The Dead Have No Shadows

by Chris Mawbey

  “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.

  Chapter 24

  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.

  A broad, well manicured lawn separated the house from the boundary. A brick built conservatory ran across the rear of the property for almost the entire width of the building. The conservatory and the first floor windows above were black and sightless. The view reminded Mickey of a row of houses he’d seen somewhere before. He couldn’t place where he’d seen them but was certain that it wasn’t his imagination.

  Keeping close to the boundary fence, Jonno led Mickey and his two unseen companions to one corner of the house. He took a piece of stiff plastic, about the size of a credit card, from his pocket.

  “This is a crap lock,” Jonno said. “I keep telling them that they should get it changed.”

  He slid the plastic between the door frame and the Yale lock. Taking hold of the door handle he rocked the door backed and forward while pushing on the plastic strip. It only took a few seconds before there was a loud click and the door was open.

  They entered a utility room that contained gardening tools and led to another door that opened into the house itself.

  “They never lock this one,” said Jonno. “I keep telling them that they should.” He turned the handle and walked into the kitchen of the house just as he would on any other day. Despite the fact that the house was empty Jonno still spoke in a whisper.

  “They keep a load of money in a small chest in a wardrobe in their spare bedroom.”

  “Twenty thousand pounds worth?” Mickey asked.

  “Don’t know,” said Jonno. “I only saw it once. There looked to be a lot of cash.”

  Great, thought Mickey. All this trouble and we don’t know if we’ll get enough to pay off The Polite Man. He spotted the infra red sensor, high in the corner of the room light flash and tensed himself for the resulting blare of the burglar alarm. Nothing happened. Mickey relaxed a little. The owners must have forgotten to set the alarm when they left. Jonno hadn’t realised any of this though, or had forgotten it. He was leading the way out of the kitchen and down a short passageway into a large entrance hall.

  The stairs dog-legged to the left. As they started to climb Mickey thought he could see light coming from under a door just beyond the stairs. Again, he tensed, then calmed down when he realised that it would be from the streetlights outside. He was getting too jumpy. He needed to get a grip.

  A floorboard creaked as Mickey stepped onto the landing. Everyone froze, even Pester and Elena, who couldn’t have been seen even if someone else had been in the house.

  Mickey could feel his heart pounding and was sure that he could hear Jonno’s as well. He was starting to feel a throbbing pain in his right thigh; but couldn’t remember banging it anywhere. He rubbed at it absent-mindedly. Looking around him he jumped when he saw the hazy images of a man and a woman standing at the top of the stairs. Pester put a finger to his lips. This had the desired effect and brought a smile to Mickey’s lips as a deeply buried memory emerged and he remembered who he was seeing.

  “What’s up?” hissed Jonno.

  Mickey shook his head. “Nothing. Thought I saw a ghost. Let’s get on with it.”

  Elena turned to Pester. “Why is he rubbing his leg? He had not hurt it earlier.”

  “I think it’s because this time frame is so close to Mickey’s actual time, that his current self is so close to the surface. That was why he could see us.”

  Mickey and Jonno had tip toed into the spare bedroom. Jonno was about to turn on the light but Mickey stopped him. It was a clear night and there was enough moon light shining through the window to show where things were. Jonno opened the wardrobe door which gave out a haunted house creak. He reached in, searched around for a moment then lifted out a small metal chest. Mickey’s heart sank. The chest was nowhere near large enough to hold twenty thousand pounds.

  We’re going to be in deep shit, he thought. He was right, but it was going to be deeper and sooner than he thought.

  The four intruders, two visible and two merely spectral, were almost at the bottom of the stairs when a door opened. An elderly lady walked into the hallway. She had taken several steps before realising that two people with their faces covered were walking down the stairs. The woman gasped, then screamed.

  “Stuart. There’s someone in the house.”

  A few seconds later the door opened again and light flooded the hallway.

  “Go,” yelled Mickey.

  Jonno dashed down the stairs and tried to reach the front door. The old lady was brave though. She’d seen what Jonno was carrying and had no intention of losing her savings without a fight. She lunged for the masked raider. The element of surprise was enough to make Jonno drop the chest. The woman could have been satisfied with that but she was incensed with the intrusion into her home. Grabbing hold of Jonno, she tried to wrestle him to the ground.

  Mickey leaped ahead to the front door. He hoped that it had a Yale lock and didn’t need a key. He was in luck. Mickey threw bolts at the top and bottom of the door and was about to turn the catch to freedom when the woman’s husband piled into him.

  “Stuart, help me,” the woman called. She was losing her fight with Jonno who was wriggling free of her grip. Stuart briefly weighed up his options; hang onto one or risk losing two. He let go of Mickey and went to aid his wife.

  Mickey had the door open in an instant. Jonno broke the woman’s hold on him with an elbow in the face. She dropped to the floor and Jonno hurled himself towards the door. He was so focused on escape that he barely registered Stuart and ran into him, knocking the old man to one side. Jonno cleared the front door, empty handed, followed by Pester and Elena.

  Like his wife, Stuart was brave, and wasn’t done yet. He recovered his balance and ran after the intruders. Four were running down the long garden path; Stuart was focusing on the two that were visible to him. They were halfway to the gate and the gap was widening. Stuart tried to put on an extra burst of speed.

  Then there was a cry of alarm from inside the house.

  “Stuart, Stuart.”

  Jonno and Mickey had reached the street by then. Mickey glanced over his shoulder to see the old man lying on the ground clutching his chest. His wife was on her hands and knees on the doorstep. She had a look of terror on her blood coated face. Jonno and Mickey continued running.

  Then Mickey split in two.

  A translucent version of Mickey carried on down the street, while a solid and full bodied Mickey limped back to the gate and up the long garden path to where the man lay. He took a quick look at the old man then went to the woman. She had a bloody nose and a split lip. It was a sight that Mickey had seen too many times before. He stepped inside the house and scanned around the hallway for the phone.

  “Hello. Ambulance please. Two old people have been attacked. Please hurry, I think one of them is having a heart attack.” Mickey gave the address then hung up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the woman, as he left th
e house. “We never meant for either of you to get hurt.” Mickey limped down the path to where Pester and Elena were waiting.

  Chapter 25

  Pester had a look of admiration on his face. Mickey removed his balaclava.

  “That was very noble of you,” said Pester, patting Mickey on the back. “It was also very risky. You could have upset the balance of things.”

  Mickey indicated that they shouldn’t hang around outside the house.

  “It was something that I felt I ought to do,” he said as they walked along the street. Progress was slow. Mickey’s thigh was protesting about the state it was in.

  “I do not understand why you kept running but came back as well,” said Elena.

  Mickey couldn’t answer Elena so Pester had to explain. “Because this Mickey is close to the surface of the Mickey who carried out the break in he was able to influence things, but not prevent them from happening. That was why the other, earlier Mickey carried on with what he did that night.”

  Both Pester and Mickey could tell that Elena still didn’t understand.

  Mickey didn’t get it either, really, but tried to clarify things. “The man died because his wife was too badly hurt to call for an ambulance. I don’t know if it will help this time, but I had to try. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. They weren’t supposed to be here.”

  Elena remained quiet but gave Mickey an appraising look. They reached the end of the street and turned right. In the distance sirens could be heard. Mickey hoped it was the ambulance that he’d summoned.

  “Do you think I could have upset the balance of things badly?” Mickey asked Pester.

  “As your earlier self kept running, and the fact that you’re still here, I don’t think there were any consequences for you in life,” Pester replied. “If there are to be any on this side, then I’d expect them to show up soon.”