Rufus still said nothing.
‘OK, he wasn’t exactly the cream of the crop. I know that. But I trusted you to see him right. To assess his possibilities.’
Possibilities? Rufus thought bitterly. Pikey had been useless. And he had told Don that, even before he’d foisted the boy on him and set the whole disaster in motion.
‘What’s the craic, eh? Say something, Rufe. Even if it’s only bollocks.’
Rufus worked some spit into his mouth. ‘The boy was a fucking washout.’
Don drew in a sharp breath. ‘That’s not nice, speaking ill of the dead. Boy’s not here to defend himself. If he was, what a fucking fright he’d look. Burned to a fucking cinder the way he was.’
‘It was an accident,’ said Rufus. ‘He was a bag of nerves. He spilled the petrol. Set light to himself.’
‘Yeah? But that’s beside the point, isn’t it. Because you were in charge. The buck stops with you, Rufus. The foreman always takes responsibility for any balls-ups.’
‘What do you want me to say, Don?’ asked Rufus, feeling exhausted, in pain, defeated. He’d been putting this off so long, and now here it was, here it came for him. He wasn’t going to walk out of this room, he knew it. ‘God knows I didn’t want it to happen. But it did.’
‘What I want you to say is that you’re sorry, Rufus. That’s what.’
‘I am sorry. Jesus, he was only a kid. He should never have been there, Don, he wasn’t up to it. I got shot, Pardew shot me. But I got him. I went to church when I was well enough, after it happened, lit a penny candle for Pikey’s – Peter’s – soul.’
‘And I’ll light one for you,’ said Don, and nodded to the man on his left.
He was holding a petrol can.
Ah Jesus…
He took off the cap, and emptied the contents over Rufus’s head. Rufus spluttered and coughed, the fumes engulfing him, suffocating him. He swallowed petrol. Spat it out, choking, gagging.
‘Shit,’ he shouted. ‘Don, come on. You can’t…’
‘I can.’ Don was taking a box of matches from his pocket. His eyes were hard, implacable. He was really going to do this. He took out a match, paused, and grinned at Rufus before moving to strike it.
That pause, that almost imperceptible second’s worth of gloating time, was a mistake.
Rufus lashed out hard with his foot, catching Don in the groin. Don let out a wheezing groan, dropped the unlit match and doubled over, his face screwed up, falling to his knees in a moment of almost exquisite agony.
The heavy on the left moved in and Rufus kicked out again, aiming for the man’s knee. He heard the thing pop out of its socket with a satisfactory snap, and the man fell to the floor, stumbling over his boss’s huddled form.