The meanest Flood

end. Ruben stayed in the lane, slowed his speed a little, gave the guy the finger. The driver of the Jag waited for a gap in the traffic and overtook him on the inside. Ruben gritted his teeth and took off after him, pumping the Skoda for everything it could give. No contest. The Jag pulled ahead with ease and when they came to the junction with the M18 Ruben turned off and let it go- He wasn’t here to play around with guys in fast cars.
    On the A1 he pulled into a Little Chef and got himself a cup of coffee and a full breakfast with extra bacon. For a moment there he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. There’d been a tuna sandwich in the police station the previous day, a couple of biscuits in the saucer every time they gave him a cup of tea.
    He sat back .for a time when he’d finished eating, thought about his world. He should keep the milk-round going. It got him out of bed in the mornings and provided readies. He didn’t want to go back on benefits, the hassle of all that. And after he’d finished work there was still a good chunk of the day left for him to track down the bastard who’d wasted Kitty.
    He’d have lost some of his customers already. You can’t leave people for two days without milk before they start looking for another supplier. But there were plenty of them who’d sign up again if he delivered tomorrow. There were a lot of them owed him money anyway, women who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. That was economics. It wasn’t so much to do with supply and demand like they taught you on the small business startup course. The real key to economics was market share, getting rid of the competition, buying them out or making it so difficult for them that they threw in the towel. When Ruben had started the milk-round he was going to take over the world, corner the market, become king of milk distribution, maybe expand horizontally into Production. Corner that market as well.
    Kitty never understood that. She was a woman. For her the world was about sharing and fair-play, even arguing that he should give milk away if his customers had children and couldn’t afford to pay. That was another reason Ruben liked her so much, because she had compassion and thought that everyone should have humanitarian principles, even the government. Ruben ‘ had never given milk away but he could see it as a possibility. Something to work towards. Once he got the market share, he argued, then he’d be in a position to be generous.
    Something else nagging away at the back of his brain. If he didn’t have a job at all he’d start brooding and before he knew what was happening he’d be knocking back too much drink, end up taking it all out on some schmuck down the boozer. On one level that would work for him, like it always had in the past. You ignore the real crap that is fucking up your life and find someone you can slap around, maybe break a few bones. Therapy. You end up back in the can and blame the system for being unfair, blame your folks for not giving you a good start in life.
    But if he did that now, whoever had killed Kitty would go free. Ruben had never come across justice. When the word came up in conversation there was a part of him that wanted to laugh. Justice? What’s that?
    Only now there was a chance for justice, because it wasn’t going to be meted out by the cops or the courts, it was going to be administered by Ruben Parkins. In fact Ruben was justice. He was the thing itself, the concept, and he was also its executor.
    Justice should be about justness. Making sure that everyone got what they deserved. The world didn’t understand that. They only understood the statue, that goddess with her scales and her sword. But the scales and the sword weren’t reality, or they hadn’t been up to now. With Ruben in charge the scales would weigh out how much Kitty’s life was worth and the sword would chop mercilessly into the flesh of the man who’d sent her to her maker. Ruben would be just, impartial, he would ensure that everyone received their due.
    He paid for his breakfast and got back behind the wheel of the Skoda. At junction 45 he left the motorway and followed the signs to York, watching his speed on the A64. He pulled into the park-and-ride centre on the outskirts of town and took a bus into the city. Had a seat behind a couple of German tourists wrapped in waterproof clothing. In the seat opposite was a woman who looked like Kitty might have looked when she was