The Birth of the Single-Handed Viking

By Davey C Bond

Jamesey John Dejames, after being seriously injured by the IRA in Belfast, thinks his dream of starting 'On la Guardia' after he leaves the army had ended but his beautiful girlfriend, Janet Elaine Stark, has other ideas and soon it is up and running. It is a resounding success and attracts attention and is soon doing off the book jobs for the British and other democratic governments.

New York, 2011. The stunning-looking Luca Natasha Valendenski, a Lithuanian immigrant and interior designer, is being stalked by a violent rapist and his pack of thugs when things come to a violent climax.

Rabbie Hamish Dejames, son of Jamesey and head of OLG New York, arrives in the nick of time and sparks fly and shots are fired but good overcomes evil and they both soon embark on an incredible, if unorthodox, romantic journey together.

Based in London, New York, Belfast and other thrilling locations and filled with colourful, dangerous and interesting characters and places, The Birth of the Single-Handed Viking will hold you gripped from start to finish and wanting more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528944564

Davey C Bond

He is a semi-disabled ex-soldier and retired police officer. He left the force in mid-'90s after a number of injuries and ill health. Highly commended on numerous occasions, he considers himself lucky to be alive. He's spent his last 18 months in Belfast, which included an undercover tour to thwart the IRA bombing campaign going on at the time. His interests, apart from writing, include poetry, good music, art, history, fine dining and socialising with friends and family. Widowed, he has four grown children and nearly a football team of grandchildren. He lives in Northern Ireland with his new partner and extended family. He has two sequels completed in the DeJames trilogy and is working on another.

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About the Author

He is a semi-disabled ex-soldier and retired police officer. He left the force in mid-’90s after a number of injuries and ill health. Highly commended on numerous occasions, he considers himself lucky to be alive. He’s spent his last 18 months in Belfast, which included an undercover tour to thwart the IRA bombing campaign going on at the time.

His interests, apart from writing, include poetry, good music, art, history, fine dining and socialising with friends and family.

Widowed, he has four grown children and nearly a football team of grandchildren. He lives in Northern Ireland with his new partner and extended family.

He has two sequels completed in the DeJames trilogy and is working on another.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to all the members of the armed forces of all the democratic countries who are fighting and putting their lives on the line to protect their citizens and defeat the forces of the evil terrorist insurgency prevailing in the world at the moment.

Lest we forget.

Copyright Information

Copyright © Davey C Bond (2019)

The right of Davey C Bond to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528900522 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528900539 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528944564 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction and most of the characters, places and operations are a figment of the author’s overactive imagination, and any similarity to real people and events is purely coincidental, although some of the events and operations are loosely based on real events the author witnessed or was involved in. The author has changed dates, times, venues and, sometimes, the outcome.

Acknowledgements

This book would probably be lying on a shelf, gathering dust now but for the help and encouragement of Liz Goodman, the late Jackie Johnston and the Fireside Crew in ‘Fajoes’.

Martin and Janice of Virtual Secretarial Services, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. Big Jeff Morrow, landlord extraordinaire. Last but not least, my daughters and extended family who are waiting with bated breath and not a little degree of trepidation for the final product.

Thanks, guys.

Summary

A novel of action, romance and triumph over adversity

(The first in the DeJames family trilogy)

"You might be stupid enough to mess with the DeJames men but you certainly don’t mess with their women."

Prologue

I

Bel-Aire, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California… Late March, 2011

Jamesey John DeJames came back from the balcony of his Beverley Hills penthouse apartment and gazed at his dying wife. His mind a conflict of emotions and thoughts. The sun was coming up over the dark Hollywood Hills, bringing light and colour to the scrubland, but there was no sunlight in his mind, only dark-grey clouds, bringing the storm of loss closer.

He threw his head back and gazed angrily up at the ceiling, hands raised in surrender, looking for mercy, an enemy to fight and devour to save the light of his life.

Nature’s daily rebirth, he mused, wishing he could somehow infuse some of the awesome natural power into his beloved Collette and drive the cursed illness out of her. He couldn’t grasp the concept that after they had loved so hard, played and worked so hard, she was being taken away from him so cruelly. It was pitiless and overwhelming. A travesty of life, something that should not be happening and was going seriously against the grain, call it what you will but it was very hard to handle and accept, and Jamesey didn’t think he ever would.

Leave the curtains open, I wanta see the sun. Now chill babe, I will always be wiv yah. Look after the kids, little blighters, the luv of my life so they are, so do yah best for them or I’ll bleedin’ come back to haunt yah, she whispered, her eyes glazed with the strong painkillers, her pupils black pinpricks. Maybe we will take the kids to the beach later, little sods will love that, she giggled hoarsely, Jamesey not wanting to remind her ‘the kids’ were grown now and had flown the nest.

Jamesey had to grin, she was going to be a hard act to follow and he felt his love for her deep in his bones.

He left a gap of a few feet, and a shaft of sunlight made a corridor of light across the bed, illuminating her ravaged but still pretty features. A big man, topping six feet and strongly built, he crossed to the bed and lay down with her in his arms. She stared at his red/gold hair and then his ruggedly handsome face and into his artic blue eyes, which at one moment could be full of mischief, then the next with implacable, deadly intent, as sharp as flint.

