The Dead Have No Shadows (26 page)

Jonno
had plucked up the courage to speak.

“No. No.  It wasn’t like that,” he pleaded.  “Mickey had nothing to do with it.  He was always against me selling drugs.”

Old Ugly went to back hand
Jonno
for speaking without being invited but the other man, the apparent leader, stopped him with a word.

“I’m inclined to believe you,” the man said to
Jonno
.  He then turned to Mickey.  “A very commendable attitude to take towards drug dealing.  It’s a shame for you that you weren’t more forceful with your errant friend here.  A lack of assertiveness on your part and some apparent mis-guided family loyalty from my associate here has put you in a serious predicament.”

The man’s tone of voice made Mickey’s blood run cold.  The polite, articulate and implied sympathetic words put an ill fitting veneer on the underlying menace and threat.  The man was pure business.  It may not be Mickey’s fault but Mickey was being held to account – such was the nature of business at times.

“But ...”
Jonno
began to say.

“Shut up,” Mickey snapped.  “Let me do the talking.”

A look of guilty relief washed over
Jonno’s
face.  Mickey always looked after him. 
Jonno’s
cousin suddenly looked smug.

“You can wipe that look off your face,
Jinendra
,” Mickey said.  “You got
Jonno
into this.  Some cousin you are.”

Mickey took bitter satisfaction from the shocked embarrassment on
Jinendra’s
face and the open amusement of Old Ugly.  They weren’t important though.  It was the man in the middle of these two, the politely spoken leader of the trio that Mickey had to deal with.

“What exactly do you want from us?”

“Restitution,” the man replied.  “We have the issue of our reputation to protect.  Your friend fell into arrears with the repayments of a loan he took out to grow his operation.”

The look of shame on
Jonno’s
face confirmed the words.  Mickey shook his head in disbelief.

The polite man continued.  “Unfortunately he hasn’t been selling the product fast enough to meet his interest payments.  We have been as accommodating as we can – we even advanced him additional funds at a special rate.  But as I said, we have our reputation to protect.  We can only be so helpful.”

Mickey understood the situation. 
Jonno
had borrowed the money to set himself up on a bigger level then had to borrow more money to pay off the first loan.

 “You stupid twat.  What the...” Mickey gave up.  There was no point in going any further with this. 
Jonno
was
Jonno
and it would take more than Mickey had to change the gullibility that his best friend had an overabundance of.

“Harsh but accurate,” the polite man offered his opinion of Mickey’s statement.  “So we need to redress the balance.  As my friend here mentioned,” he indicated Old Ugly, “we would like our money back.” 

 “How much does he owe you?” Mickey asked.  He had no idea what value of drugs
Jonno
dealt in at any one time.  Mickey had very little money, a couple of hundred pounds at the most; but
Jonno
could have it if it got him out of this fix.

“Twenty thousand pounds,” the man replied casually.

Mickey didn’t believe that he’d heard the polite man properly.

“Yes it is rather a large sum of money,” the man replied to Mickey’s look of astonishment.  “Which is why we gave him such a reasonable amount of time to procure it.”

The door behind Mickey opened and the polite man, Old Ugly and
Jinendra
looked to their left and over Mickey’s shoulder.  Mickey started to turn to see who was behind him when a back hander stopped him.

“Keep looking straight ahead,” Old Ugly growled at him.

Mickey complied.

“How much of it has he raised?” Mickey asked.

No-one answered until he heard the door close and the three standing men turned their attention back to Mickey and
Jonno
.

“He hasn’t raised anything yet,” said the polite man.  “Which is where you come in.  You are going to act as a kind of guarantor.”

This brought an unbidden smile to Mickey’s face which was instantly wiped off by a swipe from Old Ugly.

“What makes you think I’ve got that kind of money?” he said, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.

The polite man smiled indulgently.  “I know that you don’t have that kind of money, Mickey.  You’re just a poor student.  The amount you make at the pub, where you work three evenings a week doesn’t come anywhere near what is owed to us.”

Mickey’s anxiety clicked up another couple of notches.  This man had done his homework.  What else did he know about him?

“What we need from you are your facilitation skills. 
Jinendra
tells me that you have been looking out for his cousin since you were at school together.  Whilst you may have taken your eye of the ball recently I believe you can make sure that
Janardan
successfully carries out a little errand for us.”

“And what
errand
would this be?” Mickey asked.  He had the sense that he was walking, eyes wide open, into a trap.

The polite man explained what Mickey had to do.

Mickey tried some bluff.

“What if I say no?”

Old Ugly jumped into Mickey’s face.

“How would you like your old Mum to find out that you’d bumped you old man off?”

The door behind Mickey opened again.  This time Mickey made no attempt to move.  When Old Ugly and the polite man looked back towards Mickey, they both looked contrite and ill at ease.

