The meanest Flood

found a use for them. He turned on both taps and one by one emptied the bottles and containers of lotions into the bath.
    He didn’t return to the bedroom. All was quiet in there. He descended the stairs and dressed himself. He buttoned his overcoat against the night air. He placed his hat on his head and had a look around. There was the sound of water splashing into the tub, must be getting close to the top by now. And all those essential oils mixed together, filling the house with their aroma; they reminded him of his mother, not close to the end when she was old, but when she was younger, while Danny was still a boy. Lovely smell, delicious, made you picture tropical climates, soft fruits, birds of paradise and a life of magical ease and everlasting enchantment.
     
    Two hours later Danny edged his car into the garage and went into his house. He took the bayonet from his pocket and placed it back in the cabinet with his other little-used accessories. He drank a glass of cold water while standing at the sink and walked upstairs to the bedroom.
    Jody was sleeping on her side of the bed and the magician stripped off his clothes and crept in beside her, pulling her towards him. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Flawless,’ he said. ‘Went like a dream.’ He nuzzled down and took her designer nipple between his teeth, letting his eyes close and the world fade away around him.
    Diamond Danny Mann, whacked after a busy day.
     

2
     
    That morning Ruben Parkins finished his milk-round at 7.50 and went back to his flat to clean up and change his clothes. Ruben was going to spend the whole day with his girlfriend and when he got in the shower he sang ‘Everything I Do, I Do It For You’, modulating his voice like Bryan Adams, crooning away in a deep bellow with the water from the sprinkler splashing around his head and shoulders.
    Ruben was a good guy and he was feeling good about it. What made him feel so great, apart from the woman and the fact that he was in love, was that being a good guy was something he hadn’t been before. Well, not for a long time.
    He’d been cute as a kid. There were photographs his mother had kept and his auntie Sarah had a couple still, showing Ruben as a toddler, maybe a bit older, up to the time he started school. Dumb little kid with big eyes like a bush-baby, looking around wondering what the world was all about. When he saw those photographs Ruben could remember what it was like back then, when eye-level meant just above his mother’s knees. There was an overhang to the Woolworth’s counters in those days and little Ruben used to walk under it without banging his head. If he wanted to see what the grown-ups were looking at on the counter his mother’d have to lift him up.
    The violence had started when he got to school. Ruben wasn’t bigger than the other kids but one of the first things he’d learned was that if he was going to hold his own he’d have to pack a hefty punch. He had a talented straight-right. The gym teacher said he could be a fighter if he wanted. He’d have to learn to block other people’s punches, and do the little dances that pro boxers did, but he’d always have that killer punch. No one could teach him any more about that. It was a gift from God.
    There’d been times after he’d left school when Ruben had wished he’d listened to the gym teacher and taken the fighting lessons. The main time he’d wished he’d listened was when he got himself banged away on a GBH count for breaking a nightclub bouncer’s neck. What was unfair about that whole eighteen-month stint was that none of it was Ruben’s fault. The guy had been a jerk-off. Anybody would have broken his neck if they’d been in Ruben’s position that day. If they’d drunk the same amount of booze, if they’d lost half their wages on the last race at Kempton Park and if the slag they were supposed to be getting married to had run off with her own cousin. And then, to cap it all, they’d had to listen to a load of garbage coming out of the jerk-off’s mouth, saying the place was full when he was ushering his own mates through the door on the QT. Fuckin’ Italian into the bargain; nose like a parrot’s perch.
    So. Feeling good. Eighteen months banged away all done and finished with. The milk-round in the bag. Nicely showered and padding around his bedroom buck naked, freeing a new pair of leopard-skin skimpies from their cellophane bag.
    Ruben nodded at his reflection in the