Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  Mel was now aged forty five and although Scott told her otherwise, she looked it. She was not sorry to be growing older. In fact she embraced it, every year put more distance between her and the horrors of her earlier life. It was a nightmare that lived with her still, no matter how hard she tried to forget or pretend to herself thatthatMelanie had never existed. But it would never return. She knew that. She thanked God for it every day.

  Chapter Eleven

  That morning it seemed that, after all, maybe there was a hope that spring would finally break free of the cold, wet shackles of a seemingly endless winter. There was less of a chill in the air and sun shone, brightly and crisp. Even here, in the middle of the city, Doyle could make out the shrill chorus of song birds in the occasional infrequent gaps in the traffic noise, that were starting to appear now that the worst of the rush hour had passed. The new leaves on the few sparse trees that stood sentinel, guarding the main entrance to the Tower of London, seemed to be flourishing for the first time that year. They showed the really vital, elemental green that the only the French impressionists at the height of their creative storm could ever fully capture the real spirit and truth of. Today was a day when people would feel glad to be alive. Doyle seldom gave vent to any feelings whatsoever and certainly not when he had business at hand that needed his attention. But today was different, somehow. For once, he almost felt a part of the world around him. Not, as usual, isolated from it and alone, but human, able to interact with people, to relate to them and perhaps even to empathize with them. He felt surprised by this. It was a long time since he had felt this way, but he thought he liked it. Sort of. It was a warm, seductive feeling, inviting him to be drawn deeper into the society that for most, no all, of his adult life he had shunned and rejected and which had, in its turn, shunned and rejected him.

  He had left home that morning feeling like a man who had not wanted another drink the night before, but there had been one left in the bottle and he was damned if he was going to be beaten by it. But by the time he had arrived on the Circle Line at Tower Hill tube station, and ascended into the cool morning air, he felt much better. He felt truly alive. It was more than simply the prospect of what Mr. Bellini’s plan held in store for him and Tommy. He couldn’t identify what it was, why he was feeling this way. He had arrived over an hour ago and, even now, he was still early. Tommy wouldn’t arrive for at least three quarters of an hour yet, if then, for, unlike Doyle, he wasn’t renowned for his punctuality. As soon as he had freed himself from the shackles of the station’s subterranean caverns had intended to go in and take a look around the Tower. He had surprised himself for he had never thought that he would be interested. It was a place for school kids and for the bloody tourists. It was certainly not a place for men of business like him. But last night, he had had a lot of time to think, more time than he would have wished. The Tower had been a place for people like him. That was the whole significance of Bellini’s plan. Not only had it been a prison throughout ages past, it had also been a place of execution. It was to be again. But that would have to wait as he found that the ticket office was not yet open. It wouldn’t be until nine. At a kiosk he had intended to buy a paper but bought a guide book to the Tower instead. It was the first book Francis Doyle had ever bought and he was shocked by how much it cost him. He returned to the tube station entrance and sat on the grass in the small, ornamental garden looking out across Tower Hill to the imposing grandeur of the ancient fortress itself. He struggled with the words, with some of them anyway. He was a man for whom the Daily Mirror was the height of his literary aspirations and he had never been brave enough to attempt its crossword. Doyle was a man for whom Seneca’s vitriolic but joyousApocolocyntosiswould forever remain a mystery, Dickens would guard his secrets jealously from him and Proust’s self obsessed effeteness would never be in past his remembrance. In that last one, he could have taken some comfort. Although he struggled with it, he found his new book a real treasure. He read of things that he vaguely remembered from the few history lessons he had ever bothered to make a vague pretence of attending when he was, nominally, at school. There the teacher’s methods had seemed to be largely based on simple dictation, copying down the passages the teacher (he was sure she was a dyke) read uninspiringly from the textbook. Doyle could rarely keep up. Now, like him, it too seemed to come alive. He read of Sir Walter Ralegh incarcerated in the Bloody Tower for thirteen years from 1603 for plotting against King James. He read of the little princes, who mysteriously disappeared. But what really fascinated him, what gripped his attention were the seven famous executions on Tower Green, which he read of with more than just a professional interest and a wry smile at the appropriateness of Bellini’s plan. This was the sight of the private executions, those intended to avoid embarrassing the victim as well as the reigning monarch. Commoners and the hoi polloi were executed in public outside the castle walls on Tower Hill. It was, after all a public entertainment and, more often than not, thousands would attend. But it was here, he read, on Tower Green, that the authorities privately despatched the notables, the treacherous, the stupid and the just plain unlucky elite. They included two wives of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn receiving the privilege of being beheaded by a skilled French swordsman rather than the considerably more brutish English axe. There, also, poor Lady Jane Grey, who reigned for only a few days in 1553 thanks to the machinations of her father in law, the Duke of Northumberland, died admitting that she had been wrong to accept the crown but declaiming her innocence nonetheless “touching the procurement and desire thereof.” She met her end bravely as the axe man splattered her blood over the assembled audience. That was a good death, Doyle thought. A noble death.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was now past nine and he made his way across the road and back to the ticket office where he paid for his admission. At that time, although there were plenty of people about, it was still too early for much of a queue to have formed. He would have liked to have joined the people assembling by the Middle Tower for a guided tour conducted by the blustering, avuncular Tower of London version of Fred Pontin’s blue coats, the Yeomen Warders, but he knew that he couldn’t. Maybe he could come back another time. He paused as he looked down at the green expanse of what used to be the moat and he wondered why they didn’t fill it up once more. After all those bloody floods last year, it should have done it by itself, he thought. He stopped again as he came to the Byward Tower and looked up with a childlike wonder at the grandeur of its portcullis and murder holes. He was struck by the curiousness of the gateway tower, two imposing circular posterns of weather beaten white stone surmounted by the evenness of a modern superstructure of even whiter stone and red brick. The whole complex of towers was a composite of varied styles, he had learned that from his morning’s study, with the White Tower dating as far back as the eleventh century and the conquest of William I and the Fusilier’s Museum and the Waterloo Barracks not being completed until the mid nineteenth century. He strolled sedately along Water Lane and passed the water gate, Traitor’s Gate as it is known to all and sundry. He stood at the railed off steps that led down to the water, framed by the great semi circular stone arch. Never before would he even have noticed the Tudor timber framing above it but now he was captivated by it, its sturdy oak timbers and the diagonal pattern of the brick work forming large chevrons. How much he had missed before, he thought. How many opportunities had he wasted? Still, he would not shed a tear for the man he could have become.