At sixty-one Jamesey was still a very handsome man and incredibly attractive to women, but Collette never had to worry about him that way. He only ever had eyes for her, his little Collette. She would die content knowing that in thirty-four years of marriage, she had never stopped loving him. She worshipped the ground he walked on, and she knew, deep in her heart, he felt the same about her.

Yer startin’ to go a bit grey on top, mate! The ol’ snow’s comin’ down on yer Barnet.¹ He smiled at her reverting back to her cockney accent after twenty years in the States.

Collette had done him proud in all ways. No man could have had a better woman to stand by his side through life. But for her he wouldn’t be in the position he was in now. Top of the pack and master of all he surveyed. The ‘alpha wolf’ personified.

Cor blimey! Who’d ‘av thought a little Garston gal would’ve ended up in a bleedin’ penthouse in Hollywood?

Fifty cents for swearing, he replied with a private joke from earlier in their marriage.

She was quite lucid now. He knew the end was not far off, the bastard enemy had prevailed and was rampaging, pillaging, raping and raising his realm and fiefdom, and he was going to steal away with the ‘Holy Grail’, his outstanding ‘class act’, his right hand, his irreplaceable Collette. He had seen it many times before in young wounded soldiers after battle. The battle was lost; the war was over.

"Ah wind in yer Gregory Peck², love. Yer know I’d give ya my shadow if I could get it off."

You deserve everything you got, you earned it. I would run over broken glass barefoot for ya darlin’, I would, he told her truthfully. And give vindaloo curry up, he told her untruthfully, to which she gave a mocking snort of disbelief and a rueful smile.

The doctor put his head around the door, and Jamesey shooed him away with an impatient hand. He was sick of doctors and nurses hovering about. He wanted these last precious moments with Collette alone. He recalled as if yesterday her coming to his hospital bed in Belfast, forty years ago, taking charge, caring for him and mapping their future out.

In fact, it wasn’t just a want. It was a need. To see her off safely on her long journey ahead. He knew wherever it was, it would be warm, safe and full of love, and she would be looking over him and their offspring.

"If yer go bald, you could get yerself a nice syrup of figs.³ Get the gals chasing round after ya, she teased him. Always loved your strong hair, lover."

He kissed her forehead. There won’t be another woman, kiddo, he breathed, admiring her sense of humour in adversity. She was a strong woman all right. No one woman can replace you. No comparison out there. Anyway, thirty-five years with you has spoilt me.

‘Nothing Compares to You’ – Sinead O’Connor – 1990. We used to dance to that in the ol’ Peel, she said with a grin. Hip to hip, mate, yah could have clamped a double decker bus when you were younger and kissed me with yah lips, fair took my breath away, so yah did.

We will again, kiddo, for eternity and ever after, he promised.

I’ll wait for yer, Jamesey. It’s been a privilege, mate, she whispered contentedly.

The privilege has been all mine, baby, never having said a truer word in his life.

Collette was fading now, smiling at God knows what. Memories and thoughts were in her mind. The light was circling around them, beckoning enticingly, promising her eternal succour from her pain. Abba… Waterloo, EuroSong Contest 1974. We are getting our own Waterloo eventually, luv… Life is a stage ol’ Willie Shakespeare said but the curtain has to close someday. She gasped for breath, Oh how I lurved Abba… I don’t feel myself, Jamesey… What the frig’s happening?

Time for a tactical withdrawal, Collette, fall back, rest, lick your wounds and reassess. He chokingly fought back the tears. You have to go now, darling. I’ll follow on soon. God bless and keep a seat for me, dear heart, the temperature in the room dropped as the angels came down to escort her to the next stage of her incredible journey.

No retreat, mate, you hear me, she whispered and died with a last gentle sigh, the light fading from her eyes and stealing away with her essence.

Jamesey looked into her once flashing gorgeous eyes for one last time before he closed them with a finality that nearly ripped his huge heart asunder. He’d lost his soulmate. He was bereft. He lay by her side and thought back to the first time he clamped eyes on her in a North London pub. He thought about her outrageous pink hair, smouldering hazel eyes flecked with green and gold, and the cheekiest, pert, denim-clad arse any soldier home on leave would ever want to gaze upon. Feck, and what a journey they had embarked on and travelled! Jamesey smiled fondly as he remembered, Collette cradled in his arms as if peacefully asleep.

---

Rabbie, Jamie and Petral DeJames peeked through a crack in the door. Guess that’s it then. Mum’s gone, said Rabbie through wet eyes. Petral put her arm around him, We’ll be strong for Pop. He’ll be devastated.

Jamie scowled, "She was robbed. At least Dick Turpin⁴ wore a friggin’ mask. I’m going for a drink. Let the old man get composed for an hour or two."

Despite the gravity of the situation, Petral laughed, Mum would have loved that one… I’ll drive you. You know how he hates a fuss… Smudger and Kim are on their way to keep an eyeball all on him.

Rabbie shrugged his jacket on, Count me in. We’ll go toast Mum. She certainly took no crap but surely covered us in a blanket of love and care. She was a legend in the face of adversity.

They stole quietly out, leaving Jamesey to his immediate grief as his mind wandered down over the years, seeking some type of last solace in his memory banks, then a big grin split his face as he thought of their first curry night, an army hospital in Belfast and the dragon of a Matron, and how whatever the seriousness of the situation or just the general annoyance of daily life, Collette was at his side to console and advise him.

