Nicole
I moved slowly through the park, walking at a deliberately casual pace, keeping well behind my target. Just a woman out for a stroll, nothing to see here. Nothing to draw the eye or attract attention - I was completely forgettable.
These were the skills I’d learned as part of my undercover training, the ability to blend in and become part of the scenery, the unseen observer. And I was using them to follow my ex-boyfriend around a park.
It was sad. It was pathetic. It was risky. I knew that, all of that, and yet I couldn’t stop. Yesterday I’d watched him go the shops with Damon. He’d bought him something from the toy shop - I couldn’t tell what - and Damon had carried the bag home himself, swelling visibly with pride at his new possession.
Today, I knew what the present had been - a remote controlled helicopter. They were flying it together, Mason teaching Damon how to use the controls to make the cheery red machine flit back and forth across the sky. At one point, the wind changed and I could hear a snatch of conversation - Mason telling Damon not to fly it over the pond in case it fell in.
It was bittersweet, watching them. They were having a great time, and that was lovely to watch. Especially seeing Damon’s face light up with joy, not at the gift, but at the way Mason was interested in spending time with him. It was obvious that the lonely little boy was thriving, and I knew I had done the right thing by removing myself from the situation.
But god, it still hurt. To be this close and not be able to touch. Every day, every time I followed Mason, my wounds ripped open again. I would go home and cry, and promise myself that it was over, that I wouldn’t ‘check up on him’ again. But like a moth to the flame that burns, I would come back, watching again. I could feel tears welling up - again - and I rummaged in my bag for a tissue. Looking down, I didn’t see the cheery red helicopter until it landed at my feet.
“I’m sorry, we’re still getting the hang of-”
I looked up, and there was Mason, standing directly in front of me, bending to pick up the machine.
“Nicole. What are you doing here?”
A million excuses flashed though my brain. I live nearby. I always walk here. I bought a dog and it ran away. Before I could pick one, my traitorous heart had taken over.
“I miss you,” I said.
“Nicole!” Damon yelled, running over to fling his arms around me. “Daddy bought me a helicopter! Have you come to fly it with us?”
“I- no, love. I was just…”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Damon. Go and see if there’s any ducks in the pond. If there is, we could get some bread and feed them,” Mason said. Damon immediately rushed off to check.
“Thanks,” I said, staring at my feet.
“You miss me?” Mason said quietly.
I couldn’t look at him. But I could see his hand come into view, moving towards mine. Slowly, hesitantly. I reached out, just a fraction, and wrapped my fingers around his, still unable to look at him, still unable to think about what was happening.
“I missed you too,” he said.
“Hey! Hey you!”
The voice was loud, too loud, and it broke the spell. We both looked up, still holding hands. A man was staggering towards Mason, clutching a can of Special Brew. He looked homeless. One of Terry’s guys? Unlikely. Terry’s men were rough around the edges, but they didn’t look like actual tramps. “I know you!” the man yelled again as he reached us.
“I don’t think so, mate,” Mason said, in a forbidding tone.
“Not you, dickhead,” the tramp slurred. “Her. PC Mills.”
My blood turned to ice.
“I think you’re mistaken,” Mason said.
“I’m not,” the tramp said indignantly. “I never forget a face, especially a beautiful one like hers. I was at Crompton Street nick when she came in, looking all fancy in her jeans and t-shirt. She was there for a meeting. She’s a copper. PC Mills.”
He beamed proudly.
I turned to Mason.
“I’m not-”
But it was no good. I could see it on his face and feel it on mine. We both knew that the tramp was telling the truth.
I dropped his hand and ran.
Mason
I could see it on her face - right before she broke and ran. It was the truth - she was police. I turned to the tramp.
“Tell me everything, everything that you can remember about meeting PC Mills,” I said.
“I’ll try,” he said ponderously. “I’m just a bit distracted at the moment. Don’t know where me next meal’s coming from, you see.”
I shoved a note in his grimy hand without even looking at it.
“Thanks, guv! I was at the station with my mate Tommo. That fat pig was on the desk, and he said that she had a very nice woman’s body under the stab vest. She wasn’t wearing a stab vest, though. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.”
I walked away without even bothering to reply. She wasn’t just a copper, the treacherous bitch. She was undercover. And that meant only one thing. I wasn’t her boyfriend, I had never been her boyfriend. I was her target. Fuck!
“There is ducks, Daddy!” Damon said breathlessly.
“Okay, mate. We’ll get some bread. But first we need to run an errand, okay?”
I was already dialling Terry’s number as I spoke.
“Mason,” he said. “Come though. This your little lad?”
“I’m Damon, and this is my dad,” Damon said.
“Well, Damon, how would you like to sit up at the bar there and help Andrea count the straws, while I have a chat with your dad? There’s a bag of crisps and an orange juice in it for you!”
“Can I, Dad?” he pleaded.
“Sure,” I said. “Be a good boy for Andrea. I’m only through here.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Andrea, the middle-aged barmaid. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
I followed Terry though to the back room.
“There’s no easy way to break this to you, Terry,” I began.
His eyes narrowed. “Go on, son.”
