Free Raucous by Ben Paul Dunn

"But I do keep records.  A safety net against life-altering accidents.  Of which I hear too many.”
    "I do not need any accidents now.  The press and public are hounding people we know, and maybe do not like.  But they are connected to us in a way that is now causing great concern.  It is not the old days when certain tastes and certain behaviors were allowed to pass if you held enough sway."
    "I read the papers," The Turk said.  "I know what is happening.  But you haven't stopped nor slowed down.  The place hasn't changed.  The occasions stay the same.  The risk is higher.  But I am still involved, still helping.  I haven't run, and I haven't spoken."
    Sir Alex listened and nodded.  He calmed.  Turk relaxed.
    “As ineloquently as you have put that,” Chamberlain said. “It seems we are working together.  I do not like your insinuations of evidence and influence, however.”
    Sir Alex looked to the door then to the Turk.
    Sir Alex reached under the table and the Turk caught his breath, he moved back in his chair and Sir Alex smiled.  The click of a button and Parker walked into the room.  Parker’s right hand was under the left breast of his jacket.  The Turk stared at the bulge.   Sir Alex shook his head and Parker removed his hand. .
    “I’ll call you when I need you,” Sir Alex said.   Turk did not move.   Sir Alex stared at him hard.  “Off you go.”
    The Turk stood.  He pulled at the lapels of his damp jacket.  He nodded his goodbye to them both.  We walked confidently to the door and left.
    When the Turk had closed the door behind him, and they had listened to his footsteps recede down the stairs.  Sir Alex spoke.  “When we are safe, you are going to kill him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
    Jean felt the high, she soaked it in.  She had missed out on this too long.  Tonight needed to be fun.  She had ideas, desires.  Here she could be herself.
    Faces turned, people paused, a double-take or a head-shake to confirm or deny.
    Jean walked to the bar as people's mouths moved but noise was splashing together and clinging to the edges of a fast drill-like bass.
    The barman watched Jean lean forward on her forearms on the bar.  Jean lifted her right index finger and nodded toward a wood's navy rum bottle.  The barman was young, cool and desperately convinced of his irresistible charm. He had cultivated stubble and had lightly used hair wax, to go with his long-lashed eyes of clear blue and a knowing smile.  He touched the rum bottle and Jean nodded.  The barman mouthed, "Coke?" Jean nodded.  "Ice?"  Jean shook her head.
    The drink arrived, the barman didn't use bottle-spinning showboating, he placed the glass down on the Perspex bar, Jean noticed his forearm design of ever-decreasing black outlines of geometric stars. 
    Jean lifted her head to enquire about the price.  The barman held up his palms and looked down to his feet.  He walked off to flirt with two blonde female teenage drunks at the end of the bar.
    The first drink was free.
    Jean turned and lent back against the bar.  She watched the room, flashes illuminating, and darkness falling at supersonic interchanges.  People, it seemed, moved with jerking rhythm.  Some people's eyes were gone, big and wide, the pill-popping people whose night will be long and the same as they have always been.  There were drunks too, heading toward the slower side of the high, downing more and more in the hope of feeling the exciting high of the previous hour, but not realizing, after all these years, they were simply heading for oblivion.
    One woman, plastic, botoxed, but holding onto beauty by conforming to air-brushed images of untalented women ready to post photos of their flesh in exchange for notorious fame.  She was a lad-mag's idea of the ideal woman, a mask of make-up on a paralysed face, which sat above plastic enhanced breasts and a body trained thin through home gyms and not eating.
    The woman stared at Jean, turned away and