The Dead Have No Shadows (25 page)

They had reached the city centre but it wasn’t quite the city centre that Mickey was familiar with.  Where the market square should have been was a small copse.  The dead trees were interspersed with boulders and clumps of dead grass.  They continued to run back across the market place until they were blocked by the row of shops that were the start of the
Irongate
area of the city.  The image was totally wrong.

“Your time here is running out,” said Pester.  “The valley is coming back.  You’ll soon have to leave and carry on with your journey.”

“How will I know it’s time?” asked Mickey.

“You’ll know.”

So we’re back to being cryptic, thought Mickey.  He was about to say so, then dropped the idea.  Maybe Pester was being honest and genuinely didn’t know.

“You’ll need to be careful from now on though,” Pester added.  “Now that your home town is fading Mr. Jolly will step up his efforts to reach you.  No doubt he’ll have discovered that Elena is missing by now; and I can’t see him being very pleased about it.”

They skirted the low hill and walked along Sadler Gate, a cobbled pedestrian street lined with bars and cafes.  This shortcut took them away from the city centre and into a semi-suburban part of the city.  Mickey led the way through the backstreets automatically, though his pace started to get slower from the nagging pain in his thigh.

Turning into another backstreet Mickey slowed to a complete halt.

“What is wrong?  Is your leg hurting too much?” asked Elena.

In reply Mickey simply shook his head.

“This can’t be right,” he muttered, but didn’t immediately elaborate.  He stared across the street until he was prompted for an explanation by Elena.

“That shop,” Mickey replied, pointing.  “It shouldn’t be like that.”

The shop in question was on the junction of yet another street.  It had been ravaged by fire.  The roof had collapsed and the shop frontage and first floor windows had been boarded up.

“The shop wasn’t like that on the night I confronted
him
,” Mickey said.  “It wasn’t burnt down until almost two years later.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Elena.

“Because that was where
Jonno
lived.  That was his Dad’s sweet shop.”

Elena didn’t know about Mickey’s background so had no idea what he was talking about, or who
Jonno
was – but Pester did.

“Clearly your friend survived, as he was with you on the day you died.  Did the rest of his family get out?”

“Yes, fortunately,” said Mickey.  “The bastards who torched the shop made
Jonno’s
parents and two sisters watch while they smashed the place up before they set light to it.”

Mickey had begun walking again.  He crossed the road and stood outside the burned out shell of the shop.  He remembered the times when he had
blagged
free chocolate from
Jonno’s
Mum.  Mr. Patel had never been so generous, but
Jonno’s
Mum had always been a soft touch.  Mickey looked up at the flat above the shop where he and
Jonno
had spent hours planning how
Jonno
was going to grow his own chocolate selling empire.  Life had been simpler then.  That was before Mickey had started at the university and
Jonno
had become more secretive; keeping his drug dealing activities a secret from his best friend as he slipped deeper into a murky world that he couldn’t escape from.

“I think you’re right about time running out, Pester,” Mickey said.  “We’re almost up to date.”

He spotted that the boarding over the door was loose.

“I think we need to go in.”  The look on his face suggested that it was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Why Mickey; what is in there?” asked Elena.  She seemed about as happy as Mickey was at the prospect of entering the charred shell of the shop.

“Almost certainly not what you’d expect,” Mickey replied.  Oh shit, he thought, I’m beginning to sound like Pester.

“You mean like what happened at your home?” Elena said.

Mickey nodded.

“Why do we have to do these things?  Why can we not just go on with the journey?”

“This is part of Mickey’s journey,” Pester replied.  “So it’s part of yours as well now.”

The girl didn’t reply.  She didn’t want to do this, she’d waited for two years to go on her journey.  Her patience with Mickey Raymond’s own journey was wearing thin.

“Try not to make a sound or react too much if things do change,” Pester said to Elena, trying not to smile at the sulk on her face.  “You’ll be less likely to draw attention to yourself on the off chance that people can see all three of us.”

Mickey prised open the boarding over the doorway.  All of he could see inside the old sweet shop was darkness.  He could easily imagine Mr. Patel behind the counter; a tall imposing figure made to look like a giant to small kids with his huge beard and bright red turban.  Mickey could still sense the permanent smell of sugar, mint and chocolate that greeted people when they had walked into the shop.  All of that had gone and the only smell now was the residual stench of charred wood and plastic.

Mickey was convinced that he had something else to face.  Not in the shop, that was just a doorway, he was sure, but somewhere beyond. 

Mickey’s hunch was proved to be correct.

Unlike when he had arrived unexpectedly at
Ridsdale
Street, Mickey continued walking, giving Pester and Elena room when they passed through the unseen portal.  They passed from the doorway of Mr. Patel’s sweet shop, tucked away in a residential part of the city, to the doorway of a sandwich bar on Friar Walk, in the city centre.

When Pester and Elena joined him Mickey said, “This one only happened a couple of weeks ago.”

