A Middle-Aged Man's Abode

Tuesday, 1st September

16:15

Driving the distinct vehicle around the main link-road which circulated the city centre, the driver pulled into an abandoned lot surrounded by back-streets near a strip of road catering to Middle Eastern take-out places and grocery stores called the Curry Mile. Getting out, Alex stretched and sucked in the scent of spices and chargrilled meat. Line of sight sliding to the vehicle-owner sitting in the back, Alex eyed Julian's get-up. "I take it that was Dom's idea?" She threw her hand out at his front as she took a drag on her cigarette.

Covering his body with his arms, Julian looked away. "I don't want to talk about it." Anyone would think he'd been violated.

"Take all of your documents from the car, Jules."

The addressee scrambled out of the back seat, his arms flapping. His eyes landed on the blonde and his jaw wagged while a string of groans fell out. "We're not doing what you're planning to do."

"Everyone saw this car near the hotel. It's probably all over cctv footage, too." Rolling her neck and causing it to crack, Alex held her ground. "I'm blind as fuck but I clocked you my second-man-in."

Domino cut in with a quick question. "So, you were speed-dating?"

"Is that why you were following me?"

"You knew?"

"Not definitively until you just admitted it."

"I said I was sorry, right?"

"We'll discuss that later. The issue is that while I was there, I felt something off."

"What do you mean, off?"

"One of the people in there had something bad in their possession." Flattening her hair tousled in the kerfuffle and the stereotypical British weather, Alex ragged her suit jacket off and threw it inside the car. "Which is why I stripped them but security started searching."

"H-haa..?"

"I mean, I was taught by the best, and I was kinda in a hurry."

"What the hell did you do with them?"

"The hotel only uses waterproof suit bags, so I threw them out of the window and into the canal."

"You threw them out of the window?

"With a weight; they're not gonna move too far. I can't say anything good about the amount of oxygen they have left though." Snorting her nose clear from a bloody snot-clot which had been dislodged with a punch to the face twenty minutes before, Alex spat it into a tissue and looked to the pair now stood in front of her. "I think this is about the time you hired an intern, Jules, because I'll be dead before I go anywhere near the water in that canal. I can live without HIV and siph, thanks."

"They were still alive?"

"I'd be more concerned about what a bunch of mercs are protecting at a speed-dating event."

"Or rather, what they were planning to steal," Julian cut in, his brows furrowed.

"Is nobody else bothered about the person Alex left to suffocate to death in the fucking canal?"

"By the looks of the brand they had on the back of their neck, I'd hardly say they were a person at that point," scraping her hair back and wiping the sweat and precipitation off her face with her wrist, the blonde inspected the blood on her fingers. "One of those fuckers nearly put me through a wall."

"That's a cause for concern..."

"No shit, Julian. Thanks for the belated update. You're not the one who was almost thrown out of a window sixty feet up and into the goddamn River Styx of Manchester after getting the shit kicked out of them by a bunch of..." Scowling off in thought, Alex spat the excessive liquid in her mouth out into the tissue swilling her snotty nose-clot. "I don't even know what they were; they weren't any usual supernatural being, but they certainly weren't human, either."

"Whatever the case, we need to get out of here now. A small white man in a security uniform with two women in so little clothing is no doubt going to grab the attention of the residents."

"Why do you say that?"

Hacking the hardening blood from her nose and mouth blocking up her airways with its impossibly quick coagulation, Alex's face scrunched and twisted when she hacked up another blob into the tissue, "because no matter what, outside of this situation there's no way a dorkish-ly good looking, five-foot tall man in his mid-to-late forties would walk away from a crime scene with half-naked babes like us unless they're were working a job together or you were a completely trashed millionaire being bamboozled ."

Hurt clear on his face, Julian's eyebrows tensed as he tried to refrain from showing such a thing, "I'm sure you're getting ruder, Alex."

"Maybe it has something to do with the shitter jobs getting shittier pay while the likelihood of us getting murdered rises," pinching her lips, the blonde croaked, "'you thought about that?"

Forty Minutes Later...

