A good man…

A good man…

 Scully was an eighteen carrot prize bastard, no other way to describe him, least-ways not in polite company; a miserable little weasel with a fondness for preying on the teenage waifs and strays coming to London for whatever reasons – escaping abusive homes, lure of the bright lights, promises of fame and fortune – the reasons as innumerable as those arriving. Pimp, drug dealer, predator, Scully had been all of these and more…

 The man’s neck snapped like a twig underfoot. His body fell limp into the waiting arms of Hatchet Ron, ready for disposal. It was all in a night’s work for Old Hatchet, real name Ronald Hatch, not that it was wise for anyone to call him ‘Old’.

 This had been a rush job. Normally he would have charged a hefty bonus for the added urgency, but after a little digging into the weasel’s life, he’d willingly foregone the extra.

 Hatchet Ron thought back to the previous week when he first met the old man. A ‘friend of a friend’ as it were had sorted the details. The old man’s grand-daughter had died six months earlier…

 “It’s just not right, out-living your own kids, and then ya grandkids too…” He remembered the old man saying between the coughs and splutters. He’d be dead soon, was his first thought. He knew death well – the look, its smell. The old man should have been dead already but there remained one last thing that needed doing, one more person he needed to out-live.

 Two years earlier, Maria, the old man’s grand-daughter, had fell in with a “thoroughly bad lot,” as he had put it, “run off with some conman who had promised her the world…the things he’d made her do…you wouldn’t believe…” But he did believe; it was a tale Hatchet Ron had heard all too often to be shocked or moved to sentimentality by. Despite the horrific details, Hatchet Ron’s face had betrayed no emotion or reaction to the old man’s account of his grand-daughter’s suffering. He’d wanted to console the old man, place a hand on his shoulder or something, reassure him that her suffering wouldn’t go unpunished. He didn’t though; there was another witness to the tale, the ‘friend of a friend’ who had made the introductions – Hatchet Ron was a paid cold-blooded killer, he had a reputation to maintain, and sentimentality wasn’t a part of it. Not even the old man’s parting words that he only had a few weeks to live, hence the urgency of the job, had visibly stirred him.

 “I understand. It’ll be done by the end of the week,” he’d told the old man.

 “Thank you; you’re a good man.. I wish I could pay you more…”

 “No. It’s a simple enough job, this is more than enough to cover it.”

 The old man had tears in his eyes as the ‘friend of a friend’ discreetly passed Hatchet Ron the thick brown envelope, not just of sadness of the circumstances, but gratitude too for the knowledge that his grand-daughter’s tormentor would soon be dead. He had no way of course of enforcing the contract but something about the manner and voice of this, to him, nameless man told him that this was a man of his word…

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The old man’s face lit up at the arrival of the following week’s edition of the Dalston Chronicle. The headline read…

 Brutal death of local drug dealer

 It went on to catalogue a list of horrific injuries that local drug dealer ‘Sculley’ Mitchell had suffered prior to the final one, a broken neck that had ended his life. He knew of course that the newspaper account was a heavily abridged version; the photographs Hatchet Ron had provided him with had shocked him, but he had no regrets, it was nothing more than the scum had deserved, it had been worth his twenty thousand pounds life savings… Harry Simpkins died the following day clutching the photos with a smile on his face…

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 Hatchet Ron had so wanted to tell the old man that his grand-daughter Maria had had a son a few months before her death. Hatchet Ron had known this before accepting the job. The boy had been placed into foster care and then adopted by a very nice couple in the country. But that would have created a dilemma for the old man – to pay for the vengeance and justice Maria deserved and die knowing that Scully would go on living, or provide an inheritance for the boy? The old man was a decent sort, he would rather have lived his final weeks with the misery of injustice just so long as he could do something for the boy. And Hatchet Ron would not have got his fee. He couldn’t let-on, he had his reputation to maintain. Even the hardest and most vicious of his peers were a little taken aback at the coldness of his decision not to give the old man the choice, and to think the old man had called him a good man

 ********************

 A little over twenty years later, little Todd Simpkins came of age. He’d grown into a fine young man, having inherited all the kindness and generosity of the great grand-father he never knew, so who could begrudge him the previously unknown trust that had been set up for him twenty years earlier, twenty thousand pounds that had since grown to nearly a hundred thousand pounds….

 ********************

 Hatchet Ron sat listening to the frail old woman as she recounted the story of the thugs who had stolen and brutally tortured and killed her only companions, her beloved two cats. She wasn’t the least bit upset at parting with Hatchet Ron’s sizeable fee, knowing that the thugs would be brought to justice.

 Hatchet Ron had been moved by the plight of the local animal shelter that desperately needed funds to remain open and had been wondering how he might find the cash to make a donation…