Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  That afternoon Bellini was in the north London office. Robinson had made sure that he would be. The pool hall was open for business as usual but he could see no problem in that. The Maleks had had their office sound proofed, they too had liked to keep their business, particularly the more noisy aspects, those that involved a greater or lesser degree of screaming, private. Nor would there be anything unusual about Doyle and Robinson arriving together. Everyone was surprised how well Robinson had been assimilated into the new firm. He did everything that was asked of him and more. He got on with everyone, even Frankie Doyle would let him buy him the occasional beer. Bellini had been pleased with him, too. At the first hint of trouble he had been prepared to discard Robinson as a casualty of war, but it hadn’t been necessary. Their one little contretemps had not been of Robinson’s making, he was just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and as soon as Tommy had calmed him down, everything been forgiven and literally forgotten. Robinson had proved that he was good at his job. He knew the Maleks’ business inside out and as far as Bellini had been able to tell, and he had looked hard, he had no fiddles of his own, either minor or major. He was a good man. A sound man. A man you could trust.

  Robinson was also a cautious man. He had approached Tommy some weeks ago now. Not overtly. He was far too clever and wary for that. An insidious subtlety was more his style. He manipulated him sophisticatedly, cleverly guiding Tommy along all the right paths and channels, pushing and directing him carefully until the ideas that he had surreptitiously embedded into his mind formed themselves into the plan that Robinson was now pleased to call Tommy’s and congratulate him for it. Tommy was on the same eighty, twenty deal that had been promised to Doyle, the only difference being that this time Robinson intended to stick to it. With Doyle he had had to be more cagey. Dropping the odd hint into conversation, here and there. No more than that at first. Tommy, you could read like a book, he had no secrets from anybody, but Doyle was unpredictable and Robinson had left it to the last day to approach him outright. Even then he tried to disguise the fact that his whole plan was premeditated and that there were others involved. That’s why he had kept Tommy’s name out of it. If Doyle had responded badly, kicked up a fuss or rejected the plan out of hand, Robinson had intended to kill him in the alley on the way back to the car; he had a gun hidden in the waistband of his jeans, concealed by his old brown leather jacket. It was just a contingency plan and it hadn’t been required, thank God. There was no way he would have been able keep Doyle’s death quit for long. Now all Doyle had to do was to back him up. He didn’t even need to do the shooting, although Robinson would have preferred if he had volunteered. Doyle’s presence alone was all that Robinson required.

  As they drew up to the pool hall, Robinson asked his partner in crime to open the glove box. He pulled out two handguns and he examined the pair of Model D Mabs minutely. Good enough. Nice weapons. Self loaders, compact too, small enough to conceal easily but a bit too petite and feminine for Doyle’s liking. He liked a gun to look like a gun, to feel like a gun. He liked to feel its latent power transfer and merge with his own in an unnatural symbiosis of man and machine. He checked the clips. They were both fully loaded and he handed one to Robinson who tucked it away in his jacket pocket.

  “Now, then?” Doyle asked enquiringly, the final vestiges of his reluctance still lingered with him.

  “No second thoughts, Frankie.” It was more an instruction than a question but nevertheless Doyle shook his head resignedly. He allowed Robinson to continue. “Good man. I knew that I could rely on you. Let’s get it out of the way, Frankie. Just you and me together. We’ll walk straight in and do it. If he’s not on his own, we’ll wait in the room outside.” Robinson knew this would not be necessary. He had organized things too minutely for it not to run like clockwork. It was what he was best at. “It’ll be all over in a minute or two and we can get back to some sort of normality. And we can start earning some serious money.”