The black vintage car rolled down the narrow street at a normal pace as not to attract any more attention than it already did on a normal day. Two dozen, maybe three, attached redbrick houses hemmed both sides of the cracked narrow road, most of the tiny yards sprouting flourishing potted gardens and housing dustbins lined neatly. It was quiet despite being behind a row of newspaper shops, a bookies, and two take-out places Alex made note of never eating at.

Julian was still weeping in the back seat. He had been for the past fifteen minutes now, it was occasionally punctuated by the curt "turn left here" and the likes. Alex didn't know what she would do if she was told to murder her child. In fact, she did. But she was not Julian, and he definitely wasn't her. The man certainly had little fight in him to wrestle past Domino and then Alex once she had stuffed the ugly tartan cover he kept on his back seat into the petrol tank and set it ablaze in an empty lot behind an abandoned block of flats near the Curry Mile. Gods, she fucking hated both the blanket and that puke-coloured metal bubble on wheels. Good riddance. It was almost worth hearing her apparent employer whinge through rush-hour traffic all the way back to his residence.

"It's this one, here," Julian held his hand out to a narrow two-storey house on the left, its old wooden door and window frames painted white. Cracked white, rather. Out of all of the little abodes lined up, Julian's seemed to stand out as one of the more humble with its missing window boxes, rustic wind chimes and quirky yard ornaments.

Taking the keys out of the ignition, the driver got out and was quickly followed by Domino, and then the snivelling mess clutching tattered Manila folders and a battered Chaplin nodding-dog to his chest. They were the only things he'd been able to salvage before that animal torched his pride and joy. Waiting by the stone post which held up a mid-chest-height wrought iron gate and the house number 59, the two women sighed at the state of the grown man sulking as he shuffled up the thin walkway sprouting weeds through cracked concrete.

Walking up the path barely wide enough for a person, and then the three large stone steps worn smooth over the last century, Julian slotted his key into the old fashioned door, the side of his shoulder slamming into it when it refused to open.

"Come in and make yourselves at home." Hanging his jacket on the banister rail to his left and then placing down his other belongings on the telephone table littered with mail and who-knew-what else to the right, the home-owner ventured further inside without looking back.

Being the last in, Alex was hit by warm air laced with the scent of fresh linen and old books. A familiar itch was already attacking her eyes, nose, and skin. Closing the door behind her with more care than the owner had shown to it, she followed after Domino who was trying her best not to accidentally knock over piles of books stacked at every corner, or brush against the framed replica paintings on the walls which seemed to be closing in on the taller pair. If nothing else, Julian's home was serving Indiana Jones realness. The Temple of Doom, that is, not the slick lone-wolf adventurer.

Getting to the end of the straight hallway, Alex saw Domino jilt a little as she passed through the doorway which led into brightness. Before her mind could comprehend why, the blonde was also in the kitchen, tripping off the small ledge with her arms out to steady herself. Julian was half-way through making drinks for them, his hand out blindly to the left, presumably to the round table barely big enough for four which was situated at the far end of the space which merged into an extension in the form of a modest conservatory.

"Take a seat," he told as he began loading the matching porcelain sugar pot, milk jug and tea cups onto a cat-print serving tray.

"I don't know what I expected when it came to your house, Jules, b-" rubbing her nose madly, Alex blinked over and over as tears beaded at the corners of her eyes, "-but, I don't thi-th-"

"Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?" Domino grimaced and pulled away from the blonde. "You look like you're somewhere between a mental breakdown and a stroke."

Julian sat the tray down in the centre of the table and handed over a cup to either guest. Surprised by the brand of tea she was offered, Domino opened the sugar pot and began spooning in her regular amount.

"Jules, d-do you hav-av-" The blonde sucked in a long breath as her chest heaved and her head tilted back. In a flash of spasticated expression and a high-pitched choo, Alex sneezed, blowing sugar granules out of the pot and off Domino's spoon - across the table and up onto the pair facing her. "Cats?" Rubbing her nose furiously, her eyes streaming and red, Alex peered to the eldest.

As if she'd forgotten sugar had been stone-blasted into her hair, Domino's expression twisted curiously. "Are you allergic to cats? How did I never know that? I just thought you didn't like them."