“Nicole - the posh bird. She’s undercover police…”
His face was like stone as I relayed the story, his emotions impossible to read. Finally, I had finished.
“I appreciate you coming straight to me, son. That goes a long way to proving that you’re not a rat.”
The implication wasn’t lost on me. I hadn’t fully proved myself, then.
“Now be honest. What does she know, about me, about any of it.”
“I’ve been racking my brains all the way over here,” I said truthfully. “The only thing I’ve ever said is that I ‘don’t earn legally’. And I met her the night I met you, at the boxing match. That’s all she has to go on. Nothing more.”
“Has she been alone in your gaff?”
“Yeah, she has. The only thing there that could cause a problem is the gun. It’s still there.”
I had fallen into my old army habit of checking it every day, so I was confident that the gun was still in place.
“She have a key?”
“No.”
He paused, thinking.
“We should be alright on the gun. If she’d have found it, she’d have done something about it. My guess is that she broke up with you because you weren’t providing her with enough intel. She’s probably trying to shag Chopper or someone, now.”
I felt a stab of anger. Nicole would never do that! But she would, of course she would. She’d done it to me, hadn’t she?
“As far as she goes, I’ll put the word out that the filth are sniffing around, trying to set a honey trap. The boys want to fuck her, they’re more than welcome to, as long as they keep their gobs shut.”
I felt sick.
“As far as you go, though…”
“Yes?”
Here it was. The rub. There was no way Terry wasn’t going to turn this to his advantage.
“I need to know that you’re in. Fully in. You take out that cunt Callaghan,
at his house. In and out, shot to the head, no messing. Use the gun you have on you, not the one in your flat.”
“No problem,” I said, resigned. I hadn’t decided if I wanted to do it or not, but now I had no choice. If I refused, Terry would think I was working with the police.
“Good. I’ll take care of things at the car sales, ensure a future for that little lad out there.”
He smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. He looked like a cat that had got the canary.
“You’ll be a good fit on the team, Mason,” he said. “Being ex-army and all. Some of the lads, they get a bit squeamish about the wet work side of things, but now I have you - all my troubles are over….”
And mine were just beginning. I could read Terry’s message as clearly as if he had spoken it out loud. Callaghan would be my first kill, but not my only one. With Damon as his hostage to fortune, Terry would send me to kill anybody that got in his way.
Because of Nicole’s betrayal, I was now a hit man.
Nicole
It was strange, to be back at the station. The building that had once felt like home. Now it was like another world. I looked around at them all, carbon copies of Thompson, so sure that everything they did was right, and everyone else was wrong. I hated them. I hated myself.
“So, as you know,” Thompson began, relatively sober for once, “PC Mills was blown.”
“Yeah, by Jake the tramp,” someone scoffed.
“Unfortunately, she’d not discovered anything useful up to that point,” he continued, smugly. He was loving it, of course. Thompson was the only one that knew Mason and I had been more than just friends, and he was thoroughly enjoying seeing me get my comeuppance - and seeing me away from Mason.
“However, all is not lost. Our snitch is still good.”
That surprised me.
“There’s a snitch?” I said. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“Why would you be told?” Thompson retorted. “It wasn’t part of your assignment. But yes, we have a snitch in Terry’s camp. Some woman that he was shagging. It seemed our boy Terry promised her the world, but instead he gave her a crappy job in his shit hole pub. A woman scorned, as they say…”
The men in the room sniggered.
“According to her, Terry’s ordered a hit on Donal Callaghan.”
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked, annoyed that I’d been kept out of the loop. “Bring Callaghan in, or put a watch on him?”
“Neither,” Thompson said, surprised. “If Callaghan gets done in, the Sons Of Erin cease to be a problem for us. Our informant tells us that the hit man will be returning to the pub after he’s whacked Callaghan, to discuss the future of organised crime in Manchester.”
His lackeys laughed on cue. I didn’t.
“We’ll raid the pub and pick the lot of them up there. With a smoking gun, they’ll turn on Terry like the rats they are. Meet back here tomorrow to get your individual assignments,” he said, dismissing the detectives.
Over the flurry of coffee being finished, papers gathered, Thompson drifted over to me.
“I hope you’re over your little crush,” he said nastily. “The guy turned out to be a scumbag after all. Did you know his kid got took off the mother, the smack head?”
“Yeah, I did,” I said coolly. “He’s living with his father now.”
Thompson smirked.
“Not for long. Your beloved has dropped his custody claim. Having a kid full-time must get in the way of being a full-time criminal, especially now he’s lost his…” he looked me up and down, leeringly, “…babysitter.”
“Fuck off, Gary,” I hissed. “Just go and fuck yourself!”
I stormed off, hearing the jeers of the men in the room who’d witnessed my outburst. What had I ever seen in that prick? I couldn’t help but compare him to Mason, even now. Mason was everything that Gary wasn’t. Strong, loyal, loving. I missed him so much it hurt. But then something occurred to me. Why had Mason dropped the custody claim? The only thing holding him back had been my background check, not that he knew it at the time. He loved Damon, so why was he giving him up?