His mind shot back to a grey, impersonal train station as he headed off to war, and the beautiful, vibrant young woman waving him off, blowing kisses, cheeks stained with tears.

The doctor hedged his way in, concerned. Bloody diamond in a pile of coal she was, Jamesey informed him, Now sod off for a few hours, I’ll be reminiscing.

II

First Thursday in March, 2013, Midnight. Apartment 3B, ‘The Poplar Trees’ Apartments, North Village, New York City

Luca Valendenski tossed fitfully as she slept. Her dreams were of faraway shores and of a dead lover. She smiled in her sleep as she saw her lover’s face and his arms opened wide to greet her. Suddenly, Galen’s face disappeared and her dream became dark and menacing. Her exquisitely lovely face took on a frown as impending pitch-black clouds and shapes surrounded her and fearfulness gripped her subconscious. A large man in black strode towards her, hatred in his pace and eyes like steel traps.

She whimpered and rolled on to her back as beads of perspiration broke across her terrified countenance. The evil spectre was nearly upon her now, but as is the nature of nightmares, her legs were stuck fast as if cemented to the ground and she couldn’t flee.

And flee she knew she had to, because, as sure as you could predict the oceans’ tides, she realised this monster’s only intent was to do her serious harm.

She watched him with fixated eyes. He stopped before her, laughed through a mouth laced with teeth like broken tombstones and reached out to grip the cringing young beauty in a deadly embrace, his odour rank and putrid.

Escape barred and swooning with fright, she knew the situation was hopeless.

A shaft of bright light broke from the side and a strong-looking man strode down its corridor, illuminating the scene. He wore a colourful tartan coat and exuded confidence as he faced the fiend.

Go now, Luca. You’re free. I’ll handle this, and the rescuer confronted the evil entity.

Luca’s legs were freed as if heavy shackles had been smitten off; she needed no second bidding and took off like an exotic bird released from a cage and rushed towards the shaft of light to freedom.

She woke with a start, heart thudding and sat up, disorientated, chest heaving. She had fallen asleep with her bedside lamp on. What a weird dream! Who was the stranger? He had a handsome face and a slight burr in his accent she couldn’t place. Luca didn’t need to think too hard as to who the man in black was. She shuddered at the thought and memory of him. No more cheese and pickle sandwiches before bed again, my girl, she chided herself after putting the lamp out. She soon sank into a deep, dream-free slumber, happy her rescuer, whoever he was, was looking over her and monitoring her dreams and keeping her safe from devils, and she felt sheltered and secure.

In the alley, three floors below, a tall, beefy man in a black trench coat watched her light go out, Soon, you bitch. Very soon I’ll be calling, and he smirked evilly before heading off into the shadows, trailing evil.

Next morning Luca awoke and remembered nothing of her nightmare as she went through her morning routine, looking forward to her day.

Skipping down the outside steps, giving a finger wave to Mr Chin the caretaker, she almost slipped on the tiles but righted herself and laughed gaily with relief.

A clean-cut young executive, heading to work, offered a well-dressed arm You ’kay, miss? Are yah hurt?

She took his arm. Vhy tank you so much, I am fine. Silly me.

He saw her across the busy road, and she gave him her dazzling smile in farewell, which broke several men’s hearts everyday.

He eyed her departing slim back. Silly? I thought she was absolutely enchanting. You didn’t bump into many angels first thing in the morning in the concrete jungle.

Across the street a large, bad-looking guy watched him from a car. Move along, shitface, he growled, That’s my property and she ain’t for rent.

---

Cockney slang. Barnet (town in North London) Hairnet to Hair↩

Old film star – Neck.↩

Wigs↩

Seventeenth century highway man, a local hero likened to Robin Hood, hanged in York alongside his horse, ‘Black Bess’.↩

Chapter 1: ‘A Real Deal in the Peel’

(‘When I First Saw the Light in Your Eyes’… The Fureys and Davy Arthur)

London, First Monday in February, 1976 – 11.00am

Jamesey John DeJames sat on the stool at the end of the bar in ‘The Robert Peel’ public house situated at the top of Watford’s busy High Street in North London. By picking his spot he had a clear view of the doors, and if he glanced to his right, he could see the full length of the lounge bar through the partition and the entrance to that area as well. Entrances and exits were important considerations when tactical, on or off leave.

Jamesey never sat with his back to the door, he liked to see who came in so that he could react in defence if he had to and choose his exit if he had to withdraw quickly. He was a man who rarely backed down but liked to have the edge if he had to defend himself, the ‘heads up’ as they called it in the army. Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance, he mused. He doubted he would have to defend himself in The Peel, as the locals were friendly and convivial. They didn’t give one iota about politics or the dire situation in the North of Ireland, where he had just come from a few days previously, returning to barracks in Aldershot after a gruelling six-month tour in the notorious ‘Bandit Country’ of South Armagh. Several of his comrades had returned in body bags and many others were lying up in hospital with horrendous injuries. There but for the Grace of God go I, he judged with a tinge of bitterness for his suffering comrades.

