Good.
‘So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have some fun. Then you and your little friends are going swimming. With breeze-blocks chained to your ankles.’
Baldy McFatface grinned. ‘Terry’s got a fishing boat. And I’ve got this.’ He clutched a hand to his crotch and squeezed the contents. ‘Oooh, yeah.’ Rubbing himself through his trousers. ‘I know you lezzers are just gagging for a real man. Nice bit of cock to get you on the straight again.’
Wallace stood. ‘See? Told you we were going to have fun. Eric is on sloppy seconds, Richard’s on tacky thirds, and Terry’s on filthy fourths. Which means I get first dibs.’ He unzipped his trousers and pulled out his erection. Waved it in Steel’s face.
Eric — Baldy McFatface — whooped. Clapping his hands as Wallace got closer. ‘Go on, suck it you wrinkly old bitch. You know you want to. Suck it!’
Steel flinched her head away.
‘Hoy!’ Eric pulled out a six-inch hunting knife, serrated along one edge, gleaming sharp on the other. ‘Suck it or I’ll carve your frumpy lesbian bitch wife like a Sunday roast!’
Wallace gave his hips a twist, setting things swaying. ‘He’s not joking either. The mess Eric can make of a woman, it’s quite something. Your dignity’s not worth that, is it? Your pretty lesbo wife all slashed up?’
Tufty had another go. Shrink. And snap, LIKE — A — NINJA!
Straining.
Teeth gritted.
The muscles burning up and down his back...
Nope.
He collapsed again with nothing more than a creak to show for it.
Steel hung her head. Sniffed. Shuddered out a long breath. Then nodded and opened her mouth.
Wallace grinned. ‘There we go! I knew you were gagging for it.’ He took his cock in one hand, the other grabbing the back of her neck so she couldn’t retreat. ‘Now: here comes the aeroplane...’
Steel’s head flashed forward teeth snapping shut with an audible clack. Tearing from side to side.
Wallace staggered back a couple of paces, staring at her blood-drenched chin, then down at himself as more blood pulsed out. A high, sharp, whistling noise scraped its way out of his mouth, then the screaming started. He hit the rug like a sack of tatties, rolling around between the two sofas, clutching his groin, bright red pulsing out between his clenched fingers. ‘AAAAAAAAAAARGH! GOD, GOD, GOD, GOD!’
Steel spat the severed chunk out onto the rug at her feet. ‘Was it good for you, darling? Thought you liked it rough!’
Richard slid out the blade on his Stanley knife again and lunged for her.
Oh no you don’t!
Tufty snapped his foot forward, kicking it hard into the side of Richard’s knee. Making something inside go pop!
He crashed to the floor, just short of Steel, shrieking, clutching his freshly deformed leg. The Stanley knife skittering away under the piano.
Steel jerked her left boot up and stamped the heel down on his face. Once. Twice. Three times. Bones snapping and crackling under every blow.
Two down, two to go.
Wallace rolled and screamed. Legs kicking out as he curled up even tighter. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAARGH! JESUS, GOD, CHRIST, AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Painting the rug scarlet with his blood.
‘You’re dead, bitch!’ Eric shifted his grip on the hunting knife, making little figure of eights with the tip, snarling his way towards Steel. ‘Dead!’
Tufty raised his own foot, slamming it down and back into the leg of the chair he was tied to — the crack of battered wood muffled by Wallace’s screams. Again. The leg snapped and the chair collapsed sideways onto the rug, the whole frame creaking as it hit. He thumped forward and back against the ropes.
Ha: it was working! They were getting looser. Just take a second more and he’d be—
Oh crap.
Terry loomed above him, ruined teeth bared: bloody stumps and ragged gums. He took a little run up and slammed a kick into Tufty’s stomach. Flipping him and the chair over onto their backs.
A thousand burning spiders scuttled through his guts, burrowing, scorching. He wheezed in a broken-glass breath, fanning the flames.
Then Terry was squatting over him, knees on his chest, hands around his throat. Squeezing. ‘Think it’s funny slamming people’s heads in fridges, do you? Think it’s funny?’
Susan reared up behind him, holding one of those rusty old golf clubs. Blood ran down from the corner of her mouth, dripped off the end of her chin. ‘I am not frumpy!’ She smashed the club down on Terry’s head with a resounding thungggggg!
His eyes went crossed, then dim, then he pitched forward onto Tufty.
‘Mmmmnph!’ God, he weighed a ton! Tufty hauled a breath in through the gag. Struggled and wiggled... But the fat sod just lay there, pinning him to the carpet. ‘Mnnghfff mnngg mmn!’
But Susan didn’t. Instead she tore her own gag off and turned — squaring up to Eric and his six-inch hunting knife.
She took the club in both hands, feet planted shoulder-width apart, the club’s head resting against the rug. ‘HEY, NUMB NUTS!’
Steel’s eyes went wide. ‘SUSAN, NO! RUN!’
‘Think your wee golf stick’s going to save you and your friends? Nah.’ Eric grinned. Knife shining. Blade snaking back and forth through the air. ‘I’m going to slash your guts open, then I’m going to—’
‘FORE!’ Susan swung back and then forward, fast, twisting her hips into it, the golf club’s head whistling in a low flat arc and up, right between Eric’s legs — THUD — so hard it lifted him up onto his tiptoes.
Oooooooh...
That had to hurt!
Eric’s eyes bugged. Then he dropped the knife and toppled forward, squealing like a pig in a cement mixer. Tears streaming down his face. Mouth moving, but no words coming out.
Susan tossed her golf club on the couch and kicked him. ‘Great Hazlehead Ladies Challenge Cup winner three years in a row, motherfunker!’
Blue-and-white lights strobed out, turning everything into a flickering mess of silhouettes and reflections. Three patrol cars and four ambulances were parked outside Steel’s house, blocking the road, and every single window in the street was ablaze — a knot of people in expensive-looking casual clothes standing on the pavement to watch the show.
Logan pulled into the nearest parking space, two doors down. Stared through the windscreen.
Two stretcher trolleys were being wheeled out of the house, their occupants strapped-down motionless lumps wearing oxygen masks. Paramedics bustled them down the garden path, and into the back of the waiting ambulances.
OK, that wasn’t a good sign.
He clambered out of the Audi and plipped the locks. Hurried up the pavement as the lead ambulance pulled away. Closely followed by the second one. Sirens wailing in the darkness.
‘Excuse me...’ Logan squeezed his way through the clump of people, then flashed his warrant card at the uniformed officer keeping them there. ‘Are they still inside?’
‘Inspector McRae?’ The PC snapped to attention. ‘DI Vine’s SIO, the IB are processing the scene, DC Goodwin’s CSM, and DCI Rutherford’s ETA is twenty-two hundred hours. He’s at some sort of black-tie dinner. Sir.’
‘OK.’ Not really what he’d meant, but never mind.
Logan marched over to the front gate. Shrank back as another stretcher trolley was wheeled out onto the pavement. A fat bald man with tears streaming down his face and a patch of red seeping out through the fly of his trousers. Making high-pitched squealing sobs as he got shoved into the back of Ambulance Number Three. Another wail of sirens.