Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  Phase one was complete. No problems, everything had gone according to plan. Quickly he hobbled back into the hall and took the key that was suspended from a hook just to the side of the door. Opening the front door he cast his eyes quickly but intently from side to side. The road was deserted apart from a solitary tabby cat that he could just about make out, preening herself on a wall across the street. Johnston secreted the key under the mat. The word ‘welcome’ was faded and worn with time but it was still visible. He didn’t even notice it as he quietly shut the door and returned to the living room.

  For the first time, Johnston realized that the television in the opposite corner of the room, next to the window was still on. He looked for the remote control and turned down the volume. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he ever turned off a T.V. set. He supposed that he had spent too much time alone in the house. He moved his case from the table to the settee which diagonally faced the T.V. and was relieved to sit down beside it. It had been a considerable physical strain for him and he had not yet grown accustomed to such exertions. He would have liked to take his leg off and rest his stump now, but he thought better of it, it reduced his options and made him too immobile. He would put up with whatever discomfort it took. That was a small price to pay.

  He sat their for five minutes, silently composing himself. His plan was working to perfection and he felt very pleased with himself. But the next step was just as important. He pulled out his new mobile phone from the case. It had a bright orange cover that looked strangely incongruous in the hand of a man like Johnston. He had made sure that it was credited and fully charged yesterday and it had been switched off all night and day. It hadn’t been needed until now. Johnston had thought everything through carefully. He had left nothing to chance. He turned on his phone and waited for a moment as it located his service transmitter. The signal was strong. Even this was working like a dream. He clumsily worked his way through the menu, to the phone book and dialled Doyle’s mobile number. Doyle was sitting alone in the darkened house in Kilburn waiting for Bellini to call. He answered it on the third ring.

  “Doyle” was his single word answer, barked into the handset.

  “Hello, Frankie. Remember me?”

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar but Doyle could not quite place it. “No” he answered honestly. This wasn’t what Johnston had wanted to hear but he told himself that it wasn’t important.

  “It’s me. Micky Johnston.” Despite himself, he sounded hurt. “Remember me now? We’ve known each other for years. We were mates. You shot my leg off.”

  “I’m busy, Micky. Waiting for a call. Now fuck off.” Doyle didn’t wait for a response. He just ended the call. There must have been more to Tommy and Johnston’s meeting than met the eye, Doyle thought. He wondered for a moment if it had been money in the package after all, but he wasn’t going to let that worry him now.

  This was not how Micky Johnston had planned the call. Not at all. God knows, he had gone over it in his head enough times. Doyle was supposed to panic when he heard his old lady was here, tied up. He was supposed to get in a car and head straight down to Southend. But the bastard hadn’t even listened to him. Well, he was bloody going to have to listen to him. He pressed the re-dial button and this time he didn’t give Doyle a chance to speak.

  “Listen to me, Doyle, you mad bastard. I’ve got your ex wife here. Do you remember her? Melanie?” he tried to be as sarcastic as he could manage, but to Doyle, he just sounded even more pathetic. “She’s here with me in Southend. I want you here and I want you now. 29 Gravesend Road. If you don’t come, I’m going to start fucking torturing her.”

  “You can do what you like. I’ve told you already, I’m busy. I’m not coming.”

  “I’m serious, Frankie. Listen.” He stood up and stepped gingerly across the room. He held out the phone as he bent down, checking that Mel’s wrist was still securely fastened as he did so. Her hand was clenched into a fist and with his one free hand, he prised the little finger free from her balled left hand and suddenly jerked it backwards. It broke cleanly with a sharp snap and the pain receptors in Mel’s body went into overdrive and her body, restrained as it was by the tape, contorted into a spasm of agony. She screamed but it was largely muffled by her gag. Johnston pulled the tape free and Doyle clearly caught the tail end of a howl that would have sent shivers spiriting down the spine of any normal man. At this, Scott twisted in his chair, trying blindly, vainly to intercede and to protect his wife. The chair pivoted on its back leg and it fell to the floor with a deep thud, Scott with it. Although he continued for a moment to struggle, he found that it hadn’t even loosened his bonds and he gave up his futile attempts to free himself.

  Johnston roughly pushed the tape covering Mel’s now wet mouth back into position. It wouldn’t take too much to disturb the neighbours he thought and he turned up the T.V. to cover the residual wailing that was emanating through her gag. “See?” he said proudly. “See? I told you. And there’ll be more. You can count on that.”

  “Impressive, Micky. Very professional. I hope you’ve brought along a pair of pliers. They’re always useful. But you’ve just overlooked one little thing.”

  “Tell me.” Surely he was bluffing. He had planned things too carefully for anything to go wrong.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what you do. Now go on. Carry on with your torture, like a good boy. But leave me alone.” Once again, Doyle summarily hung up the phone.