  It was nearly dark by now, although the luminous dial of his cheap watch revealed to Doyle that it was not much more than mid afternoon. He felt the light drizzle of a gentle shower of rain chill his face and he pulled back from it instinctively. It was bitterly cold and he wrapped his jacket tightly around himself and pulled up his collar. The pool hall was utilitarian, stark and grey in the way that only the worst of buildings built in the sixties can be. Its drab concrete reflected the bitter austerity of the December weather and it seemed to brace itself defiantly against the biting north wind. But its windows revealed another world. Through the flaking paint of their frames and their grubby, nicotine stained panes of glass, Doyle saw into a parallel universe. He saw the same gaudy decorations that had been used for the last five years dangling from the same place on the ceiling. The sad, plaintive tree in the corner, its fairy lights flashing in time to the falsely seasonal music clawing its way from the stereo, seemed to be shedding its pine needles already, despite there being still three days to Christmas. Faces stood at the bar and at the tables, trying for one brief festive season to forget the sadness and pain of their hum drum lives in a haze of booze and unwarranted Yuletide cheer. It was a world that Frank Doyle had long ago rejected. Looking in on it through the window, as an outsider, he felt no regrets.

  Robinson and Doyle walked into the club through the bar. Silently, tensely they made their way past the pool tables, ignoring the barman who was too busy at work to even give them a second glance, ignoring the drunk slumped dejectedly in the corner trying to persuade someone to buy him one last drink for the road, ignoring all around them, until they came, at last, to the rear offices. Anticipation and adrenaline were rising and Robinson could feel his heart start to race and his chest tighten, with the thought, the smell, of the kill to come. He wiped the sweat from the palms of his hands casually against his trouser legs and hoped that the ice cold beads he felt appearing on his brow existed more in his imagination than in reality. Tommy, as usual, sat as sentinel, guarding the doorway and access to Bellini.

  “Is the boss in Tommy? On his own?” Robinson’s voice was controlled, modulated and measured. It betrayed nothing of the anxiety that was racking his brain, tearing at him from the inside out and telling him to cut and run. Telling him that he must have forgotten or miscalculated something. He knew he hadn’t and so stood his ground and faced his fears. Francis Doyle, as usual, felt nothing.

  Tommy had made sure that Bellini was alone, just as he had been instructed to. “Yeah. He’s through there, Kurt. How are you doing, Frank?”

  Doyle made no reply and the two men entered the inner sanctum without knocking. Bellini appeared to be in one of his more rational states of mind and looked up from his computer notebook to be confronted by Doyle and Robinson, guns raised and pointing directly towards his face.

  “What the fu…..”

  He had no time to finish the sentence before the retort of the gun shot rang around the office and Tommy, who had heard its muffled echo even through the extreme sound proofing, rushed in.

  “Fucking hell!” he exclaimed as he tripped over the body of Kurtis Robinson. Robinson looked surprisingly peaceful as blood seeped gently from the small hole at his right temple. It was surprising because the left half of his head and a good portion of his brain were splattered against the wall. Francis Doyle stood to one side his gun still raised, hand, as was his habit, turned ninety degrees from the conventional stance, with his palm facing downwards towards the floor. He did not find it more effective to shoot that way, quite simply he had seen someone do it in a film many years before and he thought it looked better. It was a practice he had affected many years before during his long and brutally bloody apprenticeship on the streets of south London. For an instant, just before his death, Robinson had glanced sideways at Doyle, alerted, perhaps, by a sudden impression of his movement. Instantaneously he was crucified by a complete and final realization of his impending fate. In the midst of the bitter Judas kiss of his betrayal, he had been
betrayed himself. Robinson couldn’t move, he couldn’t shoot either. There wasn’t time for that, but it took only a fraction of a millisecond for the electrical nerve impulses in his brain to become aware that he was facing death at the cold, callous hands of Francis Doyle. There was a clear, accusing look in Robinson’s eyes as Doyle pulled the trigger. It seemed to cut straight through his external, tangible persona as it if could see deep within him and was searching for his soul. He doubted if it would find one. But he recognized the look, it was one that he had seen before. Many times. Was it fear of death? Or just of the unknown, perhaps? Was it the chemical effect of the adrenaline or maybe just a last, wild, hopeless, helpless shock of anticipation? Doyle didn’t know. Neither did he much care. Not really. He was, though, surprised by the extent of the damage and the mess of what had once been the side of Kurtis Robinson’s head. What sort of bullets had Robinson been using, he thought. Not the usual bog standard 32 automatic ammunition, that’s for sure. The wound would have been much cleaner with that. Explosive bullets, dum dums, glycerine tipped perhaps. Nice touch, Doyle thought. It was really quite appropriate.