He shook his head in disbelief that in a part of the United Kingdom the only way to get around was by helicopter or on foot, treading warily to avoid booby traps, and never setting up a pattern. To drive the roads in their jeeps was courting death and tempting fate because of the huge landmines and roadside bombs the IRA¹ so cunningly concealed. Only the previous week Jamesey had watched the stream of red tracer from a heavy machine gun whizz past the chopper his patrol was aboard as the IRA had a last crack at the much hated paratroopers. A free, impromptu fireworks display by the so-called freedom fighters. The pilot had to take some stomach-churning, gut-wrenching evasive manoeuvres before landing in a field a few hundred yards from the firing point. The dazed paras, some covered in vomit from when their stomachs had objected to the pilot’s antics, found that their attackers had fled across the invisible border. A brief gun battle had ensued across the disputed line the frustrated troops were not allowed to cross before the bandits disappeared into the gloom.

Still, no casualties and no hits claimed. But long runs the fox, and Jamesey knew his path would cross the IRA’s again in several weeks’ time, when his battalion returned to Ulster for another six months, this time to war-torn Belfast, the paras being in great demand by the Army High Command in the troubled province. Not so much wanted by certain sections of the province’s community after the debacle that had been Bloody Sunday, after the paras had shot down a number of protestors in Londonderry. The jury was out on that one and would be for many years to come, he guessed quite correctly.

This was his second leave in Watford. He had come last summer for two weeks to scout the area out and make plans, before heading off to Armagh. While here he got to know Ron and Eadie Mulligan, the proprietors of the pub and, liking them, he had decided to make it his watering hole. Jamesey was a guy that wherever he went, liked to have a base from which to forage out and return safely to.

The bar was filling up with the usual regulars: OAPs, shop workers on an early lunch, and a bunch of Irish navvies, who were working on the new ring road and shopping centre and trying to drink the bar dry of Guinness and Bushmills Whiskey.

He drank his Double Diamond ale contently. Ian Drury and the Blockheads were serenading him from the jukebox, something about ‘On the Road to Mandalay’ and ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’, a catchy popular song. He chatted intermittently with Ron as he went to and fro, serving his clientele. It was good to feel safe and relax. It was a rare animal in his life of a paratrooper.

Jamesey was strong-willed and refused to dwell on the past, although the odd nightmare sometimes intruded on his sleep, but he had been warned about them in advance by the old Sweats when he was a young Penguin², it was all just part and parcel of the dangerous job he was in. ‘Carpe diem’ was Jamesey’s view, ‘Seize the day and live it to the full’.

He was a striking-looking man of twenty-six. Six feet two inches tall and wearing a size 13 boot, he was fit and muscular, with wide shoulders and a handsome ruggedness to his face and frame. Health and confidence oozed off him in waves. His head was topped with golden-red curly hair and with his clear ice-blue eyes and thick golden moustache, he had the look of a marauding Viking, looking for plunder. He knew he was attractive to a certain type of woman and had indeed had several, short-lived romances on various leaves and postings.

He was now footloose and fancy free. No piece of skirt was going to hold him back from achieving his goals. When he left the army in a year’s time, he fully intended to establish the small security firm he had planned and was saving up for. He was his own man and beholden to no one. A new future was looming ahead and he was going to seize it with a strong grip and hold it aloft in both hands like Atlas the Greek god holding the world above his head.

Several pints later and he was chatting amiably with the Irish tarmaccers, who knew he was in the army but didn’t give a damn and couldn’t care one way or the other about the crazy war ‘up north’ in the troubled, occupied six counties. Jamesey was an easy man to get along with, he was a great listener and enjoyed all types of company, neither judging nor condemning the heady rich mix of drinkers he met and socialised with in the pub. Sometimes their cockney lingo and sense of humour flummoxed him, but he generally got the gist of the conversation at some point. People were generally the same the whole world over, and Jamesey had seen quite a lot of the world. Treat people the way you would expect to be treated yourself and generally you won’t get any anguish, his mother Beth had lectured him when he was young and he found it to be a good rule overall, although ‘there is only so much crap a man should take’ was his own motto. Still, his mother, who ran a sheep farm on the Scottish border, was a wise old bird, who took no crap and didn’t suffer fools easily.

Jamesey also had a vast repartee of jokes and humorous stories he had picked up in the barracks and on tours, so when Ron had ‘lock-ins’, after hours when he felt ‘Lily Law’³ wasn’t watching, Jamesey was in great demand. He sighed happily as he munched on a crispy liver pate roll Eadie had made him and gulped down more golden ale…bliss, pure bliss. He was a content man, happy in his own little world and looking forward massively to the next few years ahead, as the world was his oyster, his own devices and plans were his mistress and the road ahead beckoned enticingly before him.

The paras were worked hard, often to the point of endurance and beyond, but likewise, when they played, by crikey, they bloody well played hard too. He wondered how many of his guys he would have to bail out of the Glasshouse⁴ on his return. There was always a price to pay for young men under military discipline who had been given a taste of freedom and misbehaved; apart from murder and other serious crimes, the army was understanding and had its own standards of practice.

This was the first leave he would spend in his new house, a three-bedroom semi he had taken a mortgage out on, situated a few miles outside town. His first big step towards total independence. He swigged more beer, one ear on the Irish tarmaccers who were as easygoing and humorous a group of guys as you could meet. Salt of the earth his mother would have said of them, having worked with and employed farm labourers her whole life.

