Read Online Katja from the Punk Band by Simon Logan - Free Book Online Page B

pumping through the veins within. Szerynski grimaces and another trickle of blood begins and then he is hooked into the first loop.
    “He’s getting one of his mules to take it to the mainland tonight. He’ll be travelling on a cargo ship at midnight.”
    A second hook is latched onto a loop. The skin remains stretched because the chains don’t come all the way down. It looks like little volcanoes of flesh erupting along the chemist-dealer’s back.
    “I want you to intercept the man before he can get there. Take the chemical from him using whatever means necessary.”
    Another hook, another.
    Szerynski’s features contort. When they soften once more he says, “You understand?”
    “Dracyev?” Kohl says. “I’m not . . .”
    “Not what?” Szerynski asks. “Not one of my employees? Not bothered about pissing me off and returning to being the fucking useless junkie you were when I first met you? Not what, Vladimir?”
    “Nothing.”
    A high-pitched humming sounds and the chains begin to tighten. They are being slowly, slowly dragged toward the ceiling and soon, therefore, will Szerynski.
    “I ask you a favour and I give you a reward, is that not my way?”
    And his words are almost drowned out by the sound of the machinery and the excited gasps of the gathered crowd — most of whom, Kohl notes, are young women.
    “Yes,” Kohl says weakly.
    “Good. If you do this for me then I will find a position for you which will reward you justly.”
    Kohl stands and watches as Szerynski drifts toward the ceiling, suspended from the eight hooks poking out of his skin like parasitic worms, vanishing into the darkness above.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    Fuck that.
    He’s not going to get stuck in the middle of any gang rivalry. Szerynski has been good to him in his own unique way but Kohl knows where his limits lie. He knows what can happen when you start dicking around with other dealers; he’s seen the results himself.
    He’s back in his workshop and he’s finished organizing the washers and coils and other miscellanea and neatly put them back into the little drawers in the cabinet and he’s not feeling any better for it. The world doesn’t make any more sense. Size and shape and material. Everything just blurring at the edges, chaos.
    He picks up a fragged circuit board that has been pulled out of a battered cabinet he doubts will ever return to the floor. He can see where the solder lines that bus the game’s information from one chip to another have cracked and so grabs his blowtorch and fires it up.
    Distraction.
    Deviation.
    And the buzzer goes — the buzzer that’s connected to the booth downstairs where Fat Rita sits for sixteen hours a day in return for as much coffee and cans of processed food as she can handle.
    He ignores it at first but it goes again and so he answers and it’s Rita because it’s always Rita and Rita tells him that one of his customers is here to see him and the rest, the rest has already been told.
    So skip forward to Kohl, pinning the useless fucking junkie, pinning Nikolai, to the wall with the blowtorch looming in his face like an angry serpent.
    The junkie has been unlucky enough to catch Kohl at this awkward moment and Kohl has exploded in the man’s face as the circuit boards do from time to time, taking his money, fucking him over just because he can, because he’s feeling fucked over by Szerynski. He’s taking it out on Nikolai as if he can encourage some sort of transference that will rid him of the problem of Szerynski’s offer.
    His instruction.
    He lets the torch bring hundreds of little marbles of sweat to Nikolai’s brow, then sweeps it across his neck.
    “If you ever want me to even consider selling you or any of your junkie friends anything ever again then you’ll do what’s good for you and get the fuck out of my joint right now.”
    The junkie seems confused by Kohl’s gentle tones and so the chemical dealer sweeps the torch across Nikolai’s throat once