Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  “I’ve got a meeting tomorrow with the Malek twins. I want you along with us, Frankie. There shouldn’t be any trouble. Just look menacing, you know the score. I’ll pick you up from your place at 8.30. Sharp”.

  Menacing, he could handle, if his visage alone wasn’t enough, his reputation certainly was, but 8.30? Doyle groaned and wondered if there really was such a time as 8.30 in the morning. He’d always assumed it to be a figment of the imagination of the people who compiled the T.V. listings in his daily paper and he never understood how Bellini could stand these early starts. Still, he thought, he was a good soldier and orders given must be obeyed. If it was the Malek brothers, he thought, it must be important. They were big shots, major players although not yet quite twenty five. Born in Middlesex from straight as a die Kenyan immigrant parents the boys had run on the wrong side of the tracks from an early age. The were wild and reckless but they were also very clever. They had a god given talent to make just about any system work for them and by the time they hit twenty one they already controlled a good portion of the organized prostitution and drugs traffic in north west London. They were the underworld equivalent of the City’s high flyers, so young and innovative that they even thought of Bellini as an old timer, a bit washed up. Most of the time they thought of themselves as British, they were Asian only when it suited their purposes and would have apoplexy if anyone called them African, despite or probably because of their parents originating from a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Very clever boys. They must be looking to expand, thought Doyle. You can never stand still in business. Bellini, always with an eye to improving his profit margins, knew this only too well.

  “8.30. Sharp, Frankie. Don’t make me wait. You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.” Doyle had done this before as Bellini never seemed to tire of reminding him. He nodded curtly and made for the door. He still had the rest of his Scotch to keep him company and now he felt like an early night.

  “And, Frankie.” Bellini’s voice was commanding and imperative; Doyle turned his head slowly and fixed him with the numb blackness of him impassive eyes. “Come tooled up.”

  Chapter Three

  The haze started to lift and Micky Johnston started his slow journey back from the recesses of his slumbering, insensate unconsciousness, to reality. He tried to ease his eyes open but the flash of the striplight was too much to bear, painfully highlighting every dust mote as it whirled and danced, sometimes slowly and deliberately, sometimes suddenly contorting and veering off obliquely at strange tangents like a demented dervish. Reality, he had always suspected, was overrated. It was a harsh and bloody and as he was soon to realize it had been changed for ever. For now he could take comfort in the warm blank numbness emanating from the cocktail of drugs, soporifics and various painkillers with which he had been fed. It had been over an hour before anyone had looked through the half open door of his bedsit and seen the abattoir his bed had become. The young mother had shielded her little boy’s eyes from the sight and had to fight her almost uncontrollable to desire to vomit. Then it was another twenty five minutes before the ambulance came and, by that time, it was a miracle that Micky was still alive, he had lost so much blood. But now, after three transfusions and the operation, that was all a world, a lifetime away. Now there was just the pleasantly dwindling vestiges of his drug enhanced stupor. For the moment Micky didn’t know where he was. At the moment, he didn’t even know who he was but as he floated inside his mind, that didn’t seem to matter. Right now he was living in a hazy, abstract world were such material concerns as where and who had no place. But it was all starting to fade. Too fast. Too fast. His whole body shuddered violently with a bloody, consumptive cough and he felt something intrusive creeping its way insidiously down his throat. He tried his eyes once more and this time he managed to keep his eyelids open for more than a fraction of a second. Shit. Too bright. Way too bright. So bright it stimulated his tear ducts to try and wash away the pain. He tried to raise his arm instinctively to shield his eyes, but such exertion lay far beyond his capabilities. He couldn’t manage to move.

  “Don’t try to move, Michael. You’re in hospital.” The disembodied voice he heard was caressing and soothing, as if it were used to comfort a distressed child. “We’re taking care of you. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s OK.” The nurse knew from many long years of training and three years in the frontline of the intensive care unit that simple reassurance was one of the most effective weapons against shock.

  As his conscious brain functions, such as they were, began to slowly reboot with the clunking, step by step deliberation of an archaic computer, recollection of the morning’s horrific events crept back into his mind with a Technicolor vividness of visual and auditory imagery that no Hollywood film could ever hope to emulate. His body felt no pain. Not yet. But the clarity of the evil he had faced and the stench of his fear, buried deep within his brain yet all too accessible, was so perfectly sharp and tangible that Micky began to scream. He didn’t stop. The sweat was running like a fast flowing torrent down his brow and it seemed as if an eternity passed before the young houseman was summoned to his bedside. The doctor was dishevelled with a thick growth of stubble and a shirt that had missed more than one wash. He looked as if he had worked a thirty hour shift. He probably had. Barking an instruction at the nurse, who had ten years more experience than him, a further injection of potent sedative was administered and the seduction of Lethe once again embraced Micky Johnston.

