Parallel II - The Gift

by Paul Rice

  “Oh deary me, that is no damned good, no damned good at all, I tell you!” White teeth gleaming against his ebony skin, he raised a chubby hand to his face and repeated the: “Deary-me!” Focusing on Ken’s face, he said, “Pleased to meetcha, Kenneth, I’m Melias Sturman but most people call me ‘Doc’.” Without waiting for a reply, he crawled up towards Jane and took her hand in his. Taking a small metal object from his pocket, he waved it over Jane’s stomach and then held it against her forehead. A dim pulse of light came from the front of the object and appeared to be scanning her body. After a slight pause, a set of numbers flashed on the rear of the device – some of them were in red. Within seconds, Melias had injected Jane with another object, a long flat shiny object, which he withdrew from the pouch on his belt, as he held the thing against her arm it hissed. Jane immediately began to regain some colour to her cheeks, and also started to breathe more easily. Turning to his stunned audience, Melias said: “This young lady is in dire need of some attention, if you will excuse us but I’m afraid that we have to go, I believe you have a mission to complete? I am so terribly sorry about the introduction…” He turned to Mike, said it was nice to see him again and hoped they may meet later? “Don’t worry about Jane, my friends, she will be in the best of care, I promise you.” He almost pushed Ken out of the van. Taking the hint, Mike also stepped out from the cab. The side door slid shut and as the two men stood looking on with jaws open wide, Melias did the reverse of his amazing appearance trick. With a liquid whisper, he disappeared right before their eyes, only this time taking the van, and Jane, with him.

  As their departing gurgle faded, Ken turned to Mike and said, “Now I’ve seen every-bloody-thing; Jesus Christ… I hope she is gonna be all right! Who the fuck was that guy, how do you know him?”

  His friend said, “Let’s just say that it’s a long story? C’mon… we’d best go and drop this guy at the warehouse, you need to keep low, look at you – you’re covered in blood, Ken!” Mike pointed at his arms and legs.

  Taking a look down at himself, Ken was surprised by the amount of it, which covered him. “Shit, that’s not good… I couldn’t see properly when I was in the back of the van, she’s bleeding like crazy!” He turned as if to get back in the van, a van that was no longer there, and then stopped. Mike saw him take a deep breath. After a few seconds he turned around and said: “Right, I’m good. She’ll be fine, let’s get this cretin to his destination, yeah?”

  “Are you OK, Kenny?” Mike looked at him. Ken’s ability to cope with bad situations was the one thing about his friend that Mike had always admired; he had never seen Ken lose his cool, not once, but this was a slightly different set of circumstances.

  “Yeah, I’m good, man – what the hell was I gonna do anyway, rock up at casualty and tell them that the guy we just kidnapped has shot my wife – fuck!” He turned back to the Spear and got into the passenger side. Mike climbed in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Caressing the display button, he waited for a second and then inserted the disc. As soon as the data streamed onto the screen, he spun the wheel and followed the Navigator’s commands. Less than ten minutes later they arrived at their destination. The Scanner showed there to be four life forms present: three inside the warehouse and one on outside. Parked in the corner, almost out of sight, they saw the nose of a black Jaguar. Zooming in, Mike was able to show them a nice clear view of the driver as he sat dozing behind the steering wheel.

  “Right, just cruise past and get to that observation spot we picked the other day.” Ken said, as he looked over the seat at O’Hara. The man seemed to be having some really bad dreams, his hands were clenching and unclenching and he kept grinding his teeth. “This guy is gonna wake up in a minute, let’s get him out of the car, sharpish!”

  Mike pulled up near their chosen spot and then reversed into it. The bushes and the rubbish concealed them nicely as he manoeuvred into his final position overlooking the warehouse. “OK, that’s it, there’s nobody on the Scanner – get him out. Do you need a hand?” Ken declined, so Mike adjusted the controls until he had the best view of the warehouse as was possible. Ken got out and opened the passenger door. He pulled O’Hara’s scrawny frame out by the armpits and then continued to drag him around the bushes to their front. Taking the man about twenty yards away, he dumped him uncaringly onto the soft verge before making his way back to the Spear to collect the black holdall. He had only just placed it by his side when O’Hara started to stir. Hearing the gibberish the man began to emit, Ken quickly turned and ran back to the Spear. Mike was checking the back seat to make sure nothing had fallen out of their victims pockets.