We reckon now, Jamesey, that if we cover all of yer country with the tarmac, in fifty years, then you’re have to be buying the good Irish beef and wheat off us Paddies, so you will, said a big giant of a man from Cork called Brendan, his hands black from the said stuff and the same colour as his pint of Guinness.

Jamesey and Ron, who were chatting again, grinned. "You’re only trying to get even for the famine,⁵ yer bunch of Paddy Whackers," Ron laughed back.

If you Brits had bought our corn, there would have been no famine, so there wouldn’t!

Jamesey laughed now, Jesus, Brendan! That was over a hundred years ago. You Irish have memories like elephants.

And this bunch smell like an elephant house, interposed Ron. But their bleedin’ memories ain’t that good that they remember to go back to work after lunch.

The navvies clapped and cheered, knowing their landlords and masters were good at winding them up.

"Another round of the Shamrock⁶, landlord, and give the lad there a drink as well, to be sure."

Jamesey watched as a slim girl of about twenty came around from behind the bar to catcalls and whistles from the regulars. She smiled fondly at the old drinkers and began collecting glasses and emptying overflowing ashtrays. She was very graceful and fluid, but Jamesey noticed a nervous awareness in her actions, like he often saw in his young soldiers on active service. A lack of trust in her surroundings. Intriguing. Things were looking up. He liked the thought of the slip of the mysterious girl to chat up and unravel.

The young woman was quite diminutive in stature compared to Jamesey, about five feet two inches, he judged. One of the first things he noticed was her tight, pert arse, encased in a horrendous pair of skin-tight, fake crocodile skin trousers. Her legs seemed firm and shapely in the shabby slacks, her feet wobbling on high cork platform soles as she moved from table to table, leaving the glasses on the bar for Ron to put in the sink for her. Her fingernails, as indeed were the ones on her bare toes that peeked out from the dangerous shoes, were painted bright orange. She was wearing a scoop-necked vest, ivory coloured, which exposed the tops of her small creamy breasts when she bent over.

Small but definitely shapely, Jamesey noticed, and grinned when he thought of his best mate, and oppo, Steven ‘Smudger’ Smyth. He always said, with a nudge and a wink, when in female company, Anything over a handful is a waste, mucker.

He wondered what colour her pubic hair was, because that’s what soldiers on leave thought. It was impossible to guess as she had outrageous, dyed pink hair in a short feather cut. He studied her more covertly. She had a very pretty heart-shaped face and a dainty snubbed nose. The eyes were evenly spaced, a rich hazel with green and gold flecks when they caught the light, and framed by lustrous, long dark lashes. Her lips were full and pouty in a perfect cupid’s bow. Whilst her manner seemed uncertain and insecure, her movements were done with a natural grace and deportment, pleasing to the eye, which complimented her quite sultry well-toned figure, almost feline in the fluid unconscious way she moved about. She was a looker, all right, Jamesey judged, and she either did not know it or was deliberately blanking it for her own, unknown to all but her, reasons.

As she went about her tasks, Jamesey decided she was a wee cracker. The locals treated her with affection, with the exception of one large, flabby dark-haired guy, who was sat alone at a table in the middle of the floor. Jamesey reckoned him to be in his early thirties. Everybody seemed to ignore him but it didn’t seem to faze him at all as he studied the ‘Racing Post’, lord in his own castle. For some reason Jamesey thought of fascists in brown shirts and concentration camp guards.

Cor lumey, fried eggs again today, he ribbed as she emptied his full ashtray. Yer won’t get lost in the fog with hair like that. Yer could get a job as a bleedin’ Belisha Beacon.⁷

She ignored him as she lifted his empty glass and he quite blatantly stared down her cleavage. As she turned, he gave her a sharp nip on the arse with two fat fingers; she jumped in pain and slapped him off. She mooched back over to the bar with the empties, looking slightly dejected but her pretty eyes flashing loathing and annoyance at the brute’s action.

Jamesey, who was a good judge of character, decided she was hiding an inner sadness, and there was a definite air of melancholy about her which she just failed to hide. Quite intriguing, he thought. Something was slightly out of kilter about the lass, and he guessed she didn’t worry too much about the way she looked or didn’t care, it was as if she didn’t want to be noticed too much, which was more the pity, because she was well worth looking at.

He decided that was very sad. Often his men in the platoon came to him with their problems, and he counselled them as best he could and kept an eagle eye out for signs of worry or distress in his young soldiers because a worried soldier was a distracted one, who could become a liability not only to himself but to his comrades as well.

Ron saw him watching and laughed. That’s our young Collette, one of Eadie’s strays. Does the cleaning and other things about the place, and I bung her a few quid to pay for her lodgings. Bit of a broody mare at times. The missus will be opening a home for lost cats next, he chortled, running a cloth over the bar. Keep the bloody rats down in the cellar anyhow, breed like bleedin’ Vietnamese boat people the vermin, he laughed merrily.

Jamesey could sense a story coming but said ‘broody mare’ came mooching around behind the bar and Ron shut up. She cleared her way up to them and gave him a small, unsure, tentative smile and asked if he had finished with his glass. He noticed her neat, pearly white teeth and the tip of a small pink tongue as she concentrated on emptying his ashtray. At least she looked after them. He liked a clean mouth on a woman and laughed inwardly at the analogy because a very dirty thought had crossed his mind as he studied her sultry, provocative lips. He drained the last inch of ale and pushed the glass towards her. I have now, my lovely. Any chance of another?