Julian got up and took a packet of tissues from the drawer. Handing them over, he opened the conservatory door as the blonde grumbled into the afforded luxury. "Because I tend to avoid them at all costs."

"It's not like you to run away from pussy."

Make-up smearing from the facial secretion, Alex's voice came out hoarse. "I'm not in the mood for your puns."

"I have three," Julian told into his cup and both women turned their heads to send him pointed looks.

"What?"

"One cat is bad enough for anyone. For a single man to have three cats is outrageous." Blowing each nostil full-force into the tissue, Alex scowled deeper than should be humanly possible. "For a man of your age-"

"-my age?"

Domino received a pleading glance from the man but she just pinched her lips and shrugged. "I like cats as much as the next person but I have to agree with her; it's a little weird considering your circumstance..."

"Yeah, like, a serial killer who wears his dead mother's clothing kind of weird. Or just his dead mother as a cardigan, full-stop."

Julian's whole demeanour went from sullen to defensive in less than a beat. "I don't want to hear that from you, you fucking psychopath."

Domino opened her mouth at the blonde hacking up phlegm and snorting like she'd had a hard weekend of too much cocaine cut with talcum powder. "It's not that bad," the redhead rolled her eyes at the over-reacting blonde but quickly turned her attention back to the home-owner, "but still off-putting."

"First you torch my car-"

"-I bought you that car-"

"-You stole that car!" Julian squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. "Now you're calling me a serial killer in my own home because I own cats. Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

"Yeah," standing up, Alex pulled her cigarettes from the carton in her pocket and took three strides until she was in the brick-walled yard that shadowed her by a good two foot, "buy a bastard bookcase." Snorting at the curt remark, Domino kept her eyes down.

"I have a room full of them, I'll have you know. Several, in fact."

"Several rooms?"

"I like to read."

"So do I but Christ, Jules, you're living in a fire hazard." Still rubbing her face and snotting, the blonde flicked her lighter at the end of her vice as her voice came out rougher still. "One day you'll leave your toast in thirty seconds too long and you'll be a goner. The entire place will go up in flames and you'll be cremated looking for those cunting cats that have probably long abandoned you."

"Thanks for the concern, Miss Smokey."

"No matter what you say to me, it won't make a difference because you're a single, middle-aged man who has rooms dedicated to books, dresses like he's seventy, and has three cats. Julian Darby, you're a hoarder ahead of your time." Inhaling a welcome lungful of smoke - probably more than she'd taken of oxygen in at least five years - Alex quirked her brow as she leaned against the damp wall. "With no car, to boot."

Domino's snickering turned into a belly laugh at the words which were clearly low-blows - and most definitely working at offending the man offering his hospitality.

Back up at the insults testing his patience, Julian huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "And you're just plain rude. No wonder you don't have any friends."

"I have Dom and you, that's all I need." Exhaling a long, slow breath as she kept her head tilted back, the blonde watched the sky-rats soaring across slate clouds.

"I don't mean to interrupt the afternoon banter, but did anyone clock you earlier?"

"You mean McCauley?"

The seated pair tensed and glanced to the woman who knew that dangerous name. "I shouldn't be surprised that you know him but I really don't like the fact you do."

"If it was him who noticed me instead of some random, I wouldn't have been so lucky. He would have probably managed to throw me out of the window if he recognized me." Twisting her head sharply, her neck cracked and Julian grimaced at the disgusting habit. "Again."

"Excuse me?"

"I met him around three years before I met Jules."

"And he threw you out of a window? You were what, like, sixteen then? What the fuck did you do to him?"

"Before, or after he yeeted me? Because I had a little issue with a broken leg and half of my ribcage was shattered afterwards. Even I can't do too much working with that - especially against a guy like that. Thankfully it was only the second floor. Before, however..." Cracking her neck to the opposite side, Alex looked off at nothing in particular with a hum. "It was when I was slumming it after leaving St Em's. I saw his car parked up near where I used to hang around. I'd never seen it before; it was classy, a vintage Jag in the iconic British Racing Green. I got told to leave it alone by just about everyone. Even the guys who made a living from nicking cars from big-shots told me to leave it be. But I liked it, so I took it."

