Free The Amateurs by John Niven

‘Ranta’ quickly modulated into a shrill scream as Ranta whipped the club back. Using his old swing, the full swing, Ranta smashed the metal driver into Charlie’s balls: like hitting a pair of soft-boiled eggs with a cricket bat. Charlie’s scrotum burst open, covering wee Davy and Frank with blood and viscera. Davy leapt up, wiping at his face as Charlie’s screams echoed off the bare walls. ‘Gads! Gads o’fuck! Fuck sake, boss!’
    Had this been necessary?
    Ranta had no extreme feelings about Charlie Douglas. He was just a daft boy who had tried to rip Ranta off. It was one of the dangers of running the kind of business where you entrusted large sums of cash and quantities of expensive narcotics to shady bams. However, Ranta understood the PR value of a certain type of violence. Wee Davy here, he’ll be in the pub tonight, he’ll have had a few pints and he’ll say to some fanny he’s trying to impress, ‘You’ll no believe whit the boss did tae this cunt the day…’ and the fanny will go off and repeat the story and after a few days it’ll be all round the whole bam community: Ranta Campbell battered Charlie Douglas’s baws aff wi’ a fucking gowf club.
    Some wouldn’t believe it, but enough would for the message to be writ large: NAE CUNT MESSES . It would help keep people in line for a while. You had to feed your rep every now and then. Even at Ranta’s age.
    ‘Right,’ Ranta said, tossing the bloody club to Alec, finding he had to raise his voice considerably to be heard over Charlie’s inhuman screaming, ‘come on, Alec. Ye can run me by the butcher’s. Ah’ve tae pick up some steak fur yer mother. We’ve got half the fucking toon coming fur their dinner the night…’ Charlie was rolling around on the floor, clutching at the ruins of his groin. He pulled his hand away and found to his horror that he was holding one of his own testicles, still attached to his body by some stringy tendrils that ran into the ragged wound where his scrotum had been. ‘Davy,’ Ranta continued over Charlie’s screams, ‘take whoever ye need and go and get Bobby Hamilton. Frank, for fuck sake do the boy a favour.’ Ranta nodded towards Charlie. ‘That’d burst yer heed so it wid.’
    Ranta turned and walked off towards the door, Alecfollowing him. Davy wiped blood from his face and watched his boss go, deeply impressed that he could be thinking about eating red meat right now.
    The Beast took his kit from the table–a black, plastic toolbox. He knelt beside Charlie and opened it to reveal a neatly arranged collection of stainless-steel knives, packed in custom-cut foam. He selected an eight-inch butcher’s knife and leaned in over the bloody, squawking Charlie. He ran a thumb up his ribcage, first rib, second rib, third rib: about the only thing Frank had learned in the paratroopers that he still used. He pressed the point of the knife between the third and fourth rib, just breaking the skin. Charlie tensed.
    ‘Maw…’ Charlie said, crying, clutching uselessly at his wet, bloody groin.
    ‘Yer maw’s no here, son,’ the Beast said pleasantly. ‘She’s away getting rode by a big fucking darkie.’ The last word pronounced in the full Ayrshire–‘dorr-kay’. As he said this he pushed the blade in and up, through Charlie’s heart. Charlie gasped, the expression on his face one of surprise more than pain, very much like someone who has plunged into an unexpectedly freezing sea.

11
    S UNNY S ATURDAY MORNING AS G ARY PULLED INTO THE car park, popped the boot open, and lifted out his clubs.
    Ravenscroft Golf Club (founded 1907) was a public course. Anyone was welcome to come along and play, but there was a membership of some two hundred golfers: full members who used the humble locker room (an extension to the original Edwardian building, built just after the Second World War, with cinder-block walls and chipped stone floors), who ate in the little dining room and who had access to the