  Johnston could not believe it. Rather, he would not believe it. Doyle was trying to con him. He’d be on his way already, hoping to catch him unawares. But he wouldn’t, he’d be ready and waiting for him. If he had been able to think clearly, even for just a moment, he would have realized how unlikely, how ridiculous even, his plan was. The whole scheme was flawed. It depended upon Doyle having normal human responses and reactions which, quite simply, he just didn’t have. Had Johnston put himself in Doyle’s shoes, for an instant, and asked if, in a similar position, he would gallop, like a white knight on his charger, lance in hand, to Carole’s rescue, he might have abandoned this idea and tried to come up with a very different plan. But he hadn’t. Micky Johnston was, after all, as everyone had always thought, a very, very stupid man.

  Mel was by now almost choking with the pain from her broken little finger and he noise was starting to annoy Johnston. “Shut up” he said as he roughly hit the side of her head, with the knuckles and back of his clenched right fist and he limped off into the back room to see if his victims would be any more secure in there. There was only the kitchen and, he thought, it may be better than the living room, no-one would see a light from the street. He went back and dragged Scott, still shackled to his chair, from the room into the hall, banging him roughly against the walls as he went, and on into the kitchen. The whole operation took Johnston about twenty minutes. Every step of the way was shear agony for him and it drove him near to exhaustion. He was sweating and straining and when he finally got Scott through the kitchen door he collapsed in a heap, on the floor, besides him. He felt sick and he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to get up. There was no way he could move Mel as well, he decided. She would have to stay where she was. Still maybe it was best to keep her away from the man, to separate them. He wanted to do a little more work on her and he could do without that stupid fucker wriggling all over the place, getting in the way and distracting him.

  It took a while before he felt able to move and he pulled himself up against one of the kitchen units, gasping violently with the sudden force of his exertion as he did so. He limped, more heavily now, back into the dining room and sank down into the old green settee. That, like the chairs, had seen better days. It looked more than a little shabby and he had the vague impression that it probably always had, even when it was new. Mel was facing him. Her sobs by now had descended into a low, soft keening. Johnston liked the sound of that much better. It was like incidental, background music to his voice as he began to speak to her.

>   “You probably gathered who that was I was talking to on the phone. Good old Frankie Doyle. He asked after you.” Johnston gave a sad mirthless laugh that was devoid of all human feeling. “He’ll be on his way by now. He’s coming to rescue you. Let me explain. I owe you that much. I’ve had the odd run in with your old man. Your old old man. He and I go way back. Not as far as you, obviously. Well, there’s only been one run in really, we’d always got on well before that. And the wife’s had one, too. Men or women. They’re all the same to our Frankie.”

  Children, too, Mel tried to say, but through her gag, the words just wouldn’t come out. She wanted to tell him that she knew what it was like to live in fear of Frank Doyle, to hate him with a vengeance with every part of your being. Try as she might, even with the passing of so many years, she had never lost that burning hate. Although she kept it buried, she could never forgive him. It was, after all, the strongest and oldest of all emotions. But Johnston wouldn’t have listened, even if he could have made out her words. He was finding that talking was too cathartic to countenance any interruption.

  “Once,” he continued, “– you’ll like this – once, when he was looking for me you understand, he beat her up. Badly. Really badly. He trod on her hand. Stamped on it. Crushed it. It shattered all the bones. She still can’t use, even now. Never be able to. That’s what the doctors say. And that was just because he wanted to get to me. She’d done nothing. She didn’t tell him where I was. She didn’t even know. She wouldn’t have told him anyway. But he found me in the end.” He paused at this point. Through her own gently sobs, Mel was listening intently. “That’s why I’m here you see. Retribution. That’s what it’s called. Francis Doyle is going to die here tonight. I’m sorry that you’re involved. I really am. I’ve heard all about you over the years and I know that he made you suffer too. But you’re bound up with him, even now, even after all these years. Like it or not, and I know you don’t. You’re still part of him. And he’s still part of you.”

  As he was speaking he had once again opened his case. From it he withdrew the heavy, rubber handled claw hammer that he had brought with him from London. Its head was covered in a thick coat of shiny black paint. Only its steel shaft remained silver and it shone brightly, glistening in the harsh white light of the 100 watt bulb, as he raised it towards the heavens and smashed it down squarely and without warning right in the centre of Mel Wheeler’s already agonized left hand.

  The pain from her little finger, which she had felt, could never be exceeded was suddenly eclipsed. She hadn’t seen it coming and did not know what had hit her but she thought that, whatever it was, it had literally gone right through her hand. It wasn’t agony, that she felt. It wasn’t torture. It had gone beyond the simplicity of both of those concepts. It was much, much worse. It had gone in an instant, in a flash, in the smash of the hammer, to a place where language was no longer enough to convey the corrupt intensity of what she felt. There were only feelings, or rather, there was only one single feeling. Beneath her tape blindfold, everything went white. It was a brilliant, burning white which seared and scorched and burnt into her brain. For a moment it seemed that nothing existed in the world apart from her pain. The moment became a second, the second became a minute, the minute became an hour, the hour became eternity. Inside her head, Mel could feel no emotion, only pain. She could conceive of nothing, only pain. She was nothing, only pain. Micky Johnston alone could empathize. Only he knew how she felt. Only he had felt the same. He shared a bond with her. It was a bond that would develop as the night wore on.

