Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

She was angry, blazingly angry. Parkes and Max could play boys’ games with each other all they liked, but how dare they involve her boss. Gary was a decent bloke who did not deserve this. Something would have to be done, she told herself.

  “You might warn your friend Max to make himself scarce for a while,” Gary said.

  “Max can look after himself,” Rhian said, tight lipped.

  “Yeah, well, I saw that he is pretty handy with his fists, but Parkes’ boys will probably be tooled up next time they go looking for him.

  “What?”

  “Tooled up, you know, with shooters.”

  “They had a go last night,” Rhian said. “Someone did a drive-by at Max and me after we left the pub. He took a bullet.”

  “Bloody hell,” Gary said. “Is he all right?”

  “Oh, sure, just a minor wound, it won’t bother him much.”

  “Right,” Gary said, looking puzzled.

  “Max was, ah, tooled up himself, so he shot up their car. It was dark, but he says he got the gunman.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Gary said, putting his head in his hands.

  At that point there was a knock at the door. Rhian let in Frankie. She arrived like Christ come to cleanse the temple, except that Christ probably didn’t carry Asda shopping bags.

  “That was quick,” Rhian said.

  “I was out in Mildred so I came right over,” Frankie said.

  “Mildred?” asked Gary.

  “My Morris Minor.”

  “Good Lord, does it still run?”

  “Most of the time,” Frankie replied.

  “Where are you parked?” Gary asked.

  “Right outside,” Frankie said.

  “You ought to move her. This is a double yellow no-parking zone.”

  “No problem, I have a disabled parking badge,” Frankie said with a grin.

  “That’s all very well, but Charlie Parkes has the clamping concession in this borough. The sort of goons he employs would clamp an invalid carriage with the invalid still in it.”

  “They won’t touch Mildred,” Frankie said, confidently.

  Gary still looked doubtful, but Rhian suspected that Frankie had put some sort of aversion spell on the Morris.

  “I’ve fresh bread, milk and butter, some cold meats, cheese, mincemeat, pasta, and fruit. I also brought a four-pack of Guinness to build up your strength,” Frankie said.

  “That’s very kind, but we do have rather a lot of stout downstairs,” Gary said with a smile.

  “Oh, yes, I suppose you would,” Frankie said vaguely.

  “It being a pub,” Rhian added, helpfully.

  She showed Frankie the kitchen. After the groceries were safely stowed, Frankie cooked pasta while Rhian updated her on the problem. They left Gary in the lounge watching a repeat of a 1970s sitcom. The plot involved a market gardener whose tomatoes would not ripen and the allegedly hilarious attempts by him and his “kooky” friends to rectify the problem and get them to market. Gary was fast asleep when they brought in lunch. There was nothing like a 70s sitcom to help you drift off.

  “Up you get,” Rhian said, assisting Gary to the table.

  “You are stronger than you look,” Gary said.

  “So I’m told,” Rhian replied.

  While Frankie clucked around Gary, Rhian keyed a contact on her mobile. It rang five times before a digitally recorded voice said. “I’m busy, leave a message after the tone.”

  “I don’t care how bloody busy you are, sunshine. I want you round at the Black Swan bloody quick, like now.”

  She hung up.

  “He won’t be able to come until after dark,” Frankie said.

  “Why, is he a vampire or something?” Gary asked, with a chuckle.

  The food, or maybe having two women running around after him, had done wonders for his mood.

  “Or something,” Frankie replied.

  He looked at Frankie with a smile, which faded when Frankie failed to return it.

  “Well, you’ve seen him in action,” she said to Gary.

  “You shouldn’t involve him,” Rhian said.

  “He’s already involved,” Frankie said. “He’s met you, and me, and Max. The way things are going, all of East London’s going to be involved.”

  “Involved in what?” Gary asked.

  “Max is a daemon,” Frankie said, conversationally. “Think of him as a vampire if it helps, but he’s not really. Although he does drink human blood.”

  “This is a wind up, right?” Gary asked, uncertainly. “You’re yanking my chain.”

