of the talking. This voice was joined occasionally by a deep growling voice and a dull baritone. The high pitched, monotone voice was reeling off garbled instructions that were answered by the other voices when it paused. So, three, maybe four. In a fair fight with limited weapons Anthony would be confident of winning irrespective of the size of the voices owners. The big problem being that he was tied to a chair and drugged. Why had they taken so much care with him, the drink, and the flannel? Why was he even alive? It felt bad.

 

The first few months in Manchester had been hard. He had secured a dingy bedsit on the outskirts of the city. He had enough money in stolen e-cards to enable himself to get established with some work. He had spent time hanging around after nightclubs and deliberately picking fights in full view of the door staff. After several severe beatings, which he didn't altogether mind, he was hauled into the back entrance of a large club built on the top level of a multi-story car park. He was beaten senseless with what he remembered as short steel rods wielded by muscle-bound black suited doormen. When he came too, he was restrained much in the same manner as he found himself today, bound, gagged and bleeding heavily from numerous wounds. Someone had questioned him from a different room using a PA system. He was hired later that day after being given medical attention and a bed to rest in. Within six months he was head doorman controlling ten other bouncers and operating a protection racket that covered a good-sized area of West Manchester.

He never met the person who hired him. He was highly rated and feared by most of the local operators, his reputation spread. His sadomasochistic tendencies coupled with his eagerness to carry out most of the beatings and occasional execution himself had earned him respect from all quarters. He began to build a name for himself that the people around him seemed to admire and encourage. He was soon asked to control another area of the business that brought him away from the clubs and business premises and back to a line of work that he had grown up with. He began to control the movement of silicon, which, in recent years had proved increasingly more profitable, and now way outstripped the return that was available from substance traffic. He oversaw chip deals that yielded profits in the millions. Every one, in every any walk of life, needed more and more processing power whether it be for improving their domestic systems or increasing the performance of their vehicles. There was talk of Silicon being replaced, but that had been mooted for decades. Sure, the industry giants had the technology to replace Silicon but not at a price that the world could use. Silicon was every where, in everything, it ran everything and had done so since the beginning of the new Century. Chips and memory were still high profit, and profit was all that mattered in his business, profit meant power.

That had been his life now for the last two years. He had moved into new premises in a new private estate to the South of the city near the airport. He had money, enough to allow him to let others do the more disagreeable jobs. He had landed himself in this current predicament by carrying out a run of the mill job picking up a consignment. The exchange had gone badly wrong. The suppliers were a rival group of operators from the North. His violent nature had lead to him to shoot one of the couriers in the face after the man had handed over the merchandise. He then shot the second man in the leg, aiming deliberately low, so that he could have some fun with his blade. As he was working his favourite craft on the prone man's face, he had felt a sharp pain in his left leg. The dying man had a retracted blade hidden in his sleeve, the glass point must have been coated with a fast acting nerve agent which acted on his system upon contact. He remembered losing consciousness and slumping forward over the bloodied, grinning face with the unusually wide, scalpel enhanced grin. 

 

And now he was here. But he didn't know where here was.

 

A man and a woman entered the room from the doorway. They both had steaming drinks in their hands and had the relaxed demeanour of two friends enjoying a coffee morning. Another man who looked far from relaxed followed them in. The first man could have been from the same mould as Anthony, broad muscular chest, powerful well trained arms. He was wearing a long black leather coat that still had the signs of having been out in the horrendous weather. He moved away from the women across the room sipping gently at the warm drink that was cupped in his large hands. He didn't even register that Anthony was looking at him.

The second man, however, was staring at him with an intensity that could only born out of hatred. He stood in front of Anthony, bent slightly forward, placing his hand on his knees. He too, was wearing a wet leather coat. He looked familiar. Had Anthony worked with him? Was he a dealer or courier? Yes. A courier? Anthony's expression betrayed him.

"Well Tony. I see that you recognise my face." He scowled as he said the words, bearing his clean white teeth. The word `Tony` was pronounced with a heavy Italian/American overtone that young thugs of the day found fashionable. It did not sit well with the man's drawling Mancunian accent. "But, there are no scars there, are there Tony?"

As Anthony stared into the man's eyes he began to piece things together, fragments of his recent memory. The reason Anthony felt that he knew the face so well was that it had been the last face that he had seen before passing out. The only difference being that this face wasn't contorted in pain or covered in bright blood from recently opened blade gashes. And this one still had ears! He couldn't have survived? Just before he had been stabbed Anthony distinctly remembered piercing his victims jugular, a small nick admittedly, one designed to give a fine spay effect that Anthony always liked to watch. And how could he have had his face reconstructed in such a short space of time?