  In the kitchen, Scott swayed slowly in his chair. It was as if he was trying to comfort himself. He could only vaguely make out muffled noises, creeping into his senses, from the room next door. But he heard that hammer blow. And he heard what must have been Mel’s scream. Masked by the black tape as it was, he could tell that it was of her essence, guttural, uncontrollable and wild. It made him more afraid than ever. The initial numbness of his shock was, at last beginning to subside and that only served to make things worse. This maniac obviously had little interest in him, clearly it was Mel he was after. Scott knew about her past, of course. She had hidden nothing from him. But that was years ago. It belonged to another person in another lifetime. He knew the man at the door was not Francis Doyle. He had seen a photo of him once. Years before. He had thought that the face that stared at him, impassively, out of the black and white snap shot had the most lifeless, dead eyes, or rather eye, because only one was open, that he could ever imagine. He had tried, God knows he had tried, but he had never been able to forget that face; its harsh, callous features were acid etched deep into memory.. It haunted his dreams and he saw it sometimes in his waking moments, too. Just on occasions, when he least expected it. For no reason, it would flash into his mind. And then, as suddenly as it came, it vanished and he could banish all thoughts of that hateful face, once more, to the darkest recesses of his sub-conscious and pretend to himself that it no longer existed, although he knew that really it was never far away. He knew that it was all real. Just as Mel did, Scott knew that Doyle had to be involved in this somehow. In his worst moments he had always dreaded this happening. Or something like it. Why can’t the past be buried and forgotten he thought? But it never is. We are all children of our pasts. The fact that it was Mel that this man, whoever he was, wanted, and not him, made it worse for Scott. So much worse; the instinct to defend his wife, to protect was what his now took hold of him with a vengeance, he could feel it welling up inside him, ready to explode. It seemed barely controllable but he was able to give no vent to it. He knew with a certainty that he would sacrifice himself for her if he could. But he couldn’t. He was powerless to help her at all. He felt so impotent that for the first time, in many years, he began to cry. His bitter tears stung and burnt his eyes, trapped as they were behind the masking tape blindfold. His brain was beating on the inside of his skull as he tried, desperately to find something, anything that he could do to help. He wrenched at his bonds but they did not give an inch, the tape just cut more deeply into his skin and bound themselves yet more inextricably to him. In truth, although it would have destroyed Scott to accept it, his wife’s fate was sealed. The hours were passing and they were slowly but inexorably drawing to their inevitable conclusion. Mel Wheeler was already beyond any human help.

  Back in the living room, Micky Johnston was about to get Biblical. It hadn’t been part of his plan to really hurt Mel. Well, not an articulated part, although the equipment he brought with him was never really intended to be mere window dressing. He accepted that she would have to die, but he hadn’t reallywantedto hurt her. Probably the threats alone would have been enough to get Doyle here. Yes, he had been sure of that. But that bastard had forced his hand and now he felt, more than ever that events, indeed that fate itself, had taken over. Doyle had had enough time to get here but he still hadn’t shown up. He glanced down at his watch, it had just gone two a.m. and he looked back at Mel. She was quieter now. The pain had lost none of its intensity but she seemed to have developed a gradual tolerance to it. He understood that concept. She had tried to move her hand an hour or so before but that had been a step too far. The pain had just bitten yet more deeply into her brain with a fresh new intensity. For hours now Johnston had been just sitting and staring at her, his gaze deep and penetrating. Violating. He thought that she was really quite beautiful. Even now, even under these circumstances. Hers was the sort beauty that lay deep within and permeated her countenance. It was one that the mask and gag could not hide. And there has always been something alluring about vulnerability. He traced the wrinkles of time, that grew a little deeper with each passing year, across her forehead. They spoke to Johnston. They told him of laughter and of tears, of pleasure and of pain. He believed that she could not have been more beautiful all those years ago, when, smooth and virginal, she first met Francis Doyle, than she was today. Perhaps he was right. Hers was a beauty that had been forged in trial after bloody, burning trial
of adversity. Johnston felt a need to touch that beauty to commune with it. To take it for himself. Whatever he did to her, he was quite sure that she would forgive him and give him her benediction. He was wrong.

  He raised himself up from the settee after digging deep into his case which was still set beside him and he stood before Mel. She couldn’t see but she sensed him there. She could feel the heat of his body near hers. Fear rose up within her once again, mixing and mingling with the pain. She didn’t want him this close. It wasn’t safe. Johnston reached down and pulled back the masking tape that covered her eyes. He didn’t pull it all the way, just enough to uncover her left eye and to release her from her unsighted prison. He tried to do it gently, slowly but, even so, it tore at her eyebrow. She didn’t even wince, the agony of her hand still fully occupied all of the pain receptors in her brain. She opened her eye wide and stared at him. At first the sudden light was too intense after the numbness of her dark, unseeing world and she screwed her eye up involuntary. It took a great effort of will to open it again and confront the man monster that stood before her, but Mel was strong willed. She had taught herself to be over the years of adversity. Her eye gradually adjusted to the light and now, freed from the shock of their initial encounter, she saw Johnston clearly for the first time. He was like a monster, sent from the bowels of hell to devour her soul. He had become death, the destroyer of worlds.