  There was still some time before Tommy would arrive and Doyle was keen to make the most of it. As soon as he entered the upper chamber of the Wakefield Tower, his mouth almost fell open at its sheer scale. From the intricate marquetry of the vaulted ceiling, he saw suspended a vast wooden chandelier which dominated the room and seemed to hang so low that Doyle felt he could almost reach up and touch it. But it was the throne that drew him. It was magnificent; it stood on a raised stone dais, and had carved heraldic motifs, fleurs de lys, and coats of arms surmounti
ng two roaring golden lions. It reached out, stretching upwards as if commending its anointed incumbent to the heavens above. Doyle thought that no human hand could have made such an exquisite object. If there hadn’t been work at hand, Doyle knew that he would have stepped over the barrier and enthroned himself there, to become Henry III or perhaps even Francis I just for a moment. He had to turn his back on it, remove the object of his temptation from his line of vision. It was nearly time now. Tommy would be here shortly. Now, turning to face the wall he inspected his guidebook carefully, once more. Casually yawning and glancing over both shoulders to make sure the mother and daughter, the only other people with him in the chamber, were not watching, he pulled out, from the shoulder holster underneath his jacket, his small Tokarev pistol, the one he had used to kill the Malek twins with Bellini so long ago. Its short snub nosed silencer was already in place and he concealed it within his guidebook, rolling it securely around the gun and he placed the bundle carefully within his voluminous jacket pocket. Doyle could not resist one final glance around the room as, with some reluctance, he made his way outside.

  His eyes blinked as he left the gloom within and they became accustomed to the light outside once more. He stood behind some Japanese tourists, cameras auto focused and shutters clicking at everything that moved or didn’t move. He strained to hear the Beefeater, a tall unsmiling man in his dark blue Tudor uniform, resplendent with the scarlet crown and E II R motif, give his well practised, and none too historically accurate, commentary. The man wore his own swathe of military medal ribbons proudly and Doyle envied him his service, and the knowledge and the respect that they had earned for him.

  A voice from behind suddenly re-focused him back into the real world.

  “Been waiting long?” Tommy was, for once, on time. He was unshaven and looked as though he hadn’t slept. He was, though, scrupulously clean, he had spent most of the night in the shower, trying, in vain, to wash away the sin of all his iniquity. He felt worse because his last hit of heroin seemed to be wearing off already.

  “Just got here. Christ, you look rough.” He sounded it too, Doyle thought.

  “Heavy night. You know how it is, mate. Now, what do you want to talk about.” Tommy was keen to get down to business. He did not know what was in store for him but, whatever it was, he had decided he would have to play along.

  “I want to talk about Mr. Bellini, like I told you. But there’s no rush. Let’s have a wander around first.” Bellini had been quite specific. Get in, do the job and get out. But there was so much that Doyle wanted to see and this was too good an opportunity to waste.

  “Do we have to Frank? I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.”

  Doyle was disappointed and it showed, although Tommy did not seem to notice. He was too preoccupied with his own rapidly mounting problems. Doyle resigned himself to following his orders to the letter after all. “No, I suppose we don’t. Let’s go and find somewhere to sit.”