  He awoke once during the night but this time he felt little of the panic which had earlier enveloped him in her dark deathly stranglehold. By this time, he was out of the intensive care unit and had been moved to a basic, functional private post-operative recovery room. They couldn’t risk putting him in a public ward after his previous outburst and besides, Micky Johnston, although he didn’t yet know it, still had a lot of grieving to do. He would need privacy. He hadn’t been awake long, only a matter of minutes when the night nurse came in. She was tall and slim with her shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair drawn tightly back. She had a face pretty enough to take the stark brutality of its adornment.

  “Try to rest, Mr. Johnston. You’re alright now. The doctor will be along to see you first thing in the morning.” Micky didn’t feel alright but he was in no position to argue, so he forced himself to nod accommodatingly. Thank god the pain killers were effective and he shared Doyle’s god given talent to be able to readily banish all thoughts of his problems to the very back of his mind. He had long ago found out that if you ignore your problems for long enough, they generally become someone else’s. Not quite up to Socratic standards, perhaps, but Micky always took comfort from his philosophy and gradually the blessed shroud of sleep overtook him once more.

  “Micky, Micky, Micky. What sort of mess have you got yourself into this time?” The disembodied voice sounded to poorly educated to be a doctor, Micky thought as he stiffly and with great effort turned his head in its direction. He groaned as a dull pain in his right leg suddenly intensified, for the first time it began to throb with agonizing, rhythmical, pulsating regularity. The voice sounded like that Welsh bastard Morris. Detective Sergeant Morris. Surely it couldn’t be him. Could it? Morris was part of a tactical crime squad based at Scotland Yard. Their principal objective was targeting organized crime and especially the bringing to book of one Donald Bellini, esquire. Johnston had had run ins with Morris before. On more than one occasion. He had always come off worst.

  “Please, Mr. Morris, I need to see the doctor. I can’t talk to you now. I’m in bloody agony.” His voice was plaintiff with an genuine edge of desperation. A lesser man than Morris might even have been moved by it.

  “All in good time, Micky. All in good time. Me and Ray here need to have a quiet word with you. We came in yesterday but they said you weren’t in any fit condition to have visitors. I suppose they had a point” he said looking down and surveying the Micky’s all too obvious injuries disinterestedly. “But there’s no Nazi guar
ds on the door this morning, so we thought we pay you a surprise visit. Just pop in and say hello to an old mate. Sorry, but we ate the grapes.” Suddenly, as if sensing that he might not have much time, the detective’s mood became more serious.

  “We know what’s been happening, Micky. Were not bloody stupid. It’s been all over the manor for the best part of two weeks. You got a bit too greedy with some of your collections for Bellini, didn’t you?”.

  “Has he said that?” countered Johnston ironically. “Does he want to press charges? Don’t make me laugh – it hurts.” After years of being combative with the police, it had now become second nature. He didn’t even have to think anymore, he just turned on the tap and out it came. Micky Johnston could deal with the likes of Dave Morris in his sleep. Morris may be on a high profile squad at the Yard, but he was no high flyer. He was just a time server, someone to do the donkey work that the major players wouldn’t demean themselves with.

  “You know it was him. You can’t let him get away with it. Or Frank Doyle. This has his moniker all over it. It was him, wasn’t it? He’s the only bastard sick enough to do this. No matter what you did to them, no matter how much money you nicked, you don’t deserve this, Micky.”

  “The ‘great’ Sergeant Morris concerned over the likes of me? Some new tactic, heh? Sent you on another course, have they? Don’t worry about me, Morris, I’m going to be alright. They said.”

  “Jesus wept, Micky. There’s alright and there’s alright. But you, as sure as hell, are not going to be alright. They’ve taken your fucking leg off.”

  The cold sweat of panic that had gripped him the previous morning returned to haunt Johnston once more, only now it was so much worse. Ten times, a thousand times worse.

  “No. No. I can fucking feel it. It hurts like shit.” His voice was cracking. Micky did even bother to try and conceal his panic from Morris. It was too severe for that.

  “Micky, it’s gone. Your leg’s gone.” Morris spoke quietly now, but insistently. For the first time there was just the faintest echo of the merest hint of pity in his tone.

  Micky hauled himself up as best as he could, feeling the searing waves of pain flood through him, and rested himself on his elbows. The protective cage, hidden under the virgin purity of the cotton bed sheet, disguised its full horror just a little but there could be no mistaking it. It wasn’t Morris’ cruel wind-up. Frankie Doyle had blown his leg off. The mad, evil bastard. Micky emitted a guttural howl of unadulterated anguish that came from somewhere deep with. From somewhere primordial. It was the worst thing that Morris had ever heard and in the what now seemed oppressive heat he felt tiny beads of perspiration bedeck his brow. The howl intensified. Now it was worse than Lear’s and gave vent to every anguished, hurt, bitter horror that it was ever a man’s misfortune to suffer. He began sobbed uncontrollably, wildly. Like a child in torment.

