Absalom

At approximately ten minutes to eleven every evening, Mr Backshaw stumbles out of the dimly lit pub and heads towards his car. It fits nicely into his journey home from the concert hall. The Turk’s Head, known for its rather dubious clientele, has only ever cut one person off in its sixty-five years of the Boyles’ ownership. An unlucky lad who was aiming a bottle of beer at the dart board, and whose coordination was severely impaired by this point, let loose a little too early flinging it backwards knocking out the barmaid. More importantly, it ricocheted off her dented head and crashed into the shelf holding Peter Boyle’s collection of vintage whiskeys.

It was for this reason that the Turk’s Head was the natural choice for Mr Backshaw. When it was time for him to leave no one gave the combination of faltering limbs and jangle of car keys a second thought. They would also have no hesitation in serving him again tomorrow and the day after even if the news the next day reported another pedestrian injured along the road to Turk’s Head. By five to eleven, he will have made it into his car an excruciating journey to watch considering the carpark only has capacity for fifteen cars and his keys were already in his hand. After many failed attempts of getting it started and a fiddle with the radio, the car will finally be on the move by three minutes to. Depending on visibility, how many times he’s had to swerve and whether when he left he was on his eighth or twelfth vodka, Mr Backshaw will arrive at his house by twenty minutes past. Luckily, the spring had been unusually dry, and the promised frost didn’t arrive, so he was exactly as scheduled.

Another agonising scene took place between the car and the front door, my breath held the entire time watching him. During the swaying, his legs slipped from under him and there was a crunch as his knees hit the gravel. I waited. Backshaw simply chuckled, heaved himself up and continued on the path. Whilst his hands shook and rattled the keys that he pushed into the door, mine were unfalteringly calm. The stench of stale beer and spirits radiated from him and even under the dim light of the moon I could see the redness that permeated his face. Once the door was pushed open, I moved swiftly although Backshaw was unlikely aware enough to warrant it. It wasn’t for his benefit though that I was being cautious. As he pushed the door to close, my heavily booted foot appeared preventing it from shutting. His wide eyes moved round to meet mine and once they did I jammed the palm of my hand into his nose forcing him backwards. There was a crack and when I pulled back my hand it was already wet.

Backshaw unsurprisingly stumbled crashing into the chest of drawers and smashing a glass bowl containing keys onto the ground. I held a finger up to my covered lips and leant back closing the door quietly behind me.

“No more noise, Mr Backshaw.”

His nose was weeping red, his mind working too slowly to process what was happening. Outside there was no noise, our slight disturbance had not alarmed anyone. I had presumed most of Backshaw’s neighbours would be used to an odd, late night crash coming from him. In here, all that could be heard was the laboured breathing of Backshaw and the faint tick of a clock coming down the hallway. He nodded at me, letting his shirt become stained from the dripping. By this point he had shuffled himself back against a wall, trapped.

“Where have you just come from, Mr Backshaw?”

Despite that waft of booze that came off of him, the clear glazing of his eyes and flushed complexion, he lied and panicked as I knew he would.

“Work. I just got back from work. I just got back. You can take anything you want, anything.” He was slurring too.

I shook my head.

“No, Mr Backshaw. You did not get back from work. You got from the Turk’s Head, just like you did four days ago.”

Even a mind like Backshaw’s heavily inebriated one did not take long to form a connection between four days ago and a seemingly omniscient, violent stranger before him. Four days ago, at five to eleven his car had left the Turk’s Head car park as it did tonight. The sky had cleared but the road remained wet from the day’s rainfall. Petitions to have the street lamps replaced along that lane were still lacking in signatures and although the moon shone above, it was not enough to illuminate sixteen-year old Alexandra Reed to Mr Backshaw. He took the turn too quickly allowing the car to skid as it went around the corner. He saw her in enough time to react, her safety conscious high-vis jacket had not allowed her to be swallowed by the darkness. He saw her but he didn’t react. Instead he watched as the side of his silver Audi clipped the front end of her bike sending her into the air to land on the hard, cold tarmac. Finally, there was the long awaited screech of brakes, but this was closely followed by the sound of acceleration. Tyres spun against the ground feet away from her body and then disappeared. He didn’t drove straight home, he drove to his brother’s, a mechanic, as he had down three years before and again eight years prior to that. By the morning, the only evidence that was left of the events of the night before was Backshaw’s incessant hangover. 

I bent down in front of Backshaw, my eyes staring at him. He had been watching my face, searching for a clue as to who I might be. His focus shifted as the silver inside my jacket now poked out. How I savoured this moment. Physical dread washing over him. The usually red complexion almost instantly paling; that laboured breathing picking up rapidly in tempo; perspiration beginning to dot along the forehead; and a recognition of utter guilt that sweeps across their faces as they yearn over their long-lost remorse. I did not savour it because I enjoyed pain; the satisfaction lay in delivering an overdue sentence. Helping the metaphorical scales of justice be tipped ever so slightly more in the favour of the innocent. I would not draw this out, that was when a punishment became cruel. However, by allowing him that moment of realisation, he knew that his fate was justified.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“I have been called many things. The first time, I was an anonymous hero, the second, a justice seeker. Over the years they have changed. Sometimes they take to me favourably, sometimes I am a senseless, violent vigilante. They have termed me a Zorro, a Punisher, the Devil, Absalom, even the Avenger of Gods. It does not matter to me. I do not care for recognition. They can call me what they want, whatever name comforts them most. I am not here to be adored but to catch justice when it falls through society's inevitable cracks.” I reached into my long, inside pocket never taking my eyes off the quivering man. “But you don't need to know who I am Mr Backshaw because you will never get to use any of those names.”