Thorn In My Side

SHEILA
QUIGLEY

Burgess
Books

First published
in 2010 by Burgess Books

Copyright ©
Sheila Quigley 2010

All rights
reserved

Smashwords
Edition

The moral
rights of the author have been asserted.

No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means
without written permission from the copyright holder, except by a
reviewer who may quote brief passages in connection with a review
for insertion in a newspaper, magazine, website or broadcast.

British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library

Cover design
by

Printed and
bound in Great Britain by

For Heather
Cawte, one of the best editors in the business, and for Aarron
Forrest – thanks for the hands.

For Michael
Quigley

FRANCE 2007

'Non.'

One word of
defiance. Spoken quietly but with an unbreakable finality. The
French word for 'no' winged around the room, bounced off the walls
and echoed in the heads of those gathered there. A thick, cloying
silence descended as fear took hold of their hearts and quickly
spread.

Every face
turned to the front.

The man known
simply as The Leader stared at the youth. His face flushed from red
to purple with anger. He turned to those gathered there. 'Get out,'
he yelled. He spun back round to the youth. 'Not you.' He put up
his hand to stop the young man from leaving. Behind him the room
emptied.

Knowing he’d
said the wrong thing, the youth froze, his heart pounding in his
chest. But what had been asked of him was impossible.

Two others
stayed behind, both of them over six foot with steroid- hyped
bodies rippling with each movement. One, of obvious Chinese
descent, smiled a predator smile, while the Caucasian’s face showed
no emotion at all. He stared in front of him like a well-bred
fighting machine awaiting instructions.

'You dare to
defy me?' The Leader, tall, thin, with long flowing black hair,
asked with more than a touch of amazement in his voice.

Quivering, the
youth hung his head, not daring to answer. The Leader snatched a
bamboo stick off the table and poked the silent youth hard in his
stomach, punctuating each word with a vicious thrust. 'You will do
as I say… Answer me.'

Sticking to his
native tongue, the youth muttered quietly but stubbornly,
'Absolument pas.'

'You dare to
tell me “absolutely not'? You dare to say those words to me?' He
had spoken quietly, amazed that this skinny, stupid, ugly peasant
had the nerve to defy him.

His next words
though, spoken to the two heavies, were loud and very clear. 'A
lesson needs to be taught here, so that others may not catch the
fever he so obviously possesses.'

He glowered
once more at the youth before striding to the corner of the room,
where he stood with his hands clenched in front of him, his eyes
unblinking and a sarcastic curve on his mouth.

The Caucasian
guard grabbed the youth from behind. Quickly he stripped him, his
thin cotton shift like so much tissue paper in the huge guard’s
hands. A moment later he hauled him naked to the centre of the
room. The captive, beyond terror, had barely struggled. His will
sapped, knowing his fate, he gave up. Not even a sob escaped from
his dry lips.

His wrists were
tied above his head to a large thick wooden pole, where a metal
ring had been fitted for this purpose. Then the Chinese guard tied
his feet to another set of metal loops concreted in to the floor.
His face pressed tight against the wood, splinters already digging
into his cheek and drawing tiny spots of blood, the trembling youth
did not see the huge wooden-handled whip the Chinese guard had
taken from a cupboard, set flush in the wall at the right-hand side
of the room.

He felt the
first lash though, felt his flesh being ripped from his body in
nine different places, and screamed for mercy.

His tormenter
looked across at The Leader. He was the only one who could give
clemency, the guards would only do what he told them. The youth’s
pleas fell on deaf ears.

Leaving the
wall, his hands still positioned in front of him, The Leader moved
up to the wooden post, circling it once, sniffing at the youth’s
ravaged back, before suddenly grabbing the youth by his scalp and
savagely yanking his head back. His face close to the captive he
said, 'No one defies me, peasant boy. You are a cancer that I will
eliminate.'

Slowly he shook
his head at the guard. 'Finish it.'

The second
lash, criss-crossing the first, brought more agonising screams as
blood ran down the young man’s back and legs before pooling on the
floor.

Thirty-eight
times he was lashed, with a whip that had nine tails. Each time the
whip landed, the tips found an unspoiled piece of flesh.

It took the
youth two days to die. During his time of dying he had hours to
reflect on the reason why he was here. His biggest regret was the
pain his mother and the rest of his family would go through when
she found out what had happened to him. Every minute of the
forty-eight hours was taken up with prayer, prayer that begged God
for her not to see his body.

LONDON
2008

It was the
wrong side of midnight, the wrong city, and Detective Inspector
Mike Yorke was pissed off. Bad idea to leave the car at home this
morning
,
he thought, as his feet swam in a pair of shoes he
would have sworn were a good fit this morning. His dark hair was
plastered to his head and hanging over his eyes. He pushed it off
his forehead so he could see where he was.

'Yeah, right
street,' he muttered.

Mike had been
in London for a few months now and still he mixed the back streets
up, they all looked the same to him. He quickened his pace and
could hear his feet squelching in his shoes
.
Shit!
Eighty-five bloody quid down the drain
.
He reached the steps
to his flat. He was halfway up when he raised his head and saw the
bundle of rags lying at his door.