  “Who gave you permission to be in here, officer?” The door was almost thrust off its hinges and there was more than a hint of anger and barely suppressed resentment in her voice as the nurse, framed in dark shadow like an avenging angel, burst in. She recognized the policemen from last night. She hadn’t liked the look of him then either; like a second-rate comedy double act from an end of the pier show twenty years ago, she thought. They were too pushy, too aggressive for her liking. And they wore cheap, badly fitting suits with unsuitably loud ties one of which bore ethereal vestiges of that day’s lunch like a menu. There was something about the big one’s eyes too, she thought. Just a little too dark. And hooded. Recessed. It was like he was permanently trying to hide something. She confronted Morris directly: “What the hell have you done to him?”

  “I didn’t know you hadn’t told him. I’m sorry.” Morris blurted out, he was defensive and probably even genuinely contrite for what he had done. But it was often his way. Speak first, think later. “We’d better go now. See you later, Micky. Sorry” he repeated once more, but it was far too little and far too late. By this time, Micky Johnston wasn’t even listening.

  Through the nightmarish veil of his tears, Micky had ceased to be aware of Morris’ presence. He had been embraced once again to the arms of the abstract. Fear. Pain. Anger. A putrid, burning hatred rising in the pit of his stomach and infusing every sorry aspect of his existence. So black and brutal that it was becoming almost tangible. He seized hold of it and wouldn’t let go.

  The nurse followed Morris and his sidekick into the corridor. “You stupid, stupid bastards. Have you any idea of what you’ve done? The psychiatric damage you’ve caused? This could take months, no, years of therapy. He might never get over it.” In a world that generally didn’t care, she was that rare, exquisite flower, the exception.

  It was all that Morris could do to mutter sorry once again. He vaguely tried to explain that he didn’t know, that he thought Micky would have been told, but the nurse was in no mood to accept his half-hearted apology. It wasn’t her who deserved the apology, but no, they certainly could not go back in. Not even for a moment. Morris was relieved. He didn’t think he could face up to whatever Micky Johnston had become. He turned and raced away without saying anymore, head down, for the elevator and the escape to the fresh air that he so desperately needed. He felt the nurse’s fixed stare burning into the back of his skull with every step he took.

  She returned to Micky and summoned the duty doctor but the sobbing wouldn’t stop. The man was totally enveloped in his pain. For him it was all that existed. Like Michelangelo and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was all he could see, all he could hear, all he could feel. It wasn’t that he was merely unaware of other things; they had simply ceased to exist. Another, this time milder sedative, calmed him enough to listen to the surgeon when he made his rounds. The man’s voice, befitting his role in life, was deep and authoritative, with the texture of rich, creamy chocolate. He had the sort of voice that you had to listen to, even if you didn’t want to. And you believed what he said, too. It was a rare gift normally only possessed by the best of actors and other conmen. He was only too well aware of his talent and he had exploited it countless times over the years. Sitting beside his patient, he raised his hand and ran it though his luxuriant grey hair, only recently starting to recede. He looked sympathetically at Micky over the top of the half-round tortoiseshell glasses that perched on the end of his aquiline nose. He had lost count of the number of times he had had conversations like this, and very much worse. It wasn’t easy, he hoped it would never become easy, and he always kept it as factual and businesslike as possible. Emotion was for others. Somebody with a less well tailored suit and a less well tailored manner could deal with the trauma of unbearable emotions. It wouldn’t be him. That wasn’t his job, thank god.

  The nurse introduced him. “Michael, this is Mr Aitchison, the surgeon who operated on you yesterday”. Mick was impassive and Aitchison didn’t bother waiting for a response that wouldn’t come. “Mr Johnston,” he began, “as you know, the wounds you suffered were severe. Extremely severe. There was extensive damage to your knee and lower thigh and I’m afraid that there was no chance of saving your leg. In fact, to all intents and purposes it had virtually gone by the time you arrived here. It’s not unusual for shotgun blast at such close range can to remove a limb completely. I’m afraid to say you’d lost a great deal of blood. If you had arrived here any later, I couldn’t have saved you. You are an extremely lucky man.” Micky half heard the words and vaguely recollected that someone else had told him this before. He didn’t believe it then and he certainly didn’t believe it now. The disbelief was starting to show.

  “Please try and stay calm, Mr. Johnston. You must realize that you are still in shock from the accident. That’s understandable, you’ve suffered major trauma. But you will receive counselling and although it may be no comfort to you now, I was able to amputate relatively low down your thigh, which will make fitting you with a prosthetic leg very much less painless. You will walk again, Mr Johnston. Soon. Quite soon”, he qualified his asserti
on, before continuing. “You could have quite easily died. But your life is far from over. No matter how it may seem to you today, everything will return to normal. Dr. Quinn to come and talk to you.” He looked o the nurse for confirmation and she nodded reassuringly. “He’ll be down to see you later.” Aitchison now changed track. He hadn’t been looking forward to this part of his monologue. What the hell did the police think they were doing. He just hoped that if the man sued he decided that it was the police who had breached their duty of care and not his hospital.