The sandwich bar was an innocent looking place that Mickey had walked past hundreds of times.  He was pretty sure that he had bought snacks from there from time to time.  A little old lady and her equally little old husband were sharing a toasted sandwich.  The only other customer was a tramp nursing a mug of what looked like cold, stewed tea.

“You here for
Janardan
?” an Asian youth behind the counter asked, giving Mickey a suspicious once over.

Mickey realised that he hadn’t reverted to his earlier self yet, so it took him a while to answer.

Er
, yeah.  He texted me.  Told me to meet him here when I finished at
uni
.”  Mickey was running from memory.  He thought that was close enough to what he had originally said.

“In the back room.” The youth nodded to a door just beyond the counter.  He raised the hatch to let Mickey through.  Mickey held back to allow Pester and Elena through first before going through himself.

The youth gave Mickey a quizzical look but didn’t say anything.  Mickey assumed that his two companions were invisible to the counter boy.

“You tooled up?” the youth asked, putting a hand out to stop Mickey from clearing the hatch.

“What?
Er
, no.  No, I’m not.”  Mickey had forgotten that he had been asked that.

The youth grinned.  “Nah, you don’t look the sort.  Go on then.”  He nodded at the door he had indicated before.

Mickey walked through into a small lounge area.  In a corner of the room a large flat screen television was showing an action movie.  The three occupants of an old faux leather settee in front of the screen were engrossed in the film.  One of the cafe tables from the front of the shop was placed against one wall.  There was a chair at either end of the table.  One of these was taken by
Jonno
.  He had turned at the sound of Mickey entering the room. 
Jonno’s
hands were tied and he looked rough.  His face was a mass of bruises.  Despite the swelling and discolouration,
Jonno’s
fear shone through.

Immediately to the left of where Mickey stood was a storeroom.  Pester and Elena quickly slipped inside and eased the door to; leaving just a small crack between the door and the frame that Pester could look through.

One of the men on the settee turned round and looked Mickey up and down.

“Sit at the table and keep your mouth shut,” he said and went back to watching the movie.

Mickey did as he was told and sat opposite
Jonno
.  This placed him facing towards the door when Pester and Elena were hidden. 

By now Mickey had regressed. 

He had a vague idea that someone had been with him when he had come into the cafe; but that couldn’t have been the case.  He’d come straight from university, alone.

“
Jonno
, what the...”

“Shut the fuck up,” barked the man who had just spoken to Mickey.

A door behind Mickey opened and everyone on the settee spun round.  One of the men, not the man who had just spoken, got up and went into another room.  Mickey also turned but the door was only just cracked open so he couldn’t see what was beyond.  The man returned a few minutes later and turned the television off.  The others started to complain then saw the look on the man’s face and thought better of it.  They got up and joined the man who was now standing in front of Mickey and
Jonno
.

Mickey recognised one of the three.  It was
Jinendra
,
Jonno’s
waste of space cousin.  
Jinendra
looked none too comfortable.  Given the state of his younger relative it was no surprise.

The man who had told Mickey to, ‘shut the fuck up,’ spoke first.

“
Yer
man here has been a silly boy.” He leant towards Mickey for effect and Mickey got a whiff of beer and tobacco.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mickey. “He’s not my man.”

The slap came so fast that the man’s hand was back where it started from before Mickey even registered that he had been hit.  He raised his hand to his face expecting to find blood.  He didn’t, but his cheek and lip felt hot and sore.

“Now you just shut your trap and listen and you won’t get
anymore
of that,” said the man.  “
Laddo
here has been a silly boy.” Each word of the sentence was spaced to give it more effect.  “He’s gone and got himself into a spot of debt.”

Mickey stared at
Jonno
with a ‘what have you done this time?’ look on his face.  Mickey’s heart sank when
Jonno
couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hold eye contact.  He looked down at his friend’s shaking hands; the knuckles were scuffed and bleeding.  Mickey thought that a couple of the fingers may have been broken or dislocated.

The man’s ugly face loomed large in Mickey’s vision.  The stubble on the man’s cheeks and chin was marginally longer than that on his head.  His grin was a poor advertisement for dentistry and another wave of his noxious breath made Mickey feel nauseous.

“He owes us a fair wedge of money and we want it, now,” the man said.

Risking another slap Mickey said, “I still don’t understand what it’s got to do with me.”

The man who had turned off the television set turned to
Jonno’s
cousin and raised an eyebrow. 
Jinendra
was trying his best to look cocky but, by Mickey’s estimation, he was falling a long way short.

“They was in it together,”
Jinendra
said with a forced swagger.  “He been watching my
cuz’s
back since they was in little school.  He planned the whole thing to scam our family of d’ money,
innit
.”

Despite the blatant lie, Mickey struggled to keep a straight face. 
Jinendra’s
effort at street patter was so false.  If Mrs Patel ever heard him talk that way she would clip him round the ear and give him such a large piece of her mind that he would be chewing it for days.