  “You’ve seen Max,” Frankie said. “How would you describe him?”

  “Very fast, very strong, but . . .” Gary’s voice trailed off.

  “And he shrugs off bullet wounds,” Rhian added.

  “I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” Gary said. He looked at the women as if they were mad. “So what are you? The two witches, or have you left a mate back at home to watch the cauldron?”

  “Ha, bloody ha,” Rhian replied. “Of course I’m not a witch. Frankie is the witch.”

  She paused and ran a hand through her hair. “Frankie’s right. What you don’t know won’t protect you but ignorance could kill. I involved you the moment I took a job here. The connection with Max, or something like him, was inevitable. I’m so very sorry, Gary, that I didn’t think things through.”

  “Look,” Gary said. “I am sure you nice ladies are quite sincere about all this Wicca stuff, but I’m Church of England myself. Well, I would be if I ever went to church. Max may well be a scary guy, but East London has always been full of scary guys. My grandfather met the Krays once, and let me tell you, they were bloody terrifying. They made the Charlie Parkeses of this world look like Mormon missionaries.”

  “I’m really sorry, Gary, but I have to convince you for your own good,” Rhian said.

  “Stop! Think about this, Rhian,” Frankie said, warningly.

  “He’s my responsibility so it’s my problem,” Rhian said, sadly.

  She was aware that what she was about to do would change her relationship with Gary forever. Perhaps destroy it altogether, but she had to do what she had to do. Rhian reached inside of herself and summoned her alter ego, the wolf.

  The world spun and morphed around her. It was so easy to change after Frankie’s magic. This must be what Boudica experienced. The world settled down, monochrome and flat but alive with three-dimensional scents and sounds. She heard Sheila rattle some glasses downstairs. When a pigeon on a ledge outside the building cooed, she heard it. She smelt it.

  Gary froze.

  The wolf stalked around the room. It knew Frankie as one of Rhian’s pack and it accepted Gary as harmless by feeding off Rhian’s emotional responses. After two circuits, the wolf was bored so she sat down and scratched an ear. She offered no resistance when Rhian pushed her down and was Rhian again.

  There was a long silence.

  “So you’re not a witch, you’re a werewolf,” Gary finally said.

  He was remarkably calm, all things considered.

  “She’s not really a werewolf, but . . .” Frankie said.

  “I can think of her as one if it helps,” Gary finished the sentence for her.

  He put his head in his hands. “This is a dream, right. My barmaid is a werewolf, her landlady is a witch, and one of my customers is a vampire. Anything else you want to tell me?”

  Rhian shook her head.

  “No, are you sure? Is this where you tell me that David Icke is the son of God and the world is run by shape-shifting alien lizards from Draco? Are Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and Wendy really living in a meaningful ménage à trois in Neverland? Does every rainbow have a pot of gold at the end? Can I expect Lord Lucan to pop in for a quick one on Sherga later or maybe H.P. bloody Lovecraft to ride Great Cthulhu down my bleedin’ chimney?”

  His voice had risen to a near shriek.

  “Be quiet,” Frankie said, cracking the words like a whip. “You’re frightenin
g the girl.”

  “Sorry, Rhian,” Gary said.

  He paused. “What am I doing apologizing to a werewolf for frightening her?” he said, wonderingly.

  “I’m not a werewolf,” Rhian said, somewhat plaintively. “I just look like one.”

  “If it quacks like a duck,” Gary said. He held up a hand to placate Frankie.

  “I’m only joking. You must admit, this is a lot to take in. I trundle happily through life with nothing but Head Office, Charlie Parkes and the obergruppenführers from Customs and Exercise to worry about, and suddenly I am lost in a horror story.”

  “Hmm,” Frankie said. “There is also the problem that someone is opening gates to the Otherworld, letting in elves.”

  “Elves don’t sound so bad,” Gary said.

  “These are sorcerous psychopathic elves that feed on human pain and death.”

  “Oh, right,” Gary said. “I suppose they would be.”