Thank you, sir, she said, taking the glass, I’m not allowed to pull a pint yet. Ron ses I spill too much of the profits.

Jamesey smiled reassuringly at her. Och lass, everybody has to learn. You’ll soon pick it up, and he offered her his hand. A big, intimidating calloused hand, but it shot a warm sense of security up into her heart.

Ron grinned and went off to pour his drink. She hesitated before gingerly placing her small, dainty hand in his, his big mitt engulfing hers. Jamesey John DeJames at your service, young lady, and he gave her a huge, happy, smiling, flashing, strong, white-tooth smile, wide open to invitation.

She shook his hand. I’m Collette, Collette Stark. You in the army then? You must be bleedin’ mad or very brave! she said before easing her hand out of his, Or both.

Don’t know about either of those, he grinned. "But for my sins, I took the Queen’s Shilling⁸. Her hand felt very small and fragile in his. Like a bird’s wing, small, delicate-boned. Although I guess I have it long spent by now."

Ron deposited a perfectly poured pint in front of him before rushing off to serve the rapidly filling pub. Collette lingered on, interested in the big man across the bar with the soft burr to his accent. He was blatantly studying her hair, interest in what she considered was a pair of very clear, attractive eyes full of mischief. Ya won’t get much for a shilling these days, mate. Bleedin rip off when we went decimal.

I think your hair is outstanding, he paused with a twinkle in his eye. Did you do it for a bet or what?

She blushed prettily and looked down shyly at her feet, tapping them about, distracted.

Nah, was sloshed one night at a party and some mates did it when I was akip.

Jesus! With friends like that, who needs enemies, he judged. Hope you got your own back?

She looked back up and mused on that before replying, her pretty fingers tapping on the bar top, "Nah, not these friends. They’re a bleedin’ rough pack, yer just let them get on with it and keep yer claptrap⁹ shut."

Nonsense. You have to stand up for yourself, lass, forget the Ten Commandments, we just have two commandments in the paras. It’s our philosophy.

Collette didn’t know what philosophy meant but was interested, What’re them then?

Number one, do it to them before they do it to you, and number two, if you can’t, get bloody well even.

She pondered on this for a while, her lovely face lost in thought, then she said, Yeah well, I guess that’s okay for a six-foot squaddie, built like a bleedin’ brick shit house, but it’s not for a sack of bloody twigs like me.

His laugh rang out across the bar as he revised his opinion about her clean mouth. She liked his ringing laugh, liked it very much indeed. What she couldn’t work out though was what induced him to take off in a perfectly decent aeroplane and then jump out of it thousands of feet above ground. She would have to ask him about that one day.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, Collette. In fact, there are lots of ways, he informed her mysteriously. The cat that bides its time catches more mice.

Wot da frig would yah wanna skin a cat for anyway? she questioned and added, Though yah don’t see too many moggies up near Mr Chin’s Chinese take-out, nor mice, thinking about it.

He was off again, laughing uproariously. She certainly had a sense of humour. She smiled, strangely pleased she had amused him. He took a big swig of his pint, still chortling.

And don’t put yourself down, Collette, if you’re a sack of twigs, then you’re a very pretty one, very pretty indeed.

She blushed furiously and hastened down to the sink, at Ron’s bidding, to wash glasses. He noticed she gave him the odd glance over her shoulder, not exactly smouldering looks but lingering, inquisitive ones. He dismissed her mentally as just a nice young girl flattered by the attention of an older man of the world. Master of his own destiny, if some lucky terrorist didn’t soot or blow him up, and supreme emperor of the universe he vowed to build and expand on in the years ahead.

If Jamesey was anything, it was self-confidence personified, and he knew his own mind inside out or so, he liked to believe. It would take a very big man or setback to damage the huge belief he had in himself and his abilities. Anyway, she was way too young and vulnerable; whilst he was quite attracted to her, he did not wish to start a short affair and possibly hurt her. It wouldn’t last and would be a bad experience for her when he dropped her and went back to the army. The thought that he might be hurt himself never once crossed his confident mind. Things like that had never happened yet in his life, which seemed to be going full-steam ahead and keep the boilers fully stoked, because any obstruction in the way ahead would need to get out of his path or get seriously rammed.

Ron called the half-past-two last orders, and the inebriates crowded the bar, shouting out their rounds to be consumed in the half hour drinking up time. At 3pm the crowd filed out, some steadier than others, the tarmaccers with pint bottles of stout in their overall pockets.

Blimey, how the devil those sods do it? Beats me, Jamesey, observed Ron.

Plenty of practice, I guess. Catch you tonight.

Jamesey marched out into the cold, as steady as a rock. Collette watched him, admiring his straight back and strong shoulders encased in an expensive dark-brown sheepskin coat. He could feel her eyes on his back as he exited the bar. He was highly trained in things like that, and he had the instincts of a hungry jungle predator.

Eadie watched Collette eyeing Jamesey, and she had noticed them talking earlier. She felt maternal towards the younger woman. She and Ron had not been graced with children during their long marriage, but it had been a happy marriage and she enjoyed helping run the pub, treating many of the regulars as the children she never had. Eadie had seen the need in Collette for a bit of care and attention, and she saw a bit of potential in her. She didn’t think Jamesey would be a bad catch for Collette; he was a big, strong, confident sod but she sensed an underlying fairness and loyalty in him.

