Free The Damage (David Blake 2) by Howard Linskey Page B

slowly and in vivid Technicolor. I shoot Bobby in the head and every streak of blood splashes in slo-mo against the white walls behind him. Then I wake with such a start, I sit straight up in bed before I realise it’s a dream and the very first thing I see when I open my eyes is Bobby’s only daughter lying next to me, blissfully unaware that I am the man who pulled the trigger on the father she loved so dearly.
    But not this time. Today, when I wake from that dream, I am alone in a hotel bedroom and, for a moment, I’m so disoriented by jetlag that I don’t even know what part of the world I’m in. I look around me, then remember I’m in my hotel on the Quayside with a view that would overlook the Tyne river if I hadn’t drawn the curtains to blot out the afternoon light so I could get an hour’s rest.
    I stumbled groggily to the bathroom, ran the cold tap and caught water in my cupped hands. I brought it slowly up to my face and it had the desired effect. It jump-started me back to the present. I looked in the mirror at my pasty face, with its contrasting bloodshot eyes, and contemplated going back to bed for the whole afternoon but I resisted. I had things to do.

     
    My first call was to Susan Fitch. I told her my concerns regarding Toddy and his case.
    ‘I’m a lawyer, Mr Blake, not a miracle worker,’ was her considered response.
    ‘Should I remind you how much we paid your firm last year, Mrs Fitch?’ I asked.
    ‘And should I remind you that Martin Todd was caught with three kilos of heroin in his car, which makes him not just a dealer but a heavy-duty one? He will be damned lucky if I can get him out of a life sentence.’
    I had to admit she was right. It didn’t look good for Toddy. ‘Look, just do your absolute best for this guy, okay? Will you do that?’
    ‘Of course, but will you also do something for me?’
    ‘Name it.’
    ‘Stay away from Martin Todd. You can’t do anything to save him and we don’t want you appearing on his friends and family list right now. You may think my firm is expensive Mr Blake but this is one piece of advice I am giving you for free.’

8
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    I took a cab out to my brother’s house. Our young’un, as I always called him, had a new place. Until recently, my older brother had been content with my old apartment, which was a whole lot better than the one he had been living in before I employed him. Then, abruptly, he said he wanted somewhere bigger, with a garden. I just laughed at him. I couldn’t see it really; my big brother Danny tending his petunias. Anyway I took the piss out of him but I didn’t argue. It was his business what he spent his money on.
    He’d been in the new place a few weeks now and when I pulled up outside he was in the front garden cutting back the hedges with one of those big electric trimmers. He had his shirt off while he worked, revealing a tanned and muscular torso, covered with long-faded Parachute Regiment tattoos on his arms and back. On his chest he had the cap badge with a motto underneath; the Latin words ‘Utrinque Paratus’, which translates as ‘ready for anything’ and was as suitable a motto for our firm as any I could think of. On his back was a huge airborne forces emblem of Bellerophon atop a winged Pegasus wielding a spear to kill the Chimera. I knew fuck all about Greek mythology, but I knew that story. I could still remember the day Our young’un first showed me his new tattoo. He’d not been in the Paras long and was about to go off to the Falklands, a war that completely fucked him up for thirty years or so, before I finally got him straightened out. He came home pissed one night, woke me up and pulled off his shirt to show me the fresh new tattoo. I was only about seven and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t think I really understood what he had done. It felt like that bloody man with the spear somehow owned him after that. The tattoo had faded, but the childhood memory was