  The Jaguar had “a do not attempt to drive this car” notice stuck under a windscreen wiper when Jameson and Karla returned to pick it up. Further investigation revealed a large yellow metal plate clamped to the offside front wheel.

  Two large beefy men leaned against the front of the white van parked behind. One, hiding behind large black wrap-around sunglasses, had his arms crossed. The other sucked on a fag, his open sleeveless leather jacket displaying his chest hair and arm tattoos to full advantage.

  Jameson gestured at the wheel clamp. “I suppose this is something to do with you?”

  “You’re illegally parked,” said black sunglasses.

  The other just sneered, quite a decent little trick that he managed without removing the cigarette from the corner of his mouth. There was, Jameson reflected, always one that talks and one that sneers. He wondered if they were recruited in pairs because they possessed those skills or whether such job specialization was the product of a long training course. He was reminded of the old KGB street thugs who went around in threes: one who could read, one who could write, and one who kept an eye on the intellectuals.

  “Didn’t you see the police card on the top of the dashboard?”

  “The motor don’t look like no jam sandwich,” black sunglasses said. “Where’s your duke box?”

  British police cars were no longer white with an orange stripe down the side, but “jam sandwich” was soaked into London English. Jameson fished out his special branch warrant card and stuck it in front of the sunglasses.

  “Well you know now, so get the bloody thing off.”

  “Can’t do that, squire,” black sunglasses said, arms still crossed. His mate practiced another sneer.

  “The only way you get that clamp off of the Jew’s canoe, sunshine, is to cough up a monkey,” said black sunglasses.

  Jameson ran a quick translation from London into English. A monkey was five hundred pounds sterling but Jew’s canoe was a new one on him.

  “Five hundred quid, you must be having a giraffe,” said Jameson, getting into the vernacular, giraffe being laugh.

  “A monkey if we take it off now. If we leave and have to come back, it’ll be another two hundred sovs for the call-out charge.”

  “I haven’t got time for this crap,” Jameson said, losing patience.

  He opened the car’s boot and rummaged around. He tossed a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters to Karla, who caught them casually in one hand.

  “Fat lot of use that will be on a wheel clamp,” black sunglasses said. “What is she, superwoman or something?”

  “Or something,” Jameson replied. “Cut if off, if you please, Karla.”

  “You tell him, love. The bastard clamped my son when he came to see me.” An old woman’s head was stuck out of one of the upper windows.

  “Piss off, you old bat,” black sunglasses said.

  “Don’t you talk to Edna like that,” said an old man sticking his head out of a window further along on the same level. “I fought a war for you.”

  The redbrick building might have offices on the lower floors, but there were clearly flats above.

  A loud twang drew everyone’s attention back to the Jag. Powered by Karla, the cutters sliced through the clamp like Challenger tanks through an Iraqi firebase. Karla proceeded to use the cutters to bash back a flap of metal so she could get at the rest of the plate.

  “Oy!” Black sunglasses came off the van and started forward. Jameson pushed him away.

  “That’ll learn you,” Edna said, crowing.

  The talkative thug removed his sunglasses with a flourish, tossing them into the van without taking his eyes off Jameson. Unfortunately, the window was still up, so they bounced back into the street. This somewhat spoiled the coolness of the gesture.

  “Now you’ve done it,” said the thug with the sneer to Jameson.

  “It speaks,” Jameson said, with a show of astonishment. “Does this mean you are due for promotion?”

  The thug looked at him open-mouthed. His fag rolled down and lodged in his bare folded arms. He shrieked and brushed himself down. Jameson had the distinct feeling that he was not facing exactly Premiere League opposition. The unarmed instructors at the security services would have wept real tears over these two.

  The first thug charged Jameson and launched a massive roundhouse swing. It would have ended the fight there and then had it landed. Jameson had graduated with a poor degree because, apart from partying and rowing, he had secured a boxing blue representing Cambridge in a bout against the old enemy, Oxford. He moved inside the swing and caught the thug with two left jabs to the chin. A step to the right and he landed a solid right on the thug’s ear.