"You just stole his car?"

"I just said I liked it, didn't I?"

"What is it with you and theiving cars?"

"Not many people hire teen runaways, Julian. I had to make money somehow and I just so happen to be good at boosting cars. 'Better than hooking like some of the others I met while on the streets; getting beat up, robbed, raped, knocked up and infected with STD's just because that was the only way they could survive..."

"No, you just got thrown out of a bloody window and left to die."

Hitching her shoulder, Alex twirled her cigarette between her fingers. "I was planning on selling it to a mate who worked at a chop-shop on the other side of town but of course, that would be too easy. I thought with it being a high-end car, there might be something else valuable in it. When I checked the boot, there was a girl in it."

"Holy shit, was she alive?"

"Maybe, about two days prior."

"Oh, fuck."

"There was a briefcase back there, too-"

"-You better not say what I think you're going to say."

"I was hungry."

"How the fuck could you be hungry after finding a two-day-old dead girl in the trunk of a car?"

"I guess it must have been the three days of not eating and running away from thugs constantly."

Glancing up as she recalled, Alex ran through the memory with indifference. "I left the car in a multi-storey car park that belonged to a grocery store and legged it with the case. Turns out, rich people employ GPS on their belongings."

Julian nodded at the words, his eyes still red from crying. "Even back then, he was pretty well known for being good at his job as a retrievalist. I heard his father was in the real IRA through the grapevine. When I employed Finley for a job, he already had military training due to a stint in the Rangers before a dishonourable discharge."

"I can attest to that. I still have a scar where the soulless-eyed cunt stabbed me in the gut. 'Came right at me; the fucker wasn't playing even though I was still a kid." Subconsciously placing her hand on the right side of her abdomen, Alex scrunched up her face with a facetious pout. "I'm grateful he tossed my arse outta the window because to this day, nobody as ever fucked me up as bad as that. I really thought I was a goner that day."

"Are you sure he's human?"

Alex's eyes went wild. "I would'a known," jaw flapping, she wafted her hands like a madwoman. "Why'd ya say that? Are you trying to temp something bad into happening?"

"Did you ever find out what was in the briefcase?"

"Nah, the fingerless fuck-head tossed my arse over the ledge and got off before I even knew what hit me and I didn't go back to check if he left any clues. Besides, back then, even if I would have hit jackpot, nobody I knew was that big of a player to shift it. It wasn't worth the trouble." Head tilted back a little and jaw jut out, the blonde blew smoke rings into the air. "I didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight, it was probably some kind of supernatural artefact. Nobody sends someone like him after something mundane. It was too heavy to be blackmail data, the case wasn't anything super-secure, and if it was cash, they could have just traced the serial numbers."

"That's hardly the issue at hand. What are we going to do about the Irish Terminator-G.I Joe? We can't have him cropping up out of nowhere when we're trying to work." Domino sipped her tea from the pretty cup, her eyes closed as she enjoyed a reprieve from the day's stress. "Especially if he's working the same scene."

"He has no regard for life, human or otherwise, and he would massacre a building full of people if there was enough zeros on the end of his contract price." Finishing her vice, she scraped off the end via the brickwork and tweaked the cork. "I guess I'll just have to take care of him."

"You just said he nearly killed you."

"That was over twelve years ago. I think I could take him now." Holding her arms up, she tensed her biceps and upper chest muscles with a facetious grin and the flicker of her brow.

"That's not funny. You've had those years to get better, but so has he."

"I suppose I'll just have to kill him in his sleep, then."

Turning her head to face Julian, Domino gawked. "Is she for real, or what?"

"It's not a bad plan, really." Julian shrugged and then wrinkled his nose when he got a whiff of something stale from the stupid uniform he was still wearing.

"Have you both lost your minds?"

