Grinder

‘I know he’s dead, but I just want to make sure’, said Ray as he prodded at the corpse’s bloodied face one last time with his finger.

‘He’s dead, satisfied?’ asked Sal, keeping his eye on the night around them.

‘Not really. Wish he wasn’t, so I could stick this knife in his eye.’

‘Stop whining. Let’s just get the job done, don’t want this to end up like last time.’ Sal gazed at his open pocket watch, a relic of the past which he was often given a hard time about by the guys. No one knew where he got it, in fact Sal himself barely remembered the details, but that was because he had pushed the memory deep below. Killing an old man wasn’t something of which he was proud, but he was green at the time, and it had been a job - Sal was a stickler for following orders. He’d taken the watch from the body, which he knew now was a sure way to get caught after a hit. A mistake he would never make again. He didn’t know why he’d kept it, but he’d carried it with him ever since. A trophy perhaps, a gentle reminder of his first kill, or for some twisted sense of remorse. Regardless, he used it on each and every job, a constant reminder of urgency.

Closing the watch, agitated that once again they were behind on schedule, Sal walked around the body and dragged it towards the car. Ray shone a torch on the ground to make sure nothing had been left behind, as he knew he couldn’t keep his job with too many more mistakes. They had been on a hit the previous March and nearly been caught because a set of keys had fallen out of the target’s pocket after the kill; a snooty detective called Morvan found them. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except one of the keys was for a safety deposit box in a local bank containing sensitive documents - Ray and Sal’s boss didn’t like that.

After throwing the body in the boot of the car, Sal began the hour-long drive to the drop-off point. It was 1AM, and they were scheduled to meet ‘Bonecrusher’ Banks around 2. He was the organisation’s disposal expert, a hulking figure with a sluggish mind to match, but the boss always knew he could rely on him to make skin, blood, and gristle disappear into thin air. Banks had several modes of disposal, but his favourite was an old cotton mill on the outskirts of Windarm. Ray and Sal didn’t know the ins and outs, but they’d heard the rumours - he’d place each body in amongst the gears and cogs of the abandoned place and watch as they were turned into sludge.

‘Why can’t they play any good music these days?’ Ray offered as he twisted at the dial of the car radio.

‘Because you’re out of touch, Ray. A musical dinosaur.’

‘Not my fault if they don’t make the good stuff anymore.’

Both men had worked together for 18 years but had failed to climb any higher in the organisation. Sal had aspirations, he wanted his own crew eventually, but he reckoned he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time on a couple of jobs which now made his dreams unlikely. Ray on the other hand couldn’t have cared less. He just liked being part of the group, along with the perks - women, drugs, violence; they all had a special place in his heart.

Sal slowed down on the motorway, taking a slip road where there would be less traffic. Even at night the motorways could be busy, and all it would take was one wrong move, or one over eager police officer, and things could get dangerous.

‘What’s that?’, Sal asked as Ray sat in the passenger seat, staring at something in his hands.

‘A wallet.’

‘Dumb bastard, this is why things are never simple with you. Put it back.’

‘No, he doesn’t need it anymore, and there’s some interesting stuff in here.’ Ray continued to rifle through it, pulling out a picture. ‘Aww look at this, a family.’ Looking over his shoulder towards the boot, he shouted: ‘Well, you ain’t done them much good now, huh?’