  “Lovely, jubberly, keep your guard up and jab,” said the old man, demonstrating so vigorously that he nearly fell out of the window.

  “Kill the bastard,” advised Edna.

  The thug whirled around for another try.

  Arms enfolded Jameson from behind. He had lost track of the sneering thug and the swine had his arms pinned. The two had probably pulled off this maneuver before. Thug number one grinned and swung a massive fist. Jameson rolled his head aside and a fist like a pile driver scraped his cheek. A heavy ring opened up a cut. A loud smack indicated that the fist had found a target, and then Jameson was free.

  Thug number one opened his mouth. The world will never know what pearls of wisdom he intended to impart. Jameson jabbed him in the aforesaid mouth with another left before he could get started. The thug took a step back, raising his arms to protect his face. That opened the way for a hard right below the belt. Jameson gave it everything he had and his fist sank into flab.

  The thugs doubled over with a wheeze. Like a lot of bullies, he had relied too long on size to intimidate. He had let himself go. He should have spent more time in the gym and less in the boozer.

  Jameson was aware that the second thug was still somewhere behind. He needed to end this right now and to hell with the ninth Marquess of Queensberry. He hadn’t done Oscar Wilde any favours. Time to stop fannying around, Jameson decided. He grasped the first thug’s shaven head with both hands and used his whole body weight to push it down. Then he jumped off his right leg and smashed his right knee into the bastard’s face. The thug’s nose broke with a crunch and he went over backwards in a spray of blood.

  He didn’t get up.

  Jameson whirled around to locate the sneering thug—and relaxed. The man was on one knee holding his chin in both hands. Thug number two tried to rise when Jameson walked over.

  “I believe I owe you one,” Jameson said pleasantly.

  He kicked the thug in the mouth. The man would need some extensive dental work before he could adopt a good sneer again.

  “I hope you are registered with an NHS dentist,” Jameson said solicitously. “Private treatment can be so expensive.”

  A Rastaman on the pavement watched with disapproval, shaking his dreadlocks sadly at the brutality and wickedness of old London Town.

  “Babylon, man,” he said.

  “Yah,”
Jameson replied.

  Karla started to clap, a theme taken up by Jameson’s elderly audience. There were more of them at the windows, like spectators at a match. There must be a bloody old people’s home up there. Jameson wondered which idiot in the Council’s Planning Department thought it a good plan to house old people in upstairs flats. He inclined his head in appreciation of their appreciation.

  Karla sat on the bonnet of the Jaguar. What remained of the yellow clamp was slung up against the building.

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to give me a hand,” Jameson asked.

  “I’ve been reading up on the health of men of a certain age,” Karla said, seriously. “You’ve the life expectancy of mayflies at the best of times. The book stressed the dangers of lack of exercise. I thought you could benefit from a workout.”

  Jameson was speechless. He got in the car and started the engine. Karla barely managed to jump inside before he drove off. He noticed the logo on the side of the van, but it rang no bells. London was full of chancers he had never heard of Charlie Parkes Security Services.

  Max’s mobile Teutonic status symbol drew up outside the pub not long after the Sun dipped gratefully below the horizon, leaving. The Wicked City slipped into the long north European twilight as a prelude to another night’s carousing and general mayhem. Max would drive a BMW. The initials were rumored to stand for Bloody Minded Wankers in London, that being a fair description of the drivers. Nice cars though, Rhian noticed, as she slipped into the passenger seat. The machine pulled smoothly away, gathering speed quickly.

  “Is everything ready?” Max asked.

  “Gary did as you said,” she said. “But I don’t understand why you wanted him to warn Parkes that we are coming?”

  “He will assume that we will be mob handed and will do likewise, calling in his soldiers.”

  “And we want that?” Rhian asked, confused.

  Max put his hand on her knee, and she removed it.

  “Certainly, that way we get them all together and deal with the matter once and for all.”

  “I suppose it does get Gary off the hook from any more retaliation from Parkes’ thugs.”

  Max laughed. “Parkes won’t be a problem for your friends after tonight.”