Whatcha think of our Jamesey then, gal?

Collette thought for a few seconds, Yeah, he seems to be the real deal all right, don’t he?

Reckon so, replied Eadie. Now get yer coat on and be gone, I’ll finish up here.

Collette needed no second bidding and rushed off to get said garment, pocketing her tips as she hurried out. Eadie gave a small, self-satisfied smile.

You sneaky, devious witch, she scolded herself before shouting down to Ron, who was sneaking a swift Johnnie Walker. Would yah get those bleedin’ doors locked before Lily Law puts his head in, and yer know the quack said easy on the whiskey?

Ronnie quaffed his Bell’s, swilling it around his palate to get the full benefit. Bleedin doctors know all. Just a bunch of piss artists.

---

Irish Republican Army↩

Trainee para↩

The police (pure as white lilies)↩

Army Detention Centre↩

1845-1852 – When the potato crop failed in Ireland, over a million starved or emigrated, and they blamed the British Government for refusing to buy Irish wheat.↩

Another round of Guinness↩

First pedestrian crossing denoted by big lit orange globes↩

Once enlisted in the military, you are given the Queen’s or King’s shilling to pledge allegiance↩

Cockney slang for mouth↩

Chapter 2: Breakfast at Mama Jocelyn’s

(‘Breakfast in America’ – Supertramp)

I

New York, First Friday in March, 2013

Rabbie Hamish DeJames sat in the firm’s minibus, musing over the beautiful young Russian woman he had literally just met a few hours ago. DeJames was a good-looking man with clean-cut features, dark-blue eyes like a Scottish loch and raven-black hair that curled slightly at the ends if he let it grow too long. He had a steady, unflappable demeanour about him, which brought trust from the people he was in charge of and reassurance to the occasional lady that he dated. At a little over six feet tall, he had a lean muscular build, which he maintained by regular exercise and swimming.

Not only beautiful but intriguing and mysterious, he decided, hoping he would bump into her again soon. But this time at a place and time of his own choosing. He wasn’t to know that the next time he ‘bumped’ into her, it would be a bloody, protracted and dangerous business in the north village district of New York City.

Having only moved to ‘The Poplar Tree’ apartments two weeks previously and being flat out at work, he hadn’t a chance to get to know any of the other tenants yet. Just the caretaker and his wife, Mr and Mrs Chin. After nearly three years learning the ropes at the ‘On la Gardia’ office in New York – a security company his father, Jamesey John DeJames, had started over thirty years ago and now had offices in several countries – Rabbie had used that increase in salary to move into better accommodations and update his ‘Beamer’ to the latest model.

Today he was overseeing the final weekend in a year-long scheme that took teenagers from under-privileged backgrounds and foster homes out of the city and into the countryside. Here they were instructed and trained in outward-bound skills. It was a scheme contrived by his father and the Mayor and funded by both. Rabbie had been dragged onboard to run it, for which he was highly qualified.

Trained in all aspects of outdoor survival techniques and an adept rock climber after nine years in the elite British Royal Marine Commandos, he was happy to help out. After all, he thought, his ‘love life’ seemed to be on hold after his relationship with a beautiful Ethiopian supermodel called Juliette Castananda had ended.

During this last weekend, the kids would be tested in various stages of field craft, map reading, survival cooking, first aid, abseiling and rock climbing. A few had dropped out as the course progressed, but he was proud of the sixteen that were left, surprising him with their enthusiasm, tenacity and boundless energy.

Later on they would be presented with an award down at City Hall by the Mayor. An award Rabbie hoped would boost their own self-assurance and help them gain meaningful employment and not turn to a life of crime and drugs.

He had a good team of instructors with him this weekend. Mal Zacakarios was driving the bus. Six foot four, totally bald and just a slab of muscle, he had led a band of the Free Kurdish Army for years against the tyrant Saddam Hussein. After his family was massacred and he was captured, he had killed his guards and fled to New York, where he had been with OLG for eight years and was Rabbie’s ‘Head of Operatives’, as well as a close friend.

In the back with the rowdy youngsters, who were roaring out some Urban Warfare rap tune were Charles Bouchard and Billy-Jo Sawyer. Charles was a dapper little man with fair hair, who had served for many years in ‘Le Legion L’estrange’ (The French Foreign Legion) and was an expert in covert surveillance and the martial arts. He insisted on being called Charles, and God help anyone who called him Charlie, although he had a terrific sense of humour. Rabbie had seen him incapacitate a 250lb Rastafarian with one flick of a wrist and a swivel of the hip on a drugs bust they had recently done. Billy-Jo was a different kettle of fish altogether. Rabbie had brought her along to stop hanky panky between the sexes. Although he suspected it was a bit too late for that, as there seemed to be a few blooming romances going on in the group. Kids being kids and their hormones in overdrive, he guessed it was inevitable. He smiled nostalgically as he remembered fondly his own torrid teenage years in Watford, North London, and on his granny’s farm in Northumberland.

No, Billy-Jo was a no-nonsense, six foot, curly-haired blonde, who had served as a cop in the U.S. Navy and ended up in the elite Special Investigation Division. Originally from some unpronounceable town in Tennessee, she was a superb marathon runner and had a kindly way with the youngsters, and they listened to her with respect. Billy-Jo had been there, seen it and wore the T-shirt.

