Hater

the job was not far off finished. It was a cash-in-hand job on the side for Jackie, a friend of a friend of his girlfriend. He'd started digging out and laying the foundations first thing yesterday morning and now, Saturday lunchtime, he was two-thirds of the way through putting down the block paving. It was hard, physical work and he was on his own today after being let down by his brother who, for a few quid, usually helped him out with jobs like this. It was a cold day but at least it was dry now. It had been raining earlier and he'd started to wonder whether all the effort and the loss of his usual Saturday morning lie-in would be worth the wad of cash he was hoping to shove in his back pocket.
    The wheelbarrow was empty again. Tired and hungry he stood up and brushed the sand off his knees, ready to fetch another load of paving bricks. A couple more hours hard graft, he thought, and that would be everything but the edging stones done. He pushed the barrow over towards the half-empty pallet on the grass verge at the side of the road. His calculations had been just about spot-on, he smiled to himself. He'd quoted Jackie for two and a half pallets of bricks but it looked like the job was only going to need two. He'd shove the rest of the bricks in the back of the van and use them on the next job. It wasn't much of a saving but it all helped. It was all profit.
    He was half-way through filling the barrow when the motorbike pulled up beside him. It was a huge, powerful thing with a wide exhaust and an impossibly loud engine. He'd heard it approaching from the bottom of the hill. Must be Jackie's son, he thought. She'd said something about him coming over to see her this afternoon. He glanced up and nodded an acknowledgement to the rider as he parked his machine and rested it on the kickstand. The leather-clad figure flicked back his visor and took off his helmet.
    'All right, mate, how you getting on?' he asked. 'Mum said it was looking good.'
    'Almost done now,' Spencer replied, loading the last few bricks into the barrow and standing up straight. He stretched his back and looked across at the other man. 'Couple of hours and I should be finished. Just got to get the rest of these bricks down and finish off the edges. I think it's…'
    He stopped speaking and stared into Jackie's son's face.
    'What's the matter?'
    Spencer couldn't answer. He couldn't speak. He was filled with a sudden, indescribable sense of panic and fear. His heart thumping in his chest, he took a couple of nervous backwards steps towards the house and tripped up the lip of the bricks he'd already laid, landing on his backside. The other man walked towards him and held out his hand to help him up.
    'You feeling okay, mate? Want me to get you a drink of water or something?'
    Spencer recoiled. He scrambled back to his feet, grabbing a heavy lump hammer as he got up. He launched himself at Jackie's son and wrapped his left hand round his throat. Knocked off-balance the two men fell awkwardly to the ground, Jackie's son on his back with Spencer on top, pinning him down.
    Spencer lifted the lump hammer and brought over a kilogram of metal smashing down into the middle of the other man's face, caving in his forehead and the bridge of his nose and killing him almost instantly. He lifted the gore-covered hammer and bludgeoned what was left of his face another five times, leaving his head virtually concave, hollowed out like a deflated football.
    Spencer got up and stood breathless over the corpse before being thrown off balance again. Jackie, wailing like a banshee, ran from the front of the house and shoved him away from the body of her son. She screamed and dropped to the ground when she saw the hole in his head and the mass of splintered bone and pulped flesh where his face used to be. She looked up at Spencer but all she saw was the bloodied edge of the lump hammer as he swung it towards her.

6

    'We're going to be late,' Lizzie grumbles. I know we are, but there's not a lot I can do about it. If she'd given me more notice that we were supposed to be taking Edward to a friend's birthday party then we would have been fine. Half an hour to get the kids ready and out isn't enough. Part of me wishes she'd forgotten about it for another hour. I want Ed to have a good time and enjoy himself of course I do, but I'm not looking forward to spending the next couple of hours sitting in a kid-friendly and adult-unfriendly 'fun-barn' attached to the side of a pub.