"Remember my features do you? Remember the cuts that you made, do you?" The man's face was inches away from Anthony's. He could easily snap forward and take his nose off with one bite, but with the others in the room he didn't think that it would help things along. He was conscious of the man's aftershave that was mingled with the smell of his own drying urine. He had worn the same lotion himself, expensive, French he thought.

"You killed my brother last night. You killed his driver, then you shot him. And then you carved him." The man was emotionally charged, and, Anthony reasoned, the biggest threat to him in the room. Anthony knew he was finished. Why else had he been kept alive if not for a brothers revenge. Strangely, he began to relax. Somehow had had always known that this would happen. Maybe not in these circumstances and maybe not in some obscure tower in the middle of a thunder storm, but he knew. He smiled.

The man stepped back and turned his face to the small framed female, his frown deepening. It was as if he expected her to tell him why this manic was smiling.

She was older than Anthony had first thought, perhaps in her fifties. She had the well shaped, muscular figure of a twenty five year old and her years were only betrayed by the lines that tracked their way across her neck and face. She was wearing a calm smile that reinforced the lines of age. She was attired in a one-piece dress made of dark red material. It covered her from below the knee to half way up her neck and back down to her wrists. Her pure white hair was scraped back across her head and tied at the back. She looked at the frowning man in front of Anthony and with a nod of her head indicated that he should back away. He moved back to stand next to the mirror. Anthony didn't need to be told what relationship they were to each other. She had the female equivalent of the chiselled features that belonged to both the man in front of him and to the man that he had toyed with in the car park.

"Yes. That's right." The women had seen the recognition pass across Anthony's face. "You are a bright boy. I am their mother." She spoke in soft tones and remained completely calm. "Last night you took away the life of my youngest. Now, you could be beginning to think that you are here for me to get revenge for his murder. You would be wrong. If it were revenge it may lead to an ongoing, tit for tat feud that might eventually lead to the breakdown of the two most respected establishments in Manchester gangland history." As she talked she began to walk around him in an anticlockwise direction, her arms clasped behind her back. As she passed him, Anthony could see subtle trace lines of surgery at the side of her head, her youthful figure and looks had been purchased, and the quality of workmanship spoke of wealth. Never mind fifty, this passive creature could be sixty plus.

"I don't believe in revenge. Revenge is a state of mind that if not treated early enough, can lead to a person being eaten way from the inside. It can lead to years of emotional turmoil while the individual tries to come to terms with getting even." She passed his right shoulder and made her way to the window. She stood next to the man who had entered the room first. She folded her arms across her chest. The man had said nothing and been looking out of the window the whole time. Anthony thought he might be a driver.

"I have operated in this business for forty years now and have lost a number of people who were dear to me. I will survive. You however, will not. As much as I do not subscribe to revenge I do not subscribe to allowing bad apples to stay in the bowl." She moved back to stand in front of him.

"The gentleman in the window works for your employer.  He is here as a witness to ensure that things are carried out in a manner that is acceptable to both parties." The man turned his head towards Anthony and nodded a greeting. He placed his empty mug down on the floor and reached inside the dark black coat. He pulled out what looked like a thin black leather wallet. He took it in both hands and opened it out then with his right hand he presented it to Anthony.

"Evening Tony. Lanson. Edward Lanson, Salford CID. Heard a lot about you."

Anthony felt his world begin to melt.

"As I said, he is here on behalf of your employer, who, incidentally as well as being my biggest rival in the industry is also my brother-in-law."

Anthony was confused. If the guy in the window worked for the same people as himself, why wasn't he doing anything. Why was he not helping to free him? 

"Both myself and your employer work to what is called an unwritten code. We follow certain rules and regulations that exist to help maintain the balance. You, my miss-guided friend, no longer abide by those rules. We have decided that the only course of action is to remove you."

Anthony knew it was useless now. He had fallen victim to his own depravity. Through his drugged haze he began to realise what had happened to him and in all honesty he wasn't surprised. He looked across the room at the man standing in front of the wind swept window. He said nothing. He looked past the man, out into the dark. He could make out the lights of vehicles passing along the high rise roads that pushed between the blocks heading into the City. He had learned to love the rain since moving to Manchester.

"Oh, I forgot to mention." It was the women. She was turning towards the doorway through which she had so recently entered.

"I don't like to be involved with revenge killings. But Mark does!" she smiled at her only remaining Son as she left the room.

Anthony died after the third stud from Mark's pistol entered his chest. He quite enjoyed the view in the mirror as the first two studs passed through each of his legs.