  “Are we all clear?” Ken asked as he rejoined his friend.

  “Yeah, its fine, is he coming around yet?” Seeing Ken’s nod of affirmation, Mike shut the back door and then both men returned to their seats in the Spear where they sat and watched the whole scene on the screen to their front. Within seconds, O’Hara was on his feet and doing a damned fine impression of a madman. The argument he had with himself seemed as though it may even end in violence. “What are we gonna to do if he shoots himself…” said Mike, as he watched the man angrily wave his arms about.

  “Yeah, well, that would still be mission complete, wouldn’t it?” Ken didn’t really care about O’Hara as he was currently more concerned about Jane. If the truth be known, he would have quite happily gone out there and shot the skinny little prick himself. Ken need not have worried though. O’Hara stopped, looked at his watch and then, leaning towards them, puked long and hard into the other side of the bushes that lay between him and the Spear. Wiping a hand across his mouth, he stooped towards his bag and undid the zip. When he stood again they could see the weapon in his hand. Ken, feeling Mike stiffen beside him, said: “Don’t worry about it, that peashooter could never get through this thing!”

  Mike looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just weird seeing people carrying guns around the streets in broad daylight, especially over here, it’s like being in fucking Kabul!” He turned back to the screen and watched as O’Hara walked across the road and into the car park beyond. He had the holdall over one shoulder and the weapon in his right hand. He never acknowledged the driver of the Jag and instead walked straight into the warehouse. The other three men were gathered at the far end, their bodies glowing on the scanner as they stood next to a table. As they heard him enter, one of the men reached up and pulled something to one side, Ken couldn’t see what it was, but Stevo ducked under it and made his way over to them. All four men gathered around the table and waited whilst he unloaded some items from the bag. They stood around for a while and it appeared as though they were listening to the biggest man: he lifted something from the table into the air and then pointed at the other three. Throwing it back down, he walked over and they could see him slapping one of the other men around the face. There seemed to be a lot of shouting and arm waving going on. The big man looked as though he was getting annoyed – he pointed at the others and then kicked the wall behind him. Suddenly, Stevo reached forward and picked up something from the table. It must have been a weapon as Ken and Mike saw the other three men step backwards. Without warning, a long snake of bright light poured from the end of Stevo’s hand. The heat from the fired weapon glowed on the screen and they watched in silence as O’Hara gunned down the two men who were trying to escape through an interior door. Their blood flared on the screen and then darkened as it sprayed onto the cold walls and concrete floor of the warehouse. The red-hot, empty shell cases spun merrily through the air, bouncing like fireflies as their heat traces zigzagged across the screen. After firing one shorter burst into the fallen men, Stevo then turned to the big man who stood frozen by the table. Ken saw the man raise his hands in defence. It was to be of no avail, however. Stevo fired the remains of his magazine at the man, the final hail of bullets leaving the muzzle in a long, flashing spray of light. The rounds struck home and the man went down with a twisting jerk, some of the bullet
s missed and ricocheted around the room, sending sparks flying off the walls and floor. The weapon jammed and they watched as Stevo started fumbling with it. Ken hissed. “Out of ammo…” He appeared to be right: O’Hara straightened and made as if to move towards the table, as he did so the man on the floor moved and they both saw the long blade of light that leapt from his hand – Stevo‘s head erupted in a spray of blood and warm bone. He staggered backward for a second and then collapsed where he had been standing. The last thing, which Ken and Mike saw, was the black Jaguar roaring out of the car park. Turning back, they were in time to see the long-awaited words feeding onto the screen: ‘Mission Complete…’ Without a word, Mike touched the control panel and waited for the transfer screen. They had delivered O’Hara and it looked like he had met his end. As they felt the rush of an incoming Shrink Down, both men’s thoughts were with Jane.

