Pig's Blood

by Peter Robb

Extract

The trouble with torture was people got carried away. You never knew when to stop. You completely forgot why you started destroying somebody with pain and you ended up putting paid totally to getting whatever it was you wanted out of them in the first place. The whole thing was a total joke and it wasn't the first time Pasquale had thought this.

Far from it.

Pino's body stiffened. Insofar as the electric flex let him arch upward from the kitchen chair. The relatively free part of him, which was his head, jerked back savagely. Pasquale, who was standing behind him, winced and rubbed his own neck. It was like the whiplash effect he got from the guy running up his arse on the way home from the footy two years back. The pain had stayed with him for months. Even now it came back with the damp. Plus they'd lost on their home ground. Morale went into a tailspin and what could you do? You were losers in everyone's eyes.

The eyes. Pino always had the wide shiny eyes of an astonished little boy. They were an interesting and attractive light brown colour flecked with some kind of turquoisy little needles. He'd been the angel of the catechists, the priest said, six or eight years earlier, getting the four of them ready for first communion.

Now the the big brown eyes were rolling at him upside down right under Pasquale's face. Pasquale took a step back a bit into the darkness. There were dark gobs of blood imbedded in the whites now and the eyes were so wide open he could see a jungle of lighter pinky veins at the edges.

Rule one was stop thinking of the person you were torturing as a person. They were no longer a person from the moment you began work. Without professional detachment, without serenity, you got nowhere in this business. Easier said than done. When you'd grown up with someone, spent all your life in the same alley, though, it was hard to keep your mind clear. This was something they all felt. Things were messy from the start that night. They'd played cards together, eaten pizza together, caught crabs together, stolen together, whored together, for as long as any of them could remember. Pino always came out best. Pino never even tried.

It was hard now, not to think of settling a few scores.