'What
the…?'

Angry that
someone had dumped the rags on his doorstep he reached them and
lashed out with a hard kick. A moment later he cringed when his
foot was met with a solid resistance. With a bad feeling in his gut
he bent over and quickly yanked at a damp moth- eaten blanket,
dragging it down to the next step.

The security
lamp, lazy since the day it had been installed, finally decided it
was time to go to work, exposing not a bundle of rags as Mike had
first thought, but the body of a child. And the dampness on the
blanket was not just rain. It was blood, blood that was still
flowing from the large gaping slashes in the kid’s wrists.

'Jesus Christ!'
Shocked, Mike jumped back. Whipping his phone out he dialled for an
ambulance. Phone still in his hand, he opened the door and stepped
over the kid. Inside he took the stairs three at a time. Reaching
the airing cupboard, he shoved the phone into his pocket, grabbed a
sheet and a blanket, and hurried back outside.

He placed the
kid in the recovery position, tore the sheet into strips, and
quickly wrapped them round the bleeding wrists, noticing how deep
the cuts were. He recoiled for a moment when he saw just how many
healed scars were already on the thin arms, each vicious groove an
obvious attempt at death.

To preserve
what little body heat the kid had left, Mike covered him with the
blanket, and got as close as he could by lying down next to him.
Resting his left arm over the boy, he snuggled in as tight as he
could, the bitter cold stone steps digging into his side.

Is it a
him
?
Mike wondered.

Leaning over,
he studied the pale face, then winced when he saw the deep slash
marks on each corner of the kid’s lips, marks that created a
permanent false smile, a heinous parody of a circus clown.

'Jesus!'
Overwhelmed with pity, Mike shook his head. The scars looked fully
healed and had obviously been there for some time. Why the hell
would a kid do this to himself
?
He sighed, unable to tear
his eyes from the terrible ruin of the kid's face.

He heard the
sound of an ambulance in the distance and prayed it was the one
he’d called for. Sirens were two a penny in London. It made Durham
where he lived and Newcastle, where he worked seem pretty quiet in
contrast. A friend who had lived here for ten years had told him
that soon he would be able to block them out. He figured he was
getting there, but tonight there would be no chance of sleep until
he found out the story behind this poor kid.

Gently he
covered the boy’s head with the blanket. It was a boy, he was
convinced of that, although how old is the poor little sod? He
shook his head. Rough guess, he could be anywhere from ten
to
fourteen, fifteen at a push.

A few minutes
later the ambulance lit the street up with its flashing lights.
'Thank God,' Mike muttered, as he put his cheek next to the boy’s
lips. For a moment Mike’s heart sank. There was nothing. With an
overwhelming sadness, he was about to pull away when he felt a
gentle caress of air against his skin. Heaving a sigh of relief he
rocked back on his heels, convinced he’d done everything he could
for this poor forgotten piece of humanity.

The ambulance
pulled in close to them, and quickly the paramedics got the boy
into it. While they worked on him, Mike took the opportunity to get
out of his sodden clothes and changed into a pair of black jeans
and a white T-shirt. Dumping the dead suede shoes into the bin as
he passed, he went to the cupboard and found a pair of
trainers.

'Amazing!' he
muttered. He’d searched for the same elusive pair for over a week
with no success. Shaking his head, he grabbed his car keys and
hurried outside.

Running to the
ambulance, he was about to hop on board when he spotted his
neighbour from the flat below among the small crowd that had
gathered, all of them wondering what had gone on in this quiet
little back street where nothing ever happened. Where you bump into
a neighbour after a couple of years and wonder when he got those
lines on his face.

'Catch you
tomorrow,' Mike said to the tall, bald man. He had moved into the
basement flat the week after Mike had taken up residence. Keith
Stotter was a friendly American from Atlanta. They had shared a few
pints at the local pub and often put the world to rights when
walking Keith’s dog.

'OK,' Stotter
said, as he gave a small wave.

They arrived at
the hospital with the sirens full on. Quickly the boy was taken out
of the ambulance and rushed into Casualty. Watching the trolley
being pushed away, Mike looked up and noticed the ward sister
staring sadly at the kid. She lifted her head and Mike caught her
eye.

Walking over,
he introduced himself, explained he was the one who had found the
boy, and said, 'You seem to know him?'

She sighed,
then smiled sadly, her chubby cheeks dimpling. The smile stopped
short of her blue eyes just before it faded. 'Yes, I know him, just
about everyone in here knows Smiler… Would you like a coffee?'

'No thanks.'
Mike said. Coffee wired him up to the ceiling, and by the time he
got home he would need some shuteye.

The sister
ushered him into her tiny office, offering him one of two seats,
then said over her shoulder as she headed back out the door, 'Won’t
be a mo.'

Mike looked
around the small space, the usual office paraphernalia scattered
around -- a pile of clip boards on the desk, an assortment of pens,
posters on the wall proclaiming to the world the perils of sharing
needles and unprotected sex.
Not that anyone seems to take
any
notice of them,
Mike was thinking, as the sister
came back in carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a cream bun
in the other.