Death on the Driving Range. Brian Ball
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he yelled. “Just plough the poor sod back into his grave—you mean, just go on with levelling the Kop and shove him down a few feet under, like!”
That was exactly what Knight had meant.
“It could have been a few old bones from years back—it could have been an old dog or a few pigs they’d buried with swine-fever, for all you know, you bleeding Welsh git! Why couldn’t you just do what you’re paid for, not get me into a shit of a mess with the law! They’ve cordoned off the whole damned site, and I’m buggered if I’m keeping you on a minute longer! Just get off before I—”
That was when small, but thickset Owen Burroughs realised that seven years of labouring in the depot had just gone up in smoke. He’d signed up with Knight when he had come along to buy the ill-run business for peanuts. So far he’d shown acumen and kept the competent employees on. Owen went with the site. Now, he was out of it.
“Pick up your envelope in the morning,” Knight told him, quietly, but hard. “And don’t think of making waves. Ever. You got that?”
At a safe distance, Owen Burroughs yelled:
“You’re not right in the ’ead, you know that? You don’t act like—”
He stopped. There was no going back, not with such venom in the man. Out. Owen looked down at his wide, calloused hands. There was still strength in them. Maybe there was work Swansea way.
“Me, I’m gone!”
Listening at one of his many sounding boards, the steward smiled. The members and clientele, the paid help and the chance drop-ins: all their misfortunes nourished him, and more than made up for low pay and unending faux-subservience. And now that the coppers were involved, things were stewing nicely. Voices, low but young and passionate, vibrated around the old cupboard, long forgotten, never opened in half a century, where he accreted fragments of lives.
* * * *
Josie Marsden said it for both of them.
“I’m not in the mood any more, Gary. I hate all this kind of thing. That boss of his must be a real hard case. I heered too many of his kind on a rough night at the bar. Poor old bloke. Outed, just like that. My dad never got over being kicked out when the pits around here closed. Will I see you again?”
“Count on it.”
The day had closed in. So had the all-too-omnipresent echoes of fierce explosions, shrieks of pain and blackening blood as warm with insects. Gary Brand too wanted no more of violence and sudden death.
“I’m away,” he said. “Got to be.”
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