  Chapter 18 - Sting in the Tail

  Part Two

  It was two days before the gang of kids, who’d bunked off school for the afternoon, did their usual trick and broke in to the old warehouse for a game of football. They always did it, it was fun and the boys enjoyed the on-going war between themselves and the security firm whose employees spent a lot of wasted time in trying to catch the kids, currently, the youngsters were up by about three-to-one. As the boy’s entered the dusty old building, the first thing they noticed was the smell. “Nah, don’t worry about it, you pussies… it’ll just be a dead rat or something?” The gangly leader reassured his friends, and then said, “Come on, get the footy out – let’s play! Same teams as last time, yeah boys?” Running to the far end of the room, he pulled the old tarpaulin to one side… someone had suspended the big canvas from the roof and the material was taking up half the playing space… as he tugged on the heavy cloth there was a thick tearing sound and half of the material came down to hang lopsidedly from the steel beam above. Behind the tarpaulin laid a sight that made the boy gasp loudly and then hurriedly turn away, shouting to his friend as he did so: “Oh Shit! Somebody call the Police, call the cops!” He grabbed his pals and told them to run. “Leggit, come on, scarper, there’s dead people back there, lots of dead people – let’s go, run!” They ran helter-skelter from the building and didn’t stop until they were two streets away.

  Within seconds of receiving the panic-stricken call, the emergency switchboard had dispatched two patrol cars, along with an unneeded ambulance. Four minutes later the racing vehicles swung into the delivery yard of the old warehouse, sirens and lights bouncing crazily within the confines of the high brick walls. The young sergeant in the leading car knew straight away that this one was a bit more than he could deal with. Leaving the warehouse in a hurry, the officer pushed the transmit button on his radio. It wasn’t too long before he and his men had cordoned off the area and then waited for the various other agencies to arrive.

  Within the hour the picture at the crime scene became much clearer. “Obviously gang related wouldn’t you say, Harry?” DI Bolderson turned his large frame towards his partner.

  “Yes, you would have thought so, John. We’ll let SOCO make the final call, but yes, it looks as though someone has been holding rather a large grudge, don’t you think – there must’ve been a hell of a fight?” Shouldering the plastic tape out of the way, the short, grey haired DS pushed into the sealed area where the bodies of the four men still waited. John Bolderson followed him through. The smell of death hung like a fog, decomposition hadn’t quite started and the coolness of the air within the large building had helped delay things. However, the thick pool of blood beneath each corpse had started to congeal and the first few flies were beginning to arrive at their new watering-hole, it wouldn’t be too long before the need for face masks arrived.

  Initial impressions led them to believe that there had been a meeting, one which had turned very nasty. It was obviously drug related as there were two shopping bags and one black holdall, all sitting in undeniable evidence upon the table. One carrier bag held a large amount of, what appeared to be, cocaine. The other bag was stuffed with cannabis resin. Two of the men were slumped together and looked as though they had been killed simultaneously, their bodies almost entwined like lovers where they had fallen after apparently facing the hail of bullets, which had cut them down. Bolderson looked down at the blood speckled faces of the corpses as they lay by the door. “Both of those two are from the Cracker Gang aren’t they, Harry?”

  “Actually, I think they all are… look at Mister Blondie over there by the door, surely you recognise that bastard?” He pointed at the huddled corpse that lay by the table. It was difficult to say for sure as the bottom part of the face was blown away, the lower mandible dangled below the left ear and a large chunk of the tongue also hung precariously by some tiny thread of flesh. A single gold tooth glinted below the shattered top lip. There was a large blood spattered hole on the wall behind the body, small pieces of flesh, teeth and bone fragments lay streaked across its white surface. “Well, well, well… it looks as though Stevo has finally got his comeuppance! It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, either, if you were to ask me?” Bolderson only just managed to restrain his laughter. “Make sure that forensics do a proper job on him won’t you, Harry – I’d be really interested to see where the gun has come from, and more importantly, where it’s been?” He reached over in typical TV-cop fashion and used his pen to pull the blood spattered machine-pistol away from the corpse. Several empty shell cases rolled out of the way as he slid the weapon towards himself.

