a ball in play (4)

“So, where did you get the money?”
Davie smiled massively.
“An Insurance policy that my folks had started for me the very day I was born. I was twenty-one the other week: mind?”

(“A wee start for you in life, my boy.” Ten thousand effing pounds!!)

Catherine had to sit down. She felt the violence that even talking like this would bring. She felt sick. He was forever right there beside her. The image that always came to mind was of that quivering pleading shell of a guy he had trapped in his flat one afternoon.
“Katey get fuckin’ through here,” he’d barked.
 The guy owed him money and by the look of him it was for doing what he should be dealing. She did as he asked because she knew better than to reason with Bingo. Any compassion she showed to his victims only complicated things, only seemed to give Bingo more pleasure when he hurt them.
  She watched Bingo grab his hair, she lit the lighter like her told her and he heated the blade of a knife over it. When it was shimmering hot he burned the guy’s ear, then (after a wee reheat) his cheek. If she didn’t do as she was told it would be worse for the pathetic so and so. She feared Bingo was going to put the blade in his eyeball but he just singed below it then picked him up and kicked him out the flat down the stairs. The smell of singed flesh was sickening.
 “That’s my girl,” he said when he came back in and patted her arse.
  That was his insurance: he made her a part of everything. All the deals, the dealers, the violence: she was in on it.
  She had been fourteen when she first met him walking home from school and loved how protected he made her feel. She’d lost both her parents young and didn’t get on with her aunt. He made her feel like she was worth something, unlike that old boot.
 So she moved in with him and quickly the whole sordid thing that was his life revealed itself and there she was up to her knees in quicksand: any resistance only sucked her deeper in. There was nowhere to go anyway.
  “You’re safe wi’ me Katey, naebody’ll come near you cause ye’re mine! And nae fucker touches what’s Bingo’s!”
  It was true, she had no real friends or family she could trust. Then, one drizzly day a new boy started at work …