  Doyle had needed to act quickly, to get in before Robinson could shoot and his reflexes had not let him down. Right up until the very last moment, he hadn’t been sure, not one hundred per cent sure anyway, which way he would turn and who he would shoot. Would it be Robinson or would it be Bellini? Even now, after the event, he wasn’t sure if he had done had made the right move. Pretty much all of what Robinson had said was true. He knew that but in the end, without it ever being consciously articulated, his loyalty to his boss had proved to be his primary consideration. Maybe now, if nothing else, he had just cemented over a few of the cracks which had started to appear insidiously in his relationship with Bellini during the last few weeks. Doyle had made his decision and now he would have to accept the consequences, whatever they might be. He would take his chances with Bellini. There were no longer any alternatives available to him.

  Bellini seemed to be remarkably unfazed by even this dramatic turn of events. Very little in his life seemed real anymore and although this had been unexpected he had relished the experience. In a way, he almost regretted that Robinson had not shot him. It would take more than a bullet to kill him, he thought, and he wasn’t even sure if it was now even possible for him to die at all. He was on a higher plane than ordinary men. The laws of physics, let alone the laws of England, no longer applied to him. But he did not blame Doyle for denying him his experience. It wasn’t his fault. How could he be expected to understand? He was just a little man, doing his best, no doubt, but involved in things that were the vastness of an eternity beyond his comprehension. He walked across the room, stepped deliberately over Robinson’s prostrate body and embraced Doyle warmly, with real affection. “Francis.” That was all he said. No other words were necessary. Bellini felt that the bond between them, which he knew had become less stable although he would never accept that his own tortured ego and id were to blame, had suddenly strengthened. They were, perhaps, kindred spirits after all. Doyle had become, for him, an avenging angel. But he was a possession to be treasured only for so long as Bellini felt the need. Thereafter, like everything else, he would, once again, become expendable. Seconds extended into minutes and the two men stood in the comforting, caressing warmth of their embrace. Doyle felt better, normally he didn’t relish such close bodily contact with anyone and certainly not another man. But this seemed somehow acceptable to him. It was right. Healing. Broken bonds, he thought, were being sealed, once again. Eventually, after what by now seemed like a silent eternity to Doyle, Bellini broke his reverie. “Tommy” he called up “you’d better clean up this mess.”

  Chapter Seven

  It had not been a good Christmas for Micky Johnston and he was glad to see the back of the decorations and of all the festivities and the forced goodwill he had been made to endure by the few people who could force themselves to care enough to bother. Still, for the first time he was able to force himself to entertain the possibility that both Doyle and the surgeon may have been right, that he had been lucky. Carole had sworn after her encounter with Francis Doyle, that she would never have him back inside the house again. She’d never even see him again. She’d sworn it on her dead mother’s grave. This was his world, not hers. She didn’t belong to it, she never had and she wanted no part in it. It was his own fault, deep down he knew that, but it didn’t stop him from trying to blame somebody else. Anybody else. When Micky had heard that the heat was on he had abandoned Carole. He’d just cut and run in a blind, unthinking panic. It seemed like a lifetime ago, now. Shortly after he’d gone, Carole had been paid a visit by a menacing, gaunt man with a scarred face who had, so she thought, only one eye. It was a man she knew by reputation only. But what a reputation. My God, had she been frightened. She had good reason to be. She didn’t know what Micky had done, that was the truth. But Doyle wouldn’t believe her. If Micky had got any money, she’d be the last person that the little bastard would share it with or even spend it on. She told him that but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He’d be better off talking to one of his cheap tarts. He probably knew who they were. He probably set him up with them. This was a mistake, Doyle was not the sort of man to provoke like this. She soon found this out as he punched her, with the full extent of his strength, straight in the stomach. He punched down, straight from the shoulder, twisting his hips as he threw it to put all his weight behind the blow. Carole fell instantly to the floor, writhing in an unspeakable thunder clap of agony. This was nothing like the way Micky used to hit her. Nothing like it at all. It was as an amputation is to a graze. Her whole world seemed so unreal, as it everything had become suddenly brutalized. She was physically unable to answer him when he once more demanded to know where Bellini’s money was and as he bent down, crouching next to her to could feel the heat of his breath against its cheek, she could almost taste its rank putrid stench and she felt a wave of nausea sweep across her. He spat a hideous green concoction of sputum, phlegm and catarrh directly in her face. It stung her eyes and smelled like the worst sulphurous pits of hell. She had wanted to scream but she couldn’t. Rising to his feet, Doyle kicked out at her left hand and stamped down with the heel of boot viciously. He ground it into the floor, applying his full weight, taking delight as virtually every bone in her hand was crushed. Carole Johnston had been left with a lasting legacy of her visit from Francis Doyle. For the rest of her life, her left hand would be useless, a withered lifeless testimony to her visitation from his callous brutality.