With horrible clarity, the picture started to form. Something had changed, and it could only be one thing. He knew I was a police officer. A hit had been ordered on Callaghan. Mason was the hit man. Terry must have pushed him into it after learning about me. But I knew Mason much better than Terry did. I had seen him shaking in his sleep as he relived the day his unit was blown apart in Iraq. I had seen his haunted eyes as he told me about the young woman he’d killed - too late to make a difference.
I knew that if Mason did the hit, he couldn’t live with himself afterwards. And what’s more - Mason knew it, too.
Mason
Once the decision had been made, it was easy. A cold calm descended, and I recognised it from my Army days. I was going into battle, for the final time. I couldn’t live like this, as Terry’s pet killer. I couldn’t wake up every morning, knowing that the blood on my hands would be added to. I couldn’t be a father and a killer. The care system was bad, yes, but not as bad as it would be for Damon if I raised him myself.
Saying goodbye to him had been hard, not least because he didn’t know it was goodbye forever - nobody did. I’d left him with my neighbour, slipping her a few quid for the inconvenience. That was a joke - the inconvenience was yet to come, when I never returned to collect him. She’d phone someone, I supposed, and the wheels of the system would be put in motion.
I’d left a note, tucked inside his pocket, where it wouldn’t easily be found. He was too young to read it, of course, and it would probably be thrown away, but part of me hoped that it would be kept, and one day when he was older, he would be allowed to read it and understand.
It explained that Daddy loved him, and didn’t want to leave him, but sometimes situations get out of hand, and the best thing to do for the people you love is to leave them.
I hoped that he would forgive me, and see that it was for the best. There was no other option - Terry would use Damon against me, to keep me doing his bidding. And I knew enough about myself to know what kind of man I would become if I kept on down Terry’s path. It would either break me, or worse - it wouldn’t. That was what scared me the most, the thought that I would become so cold, so unreachable that I could take a life without a single jolt to my conscience. Either way, I wasn’t fit to be a father.
So, I said my goodbyes, telling him to be a good boy and holding him close for the last time. Then I went home to prepare. Nicole was on my mind, too. Even though she’d betrayed me, even though it had all been lies, I couldn’t help it - I still loved her. I even felt as if I could smell her perfume in the air, as if she was still with me, urging me on, showing me the path to take.
I was still going to do the hit. I’d gone back and forth, but in the end I’d decided to do it. It meant that technically, I owed Terry nothing, and there was no excuse for reprisals. But deeper than that was another truth. Callaghan was a dead man, whoever took the shot. Terry wouldn’t rest until he’d been killed. And why let the murder stain someone else’s soul, when mine was already doomed? I would sleep for a few hours - my last ever. Then I would do the hit as planned, go to Callaghan’s house and shoot him in the head. After that… after that I would take another shot. One last shot. And it would be over. I lay down, and slept.
The smoke is thick, spiralling up through the hot air, blocking out the sun. It is complete sensory overload – I can smell the burning fuel, the smoke, and underneath it all, the metallic coldness of blood. All the sounds are coming from far away, barely audible behind the ringing in my ears. Orders are being shouted, but nobody can hear them. It doesn't matter. We all know what to do without being told. After years of training it becomes instinctive – every man in the unit moves as one.
We form up, weapons ready, each man checking that his brother on either side is whole. I take the point, moving forward towards the broken building. The smoke parts, and she emerges. She is young, loc
al, injured. I can see the blood on the side of her terrified face. She's screaming something as she runs towards us, and in that instant I made the decision. There is only one question in this situation – Iraqi fighter or terrified civilian? I look into her wide, brown eyes, and lower my weapon.
I can see the relief on her face as she realises that I'm not going to shoot her. She is still running towards us, stumbling over the cracked concrete. As she reaches us, she smiles, and I have time to notice that her smile is beautiful, and genuine. She pulls out the grenade from her black robes. Time is almost at a standstill now. I raise my gun as she pulls the pin, but my arms are moving through treacle, and I'm not quick enough. She doesn't throw it – she doesn't need to. She is only a couple of feet away now. She clutches it in her fist. My gun is finally up, and I shoot her right between the eyes as the world explodes around me. I was too trusting, too slow.
I woke up with a start, heart hammering, the dying screams of my brothers in arms still ringing in my ears. I got out of bed - my bed now, not our bed - and paced the room, trying to slow my breathing. It is over, I told myself. I am home, and it is over.
I opened the curtain, and looked out. The streets were dark and deserted, and the rain fell softly, washing away the sins of the day. It had been a while, since I had had the dream. At first, it had been every night, every time I closed my eyes. But things had been better lately, since her. And now she was gone. I had trusted her, and she had betrayed me. Amongst the death and the chaos, I'd only learnt one thing in Iraq – trust no one but your brothers.
It’s not over, I thought, not yet. But it will be.
It was time.
I checked my equipment once last time. The gun I carried with me, the one I would use, was in perfect order. But the other one, the one under the mattress, was gone. Terry, no doubt. He - or rather one of his boys - had come round and removed it. Hiding the evidence in case Nicole had known it was there. I didn’t care, it was irrelevant now. I was never coming back to this place again.
Mason: A Manchester Bad Boys Romance Page 6