  He had studied the guidebook’s map carefully. He knew exactly where to go. It had been planned out for him. They turned and walked through the arch underneath the Bloody Tower. To their left was the expanse of Tower Green and the black and white half timbered Tudor Queen’s House which had been home to so many prisoners of high rank. It was there in 1605 that another Catholic conspirator, Guy Fawkes had been interrogated for his part in the Gunpowder Plot but now it was just the home of the Resident Governor of the Tower. Outside the house, just in front of his sentry box, a guardsman stood stiffly to attention. He was wearing his bear skin and a three quarter length grey greatcoat, although he didn’t really need it and as the temperature continued to rise, he would soon start to feel even more uncomfortable than he did already. His self loading rifle was at shoulder arms. Doyle had no doubt that it would be loaded but he wasn’t overly concerned. They turned left down the path that would lead them to the Beauchamp Tower, where a display details the defensive capabilities of the Tower were on show and which was home to a rare fifteenth century crossbow that Doyle really wanted to see. He wished he had it now, rather than his Tokarev. That would be the way to do it.

  Doyle sat on a bench with his back to the soldier on sentry duty across the Green. Facing them was a small railed off plaque marking the site of the scaffold site, where the seven notables had been executed. Tommy was next to him and they sat in silence as three Beefeaters wandered slowly past, rapt in conversation about last night’s football, paying no attention to the two ever so slightly incongruous men sitting quietly in the sun on this beautiful spring morning.

  “So, what’s it all about Frankie?”

  “A little bird tells me that you’ve been visiting Micky Johnston.”

  Tommy swallowed hard. Suddenly he became he was worried. This was not what he had been expecting. He tried to stay calm. Surely Doyle couldn’t do anything here? It was far too public. Didn’t they keep the Crown Jewels here, for Christ’s sake? There must be more here soldiers than in Iraq, he thought but could take little in the way of comfort from it.

  “You don’t want to listen to rumours, Frank. I haven’t seen him for months. Not since before…..”

  “Cut the crap, Tommy. I saw you myself. There. At his house.” Doyle’s cold, unflinching eyes bore into him like a tungsten drill.

  “Yeah. OK.” Tommy was trying to think on his feet. Under normal circumstances, this was something that he was good at. That was why he had been selected for an under cover job like this in the first place. But these were far from normal circumstances. “I was there” he seemed to stumble over his words a little, “but only because I felt sorry for him. He’s not coping well with the leg. You know, depressed. He won’t go out. None of the lads from the firm will have anything to do with him. Not that I blame them” he emphasized. “I didn’t want to either. But he calls me up, out of the blue and asks me to come round. He was crying, Frank, for God’s sake. A grown man crying. Pathetic, but you know me. I’m a sucker for a sob story.”

  “Is that why you went back the next day? Gave him money? You didn’t seem to be too keen to stay and have a chat then.” Doyle still assumed that it had been money in the parcel that he had handed to Micky and Tommy wasn’t about to correct him.

  He nodded, it was the best that he could come up with but Doyle continued, “So what about you and the filth? Detective Inspector Ashworth? I followed you from Micky’s all the way to Hyde Park. Nice cosy little chat you had, just the two of you. Well, three if you count me. You’re a fucking grass, Tommy, that’s what you are. I never had you down for that. I thought you were straight as a die, we all did, even Mr. Bellini. But you’ve betrayed us. You’d sell us all out for a few poxy quid.”

  Tommy was now close to panic but it seemed that Doyle didn’t suspect the truth. Maybe he could buy a little more time. How the hell could he have been so stupid as to be followed? And by Doyle of all people – he was no Brain of Britain. Had he forgotten all of his training? In truth, as Charlotte Ashworth had suspected, he had. It was that that had got her killed and now it was going to do the same for Tommy himself. “It’s not like that. I swear. I can explain it all. Have you told Bellini?”

  “You’re still alive aren’t you?” Doyle didn’t answer the question directly, he didn’t want Tommy to try to make a run for it. Perhaps, he thought now, it would have been better not to say anything. Just sit down and do the job quietly and efficiently. But it was too late for that. Besides, he had wanted him to know. To tell him that he had been rumbled. To look him in the eye like a man as he killed him.

  “Thank God for that.” Tommy heard only what he wanted to hear. “Ashworth tried to get me to talk. She’s a hard fucking bitch. She’s been threatening me. But I’ve never given her anything about Bellini. Or about you, Frank. Or any of the boys. Just little things, that’s all. Outside the firm. Always, outside the firm.” He was becoming slightly more confident. Doyle hadn’t gone to Bellini. Even he must know that Bellini is history now. Perhaps he’s looking for a way out. Could be. Tommy
’s mind was racing. It was going so fast that he didn’t notice that Doyle had removed his guidebook from his pocket and had laid it on his lap. “What are we going to do, Frank? There must be a way out of this. A way that works for both of us.”