  It would have been worse, she had no doubt of it, had Doyle not then turned his attentions to the house. That was the last place it would have been – she knew that – couldn’t he just believe her?. But much to her amazement, he found the money. Or most of it, at least. Doyle looked at her as he walked sedately down the stairs, a suitcase in his hand.

  “You tell Micky that I’m coming for him.” There was more menace in his dull flatly delivered words than Carole could have ever imagined.

  Her relief, when she finally heard the front door slam, engulfed her totally and she began for the first time to cry, to wail, to howl. She had to crawl to the telephone and it seemed like an eternity before the ambulance finally fought its way through the busy streets belatedly to her rescue. How could this monster have done such atrocities to her? And how could that monster have left the money in her house? Without even telling her anything was wrong. She hoped the one eyed man caught up with him. She hoped he bloody killed him.

  Today Micky was alone in the house. Carole’s hatred had burned fiercely but it was short lived. She had relented at the moment when she first saw him in the hospital. All the promises she had made herself simply dissipated into thin air. Sitting next to him, her own hand swathed in bandages and with a pain so great that it caused her to wince in agony with even the slightest movement, despite herself she felt pity for her husband. It was not love. That had died a long time before. But lying there, consu
med as he was in his misery, depression and grief, she shared his suffering with a compassion that he really did not deserve. It had taken her almost two weeks before she could force herself to confront him and come to the hospital. This was only slightly longer than it had taken the combined efforts of doctors, nurses, psycho- and occupational therapists as well as the seemingly ever present psychiatrists to make him look at the permanent and brutal reminder of his deformity, the stump where the shattered remnants of his leg ended. In a life spent avoiding confronting his problems, it was the hardest thing that Micky Johnston had ever had to do. In a way it seemed almost like his leg was still there. He knew that it really wasn’t, of course, but he could still feel it, he thought, still feel his foot, not where it should be, but higher, somewhere around where his knee had once been. It was the strangest sensation but it seemed so real. Phantom limb syndrome. That’s what the doctors had called it – apparently it’s not uncommon. They had tried to explain the psychology of it, but Johnston did not comprehend. All he took in was that it might get better, but it might not. For all practical purposes, no-one understood how the brain produced these self delusions. It may be just yet one more facet of his disability that Johnston had to come to terms with and adjust to. And slowly he did start to adjust, almost despite himself. He began to accept what he could not deny. To look at what was left of his leg without feeling physically sick. God knows, it wasn’t easy, but at the hospital he was surrounded by professionals. They had helped him through the tears that came at night. Every night. They helped him face the future, to accept, to realize that maybe he did have something of a future after all. What helped him most of all to get through each bloody, tearful day was the certainty, the blind, unquestioning, absolute faith, the definite knowledge that he, Michael Kenneth Johnston, would absolutely, undoubtedly, unequivocally, kill Don Bellini and Francis Doyle.