  Harry Lane nodded and then glanced at the final body. “John, you’d best come and see this!” The sense of urgency in his voice stirred Bolderson from his crouching position, rising to his full six and a half feet, he turned to where Harry was looking at the last man, and with his leather soled brogues clicked officially on the concrete floor he stalked over to join his colleague.

  “Bloody hell, that’s Jacko Jackson isn’t it, what the fuck is he doing here – I thought he’d given all this up and gone legitimate?” His knees cracked loudly as he crouched and took a better look at the smartly dressed corpse. The body had been nearly cut in two by a hail of 9mm bullets, probably dispensed by the MAC-10, which Stevo appeared to have fired. Jacko’s dead hand still clutched a .50 Desert Eagle automatic pistol. They could just make out a wad of money bulging in his jacket pocket. They weren’t sure of the denomination of the bills as they were covered in blood, but it looked to be rather a lot. By the looks of things he had only fired one round from the pistol, the large empty shell case stood out like a sore thumb amongst the plethora of smaller 9mm casings that littered the floor. “Could be the bullet which took O’Hara’s face clean off, huh?” John Bolderson could barely conceal the grin that was starting to widen upon his craggy face. “I’m sorry, Harry. But I have to laugh because these pricks have just saved me ten years of work! All of them were involved in that fucking chip shop killing… especially that skinny bastard, Stevo. I’ve got witness statements all over my bloody desk and not one of them dare stand up in court! Without them we don’t have a shred of evidence – everybody knows that he was there but we just can’t prove it?” He walked back over to O’Hara’s corpse. “Let’s just hope this time the evidence has been given to us on a plate, eh?” He nodded at the machine-pistol accusingly. “Let’s just hope, eh Harry…” His hopes were undeniably fulfilled, the machine-pistol was later identified as having been the murder weapon at the chip shop, three more pistols at the scene were also linked to various other crimes, and the cocaine was identified as being part of a particular composition that was currently doing the rounds. Although there was no history to Jackson’s massive handgun, there were several calls and texts on his PDA linking him to Steven O’Hara. The Police were still waiting on the results from the searches, which had been carried out on the four dead men’s properties, but first indications were very promising... Several pieces of graffiti appeared locally, all of them indicating, in some underground way or another, that Stevo and his co
horts were grasses.

  Enough backstreet talk started to circulate as well and it easy really: two-and-two makes four. There was no other information other than the four had met in the warehouse and it had kicked off with Stevo gunning down his two friends and then shooting Jackson. But it was, as always, Jacko who seemed to have had the last laugh… As he lay mortally wounded, he had managed one final shot from his oversized hand-gun; his last act was enough to remove most of O’Hara’s face, which in turn, permanently removed the blond headed man’s presence from the planet.

  The only thing missing was any form of transport, the Police guessed that the driver of Jackson’s car had high tailed it when the shooting started – they also knew they would be wasting their time trying to find him. It was an open and shut case and the Police didn’t spend too much time chasing other leads as there weren’t any, and besides, they were quite sure that the demise of the four gang-members would bring peace to many people.

  Ironically, the wild odds bet that Stevo had placed on the two o’clock race, had been a good one and the books had been closed at nearly two hundred to one. A beautiful filly named ‘Angelica’, who was a rank outsider, crossed the winning post in the lead by less than a nose. Malky took the money and gave it to Jeanie.

  “She’s a good kid and deserves a break now that useless prick has gone…” He smiled at the though, Malky could afford to be generous as O’Hara had been the only one who had put anything on the nag.

  ‘PeeJay’ Rogers never did buy any ‘sweets’. He was far too busy doing other things. Other things like studying under a Scholarship in America, where he had been sent as a guest of the world’s largest software company. PJ loved life in Washington, and so did his Mum.