A Decent Ride Read Online Free

what’s the hypocrite doing, playing the grieving son?
    And now The Poof has caught his eye and is heading across to him. Despite rarely dressing in anything other than expensive designer suits and button-down shirts, there is always something slightly soiled-looking about The Poof. It’s as if he’s slept all night in his clothes and just been disturbed into consciousness. This impression is reinforced by the fact that The Poof is almost blind, his permanently screwed-up mole eyes adding to his sleepy demeanour. For a man who sadistically enjoys violence, he is paradoxically squeamish about anything to do with his eyes. Laser surgery is no-go, and he even baulks at fiddling with contacts. The Poof is also prone to heavy perspiration, thus clothes quickly look grubby on him. He has driven Edinburgh’s (and some of London’s) finest tailors to despair; despite their best efforts, around four hours will see him go from spruce to loose. The Poof’s younger sidekick, his face all tight angles, is backed up against the brickwork pillar in the centre of the bar, drink in hand, slyly scanning the gathering’s few younger women.
    Terry turns back to The Poof. He recalls how everybody got called a ‘poof’ at Forrester High School in the seventies. Back then, only ‘wanker’ possibly rivalled it as the most common term of abuse. But The Poof was
the
Poof. Continuously bullied, rather than take the stock revenge route of joining the polis to get payback on the world, The Poof had gone against the grain and become gangster no. 1.
    Of course, Terry knows that The Poof, strictly speaking, isn’t homosexual, and that he is one of few folk who still refers to him by that old school moniker. This is dangerous, as The Poof has worked his way up through the ranks by being a wide, vicious bastard. However, in Terry’s consciousness, part of Victor Syme will always be the dippit wee cunt in the brown duffel coat, whom he regularly took a crusty roll and crisps off of from outside the baker van at school break.
    The game-changer for The Poof was his totally left-field attack with a sharpened screwdriver on Evan Barksdale. Barksdale was a bully: a twin who, along with his brother Craig, pursued a campaign of systematic, unremitting viciousness that pushed The Poof into the frenzied, psychotic bloodletting that instantly caused the world, and Victor Syme himself, to redefine his street status. Evan Barksdale, like a scheme Dr Frankenstein, had unwittingly created a monster substantially more dangerous than he, or his brother, could ever hope to be. Of course, The Poof had met with some pain and grief along his violence-strewn personal road to Damascus, but Barksdale’s persecution had schooled him well; everything else was insignificant compared to the psychic torture he’d already undergone.
    On The Poof’s approach, Terry feels his buttocks clench involuntarily. There’s going to be trouble. He has done some business with The Poof before, delivering cocaine to the sailors at the naval base in Helensburgh, before a security crackdown had burnt his fingers and made it too dangerous a market. — Terry . . . A familiar fetid cabbage-stalk breath assails him.
    — Sorry, Vic. On reflection, ah realise it wis in bad taste . . . the speech likes, Terry concedes, again checking out where The Poof’s young accomplice is situated.
    — Fuck that! It was brilliant! Some cunts huv nae sense ay humour. The Poof shakes his head. — Alec would be laughin his heid oaf. The day wis aboot him, no thaim, and he flashes a reprimanding sneer over at the grieving family.
    Terry is so relieved, he lets his defences fall, showing a greater receptiveness to The Poof’s subsequent pitch than would normally be the case. — Listen. Ah need a wee favour. I’m off tae Spain for a wee spell, two or three weeks, mibbe mair. The Poof drops his voice. — Between you n me, ah’m gittin a wee bit ay heat here. I need you tae keep an eye oan the sauna.