Stark Contrasts (An Adam Stark novel Book 1) by Peter Carroll Page A

this shit up. The eye-for-an-eye brigade will love it, the liberals will be wringing their hands in angst over the rights and wrongs, and the TV and press will milk it for all it's worth. We can expect copycats and all the usual crap that goes with this kind of thing, so brace yourselves.”
    He was right but my brain accelerated into overdrive trying to work out what the hell was going on. I couldn't worry too much about what the right wingers or liberals might think. This was seriously messed up. I only ever did what I did as a warning, a shot across the bows. I was no vigilante, at least, I never thought of myself that way. I certainly wasn't conducting some kind of moral crusade. What really unnerved me was not that someone else clearly was, but that this someone else was evidently a big fan of my work. There was another issue; potentially much more problematic. If this guy got caught, he might well cite us as his inspiration. Sure, what me and Garry did was far less extreme, but if all the shit we'd been up to came out, we could kiss goodbye to our jobs, pensions, houses...families. I needed to keep abreast of this investigation without drawing attention to the fact I was unnaturally interested in it. Not only that, it would be far better for me and Garry if we found this sick motherfucker before he got the chance to implicate and incriminate us.

19. Back in the Gang with a Bang
     
    The gun felt reassuringly heavy in his hand. He turned it over and over, occasionally raising it and aiming into the mirror. In his mind's eye, a head rocked back, blood and brains showered the wall and his enemy folded like a Marionette whose strings were unexpectedly cut.
    Looking in the mirror had become a painful experience for Dwayne. The scars were healing well enough, but he didn't have the money for decent dental work. As a consequence, the dentures he'd been fitted with were uncomfortable and irritating. So much so, that the pain drove him to remove them whenever he was in private. Without any teeth, his cheeks sagged inwards like those of a man four times his age. It made his speech laboured and indistinct and eating was a bit of a nightmare - this did not please him. These practical, physical difficulties were suffered in tandem with psychological issues. Dwayne became afraid of the dark, took to sleeping with a night light on. He never walked alone across the park any more and, whenever anyone crept up on his blind side, he found himself totally over-reacting.
    When Dwayne got back from hospital he received a visit from some cops asking what happened, pretending they gave a shit; said they'd go after the twisted freak who did this to him...but he knew better. Dwayne amounted to less than nothing as far as they were concerned. Young, black, poor and all too familiar with the inside of their cells, and all too prone to be vocal in his displeasure at being incarcerated. No cop was going to help Dwayne get even. He'd be doing that himself.
    His friends were shocked by what happened, offering to track the guy down and fuck him up. Dwayne was grateful for their support but that task was his. Just to be on the safe side, he enlisted the help of his best friend Lamar Stokes. They grew up together and Lamar was the only person in the world Dwayne trusted as much as his mother.
    There was one major flaw in his plan though. Dwayne had no idea who his attacker was. In the toilet at the shopping centre, the guy made no attempt to hide his face, but in the park, he never saw him coming. In fact, he had no recollection of his abduction or mutilation whatsoever. Walking through the park one minute, the next, waking up in a hospital bed without any teeth. What angered Dwayne most was the trivial reason for these attacks. Spitting gum into a urinal for fuck's sake. He'd done some pretty bad things in his time - things which may well have merited some form of retribution from his victim - but spitting out chewing gum in the wrong place ! It made no