"He doesn't know I'm here, so it's an advantage for the moment. When he does find out I'm here - and he will - he'll probably come to kill me anyway." Itching her ear and then hissing when it immediately started to get hot, Alex pulled another white stick from her pack of cigarettes. "That twat doesn't give up, no matter how much time has passed." Line of sight on the dark grit the heels of her shoes were beginning to sink into, the blonde's frown deepened. "He killed three of the people I used to doss with even after he thought he killed me, just because they knew me."

"How can you be so nonchalant about this?"

"Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't give a shit, but I've grown up with people wanting to kill me from the day I was born; one potato-munching, whiskey-drinking, soulless fuck-head isn't going to make me go underground and cry like a whiny little bitch." Coming inside and facing away from the counter beside the door, Alex leaned back in the wooden chair. As soon as she'd plonked her rear in the seat, her eyes started to water again. "Jules, get-" Something in her peripheral caused the older female to turn her head mid-sentence. Shooting out of her chair and tripping backward over the spindles of the tumbled item, she pointed at the counter. Or rather, what had crept up onto it. "What in all that's holy is that Golum-looking fucker?" Holding her chest with one hand, Alex staggered back away from the chocolate coloured animal. "Argh-chwaghtch!" The blonde sneezed, shaking her head like a dog with a dire hay fever affliction.

Holding his hand out to his pet, Julian ushered the cat into his arms. "This is Truffle, the youngest."

Grimacing as if the man was holding a bag of decomposing flesh, Alex held the back of her wrist to her nose and mouth. "This whole thing is so wrong. What the fuck is that?" Her voice pushed out several notches higher than usual.

"It's an Oriental Shorthair."

"Does it fly?"

"Why would a cat fly?"

"If it doesn't, why the hell does it need ears that big?"

Covering the mentioned body part with one hand, Julian turned his shoulder in and shielded the animal from the hurtful words. "Don't listen to her, Truffy."

Dropping her arm just enough to show a disgusted scowl, Alex scoffed and turned on her heels. "I'm going to wait in the car." Pausing to glare over her shoulder, the blonde gave a warning snarl. "You better change your clothes before even thinking about getting in my car after manhandling that." Without waiting for a reply or compromise, the irritated woman left the way she came in. "Jules! Julian! They're multiplying!" The shrill scream from the narrow hallway was punctuated by clomping boot steps, a caterwaul, and then the door clicking open and slamming just as quickly.

The home-owner glanced at his remaining guest just as two other cats sauntered in like they owned the place. A white and tabby-patch of the same breed honked when it caught sight of Julian and slinked over quickly. Following behind, a fat - almost dangerously so - neon orange long hair with a brown skunk stripe and flat face gave Domino the stink-eye before waddling to its human.

Julian placed Truffle down with the other two and went about taking cat food out of one of the high cupboards. "I'll feed them and get changed, and then we can go."

"Oh, go ahead. Don't mind me." Domino wafted her hand, clearly amused by the show of affection she was seeing.

"Here, ki-ki-kitties~" Hurrying with the task, the home-owner called his pets and lined up the bowls of food and water by the wall. "Truffle, Jaffa Cake, Margaret~"

Domino couldn't take it. Plastering her hands over the breathing spots on her face, the redhead wheezed. What had he been thinking when he named them? Sucking her lips in and clamping them with her teeth to hold the laughter in, she collected the used teacups and placed them in the sink. "Jules, you named two of them after food."

"Yes, and?"

"Why is the other called Margaret?"

"Margaret Thatcher."

And there she was thinking it would be a normal reason. Shielding her closed eyes, the redhead began running the hot tap. "If you say so, Jules." Shaking her head, she made a start on washing the pots. "You better make a move before she sets fire to your house as well."

Julian thought about contesting the statement but his brain knew better. Gesturing to the sink, he nodded in appreciation. "Thanks for that; I'll just be a minute."

The door clicked open again just as Julian was about to ascend the stairs. Sticking a bare, tattooed arm in but speaking from behind the barrier, Alex handed over a letter. "Some guy on a peddle-bike just handed this off."

"My mail always comes between ten and half eleven."

"Well, that's whatcha got." Closing the door until only her fingers were left, Alex grunted. "You have four minutes before you have to call a taxi."

 

9th October 2020 - 21:04