Beyond the Rage by Michael J. Malone Page B

been.

    Kenny felt a hot spike of jealousy score his gut. He realised that this was the wee boy of twelve who still lived at his core. The grown man felt a vague sense of happiness. He had a sister and perhaps a wee brother?

    …The thing is I have to stay away. Two reasons. One is my new wife has no idea of my past and it needs to stay that way or she’s gone and I can’t lose another family. The other is that your life may depend on it.

    Oh, come on tae fuck, thought Kenny. Somebody’s been watching too many TV soaps.

    …That probably sounds a bit too dramatic, but it’s true. It’s no secret that I was involved with some unsavoury types and one of them and me had a serious fight. Unfortunately, and I will take the guilt of this to my grave, people died. A mother and a son. It was a horrible accident but no one believed me. The family of the deceased told me that if I didn’t vanish then you would too. The threat was unmistakeable. My choice was to stay and you ’d be the one to suffer the consequences. Or run and you would live. This man was determined I would lose as much as he did.
    I’ve said enough. My difficulty here was to explain without telling you too much. I don’t want you to go looking for revenge. These are people that no one messes with. Let me repeat that – no one.
    I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at the very least think that I’m not all bad.

    Yeah, right, Kenny thought. He read over the last few paragraphs time and time again. He struggled to take the information in. His dad was responsible for people dying. He was a killer.
    The letter was signed simply.

    Dad.

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    The way he saw it, Kenny had two choices. When faced with news that involved a possible surfeit of emotion either he exercised until he dropped or he got pissed. He ’d already had his daily dose of the first and he couldn’t do the second on his own.
    He picked up his phone and dialled one of his contacts. A deep voice answered in a familiar manner.
    ‘What the fuck are you wanting?’
    ‘Detective Inspector Ray McBain, you are cordially invited to an afternoon of debauchery.’
    ‘If I knew what it was, I might be tempted.’
    ‘Booze and lots of it.’
    ‘I don’t know, Kenny.’ McBain’s tone grew serious and Kenny could hear him walking. ‘There’s stuff going on here.’
    ‘Delegate, m’man, and tell them you’ve an important suspect that needs to be waterboarded with whisky.’
    ‘That serious?’
    ‘Mmmm.’
    ‘Okay, consider me a willing debauchee.’
    ‘If that’s not a word,’ said Kenny, ‘it should be.’
    • • •
    People who have a wont to launder their falsely earned money quickly realise that few methods are more effective than washing their money through businesses that deal mostly in cash. When people buy a round of drinks they rarely do so with a credit card or a cheque. In the drinking business, cash is the ermine-cloaked asset and therefore the bar becomes a handy place to integrate your pennies.
    Kenny owned a number of pubs and cafés throughout the city and it was in one of these that he arranged to meet Ray McBain. He chose one that was in a quieter part of the city and one that was ‘owned’ by a faceless corporation. None of the employees knew he was the boss and he could visit without causing a stir.
    It was called The Blue Owl and was originally offered to the Glasgow punters as a bar where jazz and blues musicians could jam and congregate. The ‘owl’ part was presumably to denote the late-night nature of the venture. Which was a bit of a misnomer because it failed to get a licence to sell alcohol beyond midnight. The business never quite got off the ground; the musicians decided they were too hip to be seen this far from the city centre and the owner was forced to sell. The building remained a bar, but despite the best efforts of an array of eager landlords it wobbled from one cash-flow crisis to another. Until Kenny and his ‘company’ took