'No, come on, let's hear it. Let's--' BANG!'--hear you say it.' She prodded him in the chest with a rock-hard finger. 'Have the fucking guts to say it!' A huge rocket exploded, a circle of red and green and silver, lighting up the beach for a second. A snapshot of summer on a cold November night. The crowd ooh-ed and ahhh-ed. A heartbeat of silence. 'I don't love you.' Jackie slammed her fist into his face. From up here the fireworks were beautiful - perfect spheres of fire that hung in the night sky, before fading away into darkness. Ken Wiseman took another mouthful of beer then crushed the empty can in his leather-gloved hand. The flat was virtually empty, just a couple of cardboard boxes full of junk, a carpet that stank of dust and cats. Kitchen worktops that would never be clean again. An abandoned flat on the fifteenth floor of a tower block on Castlehill, with a panoramic view of the beach, its firework display, and the end of DCI Brooks' life. Another flickering silver ball, then two seconds later the BOOM of its explosion. Wiseman pulled a fresh tin of beer from the carrier bag on the kitchen worktop. 'You want a scoof?' He waggled it at the man lying on the lounge floor - hands and feet bound with black plastic cable-ties. 'No?' Wiseman smiled. 'How about one of these, then?' He took a running kick at the man's stomach, hitting him hard enough to lift the fucker off the floor, sending him rolling onto his back, groaning behind the strip of silver duct-tape. Wiseman squatted next to him as the flat was momentarily lit by another firework. 'I should carve you up, you old fuck. Carve you into little bits.' He pulled one of his knives out and held the blade against the old man's cheek, just hard enough to break the skin. 'You'd be surprised how little difference there is between us and the animals. We all come apart the same way ...' Another mouthful of beer. 'Fifteen years you took from me Brooks. Fifteen fucking years in that shitehole prison with fucking rapists and paedophiles. You see this?' He pointed at the scar that ran diagonally across his face. 'They jumped me in the showers. Fuckers held me down and pulled a sharpened spoon through my face. Dragged it across the bone. Slow and deliberate.' He shuddered and drank again. 'Fucking rapists telling me I'm sick. Thinking they're better than me. That they've got the fucking right!' Wiseman stood and slammed another boot into Brooks' stomach. ''Gonnae peel yer face!' 'Gonnae skin yer fuckin' heid!' They would've too, guard hadn't come.' Flash - one, one thousand - two, one thousand - BOOM! Crackle ... 'My, my, my. Will you look at the time?' He grabbed a handful of the old man's jacket and heaved him up. 'You've got an appointment.' The corridor outside the flat was deserted, just as Wiseman knew it would be. No one to see him drag Brooks into the stairwell and up three flights of stairs to the roof. The fire door was locked, but not alarmed. It didn't take much to kick it open. Wind whipped across the concrete roof, and suddenly Brooks seemed to realize what was going to happen. He started struggling. 'Bit fucking late for that, don't you think?' Wiseman hauled the old man to the chest-high wall that ran round the edge. 'You remember what you said the night you arrested me? No?' He ripped the gag from Brooks' mouth, taking a big clump of moustache with it. 'Aaaaaaagh ... God damn, fucking, bastard--' Wiseman bounced the old git's head off the wall. 'You told me you knew people. That I wouldn't last a month in prison. That the only way I'd get out would be in a bodybag.'
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