The polite man sounded more placatory now.  “We need to resolve this by co-operation.  Too many heavy handed tactics,” he glared at Old Ugly, “will cause the wrong kind of people to become interested in us.  I’m sure that we won’t have to resort to that kind of persuasion with you.  How is your dear Mum anyway?

That last sentence sprung the trap on Mickey.
 
Thoughts that had been flying around his head evaporated.
 
The question about what Old Ugly had meant about Mickey’s father had gone, fleeing from the polite man’s unstated threat to harm Mickey’s Mum.

The front of the sandwich bar was deserted and the youth behind the counter looked ready to go home.  He went to the door, drew back the bolts and opened it.

“Let me go first,” Mickey whispered to Pester and Elena, pushing to the front of his host’s mind.

“What?” the youth at the door asked.

“Nothing,” said Mickey.  “See you.”

He left the shop and stepped from an early evening in the city centre into a leafy suburban avenue, late at night.  Mickey’s mind was back in the present so he turned to watch Pester and Elena leave the sandwich bar.  When the youth closed the door the shop disappeared.

“How much of what went on did you manage to hear?” Mickey asked.

“A lot,” Pester replied.  “And none of it was good.  You’re in danger.  You need to be very careful.”

Mickey shrugged.  Pester was being as helpful as ever.  He wasn’t overly concerned though.  Things were coming to a close.  He remembered the scene he was about to relive vividly.  It was less than a couple of weeks in the past and had been the start of Mickey’s inevitable route to where he was now.  He withdrew and allowed the mind of the then, still living Mickey to resume control.

Mickey shook his head to clear it.  He really was going to have to see a doctor about these strange episodes of zoning out.  It was probably just stress but it needed sorting out.

A car pulled up further along the street and flashed its lights.  Mickey turned and started walking towards it.  Pester and Elena followed.  As Mickey got closer to the car a door opened and
Jonno
got out.  The door was pulled shut and the car pulled away smoothly; there was no screeching of tyres to cause net curtains to start twitching.

“Mickey man.  Look I’m sorry...”
Jonno
began to say.

“Save it,” said Mickey.  “I’m not interested.”  He was trying to get angry with
Jonno
but was struggling.  “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“I know,” whispered
Jonno
.  “I’m sorry.”

“You will be,” said Mickey. 

He went to give
Jonno
the customary slap on the side of the head, then stopped himself.  It was something that his father would have done automatically, and something that Mickey was about to do automatically as well.  From the look of
Jonno’s
face, he’d had enough rough treatment to last him for a long while.  He still winced though, as if expecting the blow to land.

“You need to put this on,” said
Jonno
, handing a black balaclava to Mickey.

“Not here,” Mickey replied, quickly tucking the headgear into a pocket in his jeans.

“Why not?”

“We’re out in the street, right?  About to rob a house?  If people see us putting on balaclavas they’ll soon put two and two together.”

Understanding dawned on
Jonno’s
face.

“Ok, so we can’t go in the front way,” he said.

Mickey rolled his eyes.

“We need to go this way then.” 
Jonno
led Mickey and his invisible spectators to the end of the street, turned left and then quickly turned left again into a cul-de-sac.  The street ended in the fenced boundary of St Luke’s secondary school – Mickey and
Jonno’s
old stomping ground.

“How do you know about this place?” Mickey asked when everyone had climbed over the fence onto the school field.

“I do odd jobs for them,”
Jonno
replied.  “Gardening, stuff like that.”

“What?” cried Mickey.  “We’re going to rob the people you work for?  Are you mad?”

“It was all I could think of,” said Pester.  “I had to come up with something quick.  I was scared what they were going to do to me.”

“But you work for these people,” said Mickey.  “How are you going to be able to face them?”  Then Mickey realised what he had said.  “Oh fuck.  They’re going to be there.  We’re going to have to take them on.”

“It’s ok,” said
Jonno
.  “They went away on holiday this morning.”

“What about the burglar alarm?” Mickey asked.

Jonno
tapped his temple.  “I know the code.  We’ve got thirty seconds from when we get in to get to the keypad.”

Mickey thought about telling
Jonno
that the timer would almost certainly only work on the front door sensor.  Any of the others would trigger the alarm instantly.  He thought about saying this but could tell that
Jonno
was already wound up tight.  Mickey didn’t want to add more pressure on his friend’s shoulders.

“Why do we need balaclavas then, if no-one’s going to be in?” Mickey asked.

“
Dunno
,”
Jonno
shrugged.  “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

They reached the rear of the target house. 
Jonno
and Mickey slipped their balaclavas on and, finding a gap between the bushes, climbed over the iron fence that bounded the school field.