They were three of OLG’s best operators. All filed operatives in OLG were ex-military or police. It was the way his dad had run it for years, and it had been a winning formula because OLG was one of the most famous and sought-after security companies in the world and did a lot of contract work for several governments around the globe. Mainly bodyguarding and surveillance, but Rabbie suspected his father had his fingers in other pies, deniable ops, as he was often confidante to powerful men both in government and industry. His mysterious uncle, Davey Robert DeJames, and his sidekick ‘Scoobie’ Martin were his dad’s troubleshooters and often disappeared abroad for months at a time.

Rabbie smiled fondly at the thought of his dad. Only last week the old man had been playing golf with the President of America. At 65, he was still fit, active and very much at the helm of the OLG Galleon, which was going from strength to strength. Although, Rabbie’s Uncle Davey had hinted his dad was thinking of retiring and handing over the reins. Rabbie wondered what plotting and scheming his dad and the President had hatched as they ambled down the lush fairways of the exclusive Maryland Golf Club they had taken over for the day. Indeed, he wondered who had won, because his father was no lackey and doffed his cap to no man.

His dad started OLG in a room over a bookmaker’s shop in North London, helped by his beloved wife Collette, and was known in the Press as ‘The Single-Handed Viking’ because with his golden-red hair, height and physique, he could have been one and had lost his right hand during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Rabbie missed his mother. Collette had passed away just over two years ago after a short, ferocious battle with cancer. It had left his father bereft, and Rabbie knew his big heart was broken but he maintained business as usual. Although regarded by many as a fair employer and humanitarian, God help anyone who let the standards drop in his beloved ‘On La Guardia’!

Rabbie contemplated what his mother would have made of the gorgeous young Russian woman he had met earlier. He grinned. She would have probably taken her under her wing. His mother collected strays like Imelda Marcos collected shoes and had been patron to, and indeed founded, several charities. Rabbie had sensed a vulnerability in the young Russian, a vulnerability that pulled at his male heart to serve and protect beautiful, lonely Russian females.

Rabbie speculated if he would ever settle down himself. It had been six months since Juliette had given up her career and gone back to Africa to do aid relief with starving children in the Sudan. She wanted him to go with her and gave him an ultimatum. He didn’t want to uproot himself again, and he felt a loyalty to his father. Besides, he loved New York and wanted to settle here. Still he missed her husky voice and creamy coffee-coloured skin that felt like satin, her high, firm breasts and the long graceful famous legs so often wrapped around his waist when they copulated and he thrust into her as she moaned.

He thought about that. Copulated? Where had that come from? Not love but copulated. Had he ever really loved her or was it just the power and esteem showered upon them when they went out as a couple by acolytes fawning at their every word and bowing and scraping in their wake? Did he ever really, truly love her? He didn’t know. He knew he loved New York – one hell of a city! Such a diverse mix and match of cultures and human beings of every shape, size and colour. A different vista every time you turned a corner. The vibrant smells, hues and accents. So, so different from drab, grey North London. Like Juliette, New York’s beauty was ruthless. It would eat you up and spit you out if you hadn’t your wits about you.

Yeah, he was in a dangerous job and it could be a treacherous city, but then again any place where millions of people lived on each other’s doorsteps and in such close proximity was dodgy. A powder keg waiting to go up. It was volatile. It was a hard watch, and Rabbie DeJames at thirty-six was big, fit and strong. He was afraid of no man and walked in no man’s shadow. Screw you, Juliette. I loved you but I love New York more!

He hummed the old song by Sting ‘An Englishman in New York’ and grinned. Yep, he was very at home in the huge metropolis; with so many diverse cultures and immigrants, it was impossible to feel like a foreigner there.

As the grey industrial suburbs began to disappear and open country started to appear, he thought back to six a.m. that morning and about the Russian girl again and what a pleasing chance encounter it had been. It made him glow inside and a big cheesy grin spread across his face.

You okay there, Rabbie man? asked Mal, glancing across at him.

Yeah, Mal. Just thinking, man, just thinking.

Mal grinned back and returned his gaze to the road. He knew what and who the boss dude was thinking about. A woman like that back in Kurdistan would have ruled the watering hole and been worth ten flocks of goats.

---

Rabbie was pleased with the penthouse apartment he had acquired. The large spacious open-plan living room and kitchen combination, the two bedrooms; the master one en-suite, with a balcony overlooking the rear garden with the large poplar trees the apartments were named after. There was a spare bathroom and plenty of closet and storage space. Being fully treble-glazed, it kept the continuous rumble of traffic at bay. It wasn’t The Ritz but he liked the décor and high ceilings, and facing east to west it caught the sun in the morning and evening. Rab had seen a lot of sunsets and sunrises around the world during his military service, and he appreciated it even more now he didn’t have to get up and watch his back every day.

That morning Rabbie had left at six a.m., dressed in warm clothing – a red tartan fleece, heavy denim climbing breeches, which ended just below the knee, heavy woollen socks and Timberland hiking boots. He called the elevator, a hundred-foot nylon climbing rope draped across his chest and a black rucksack slung nonchalantly over one shoulder.

As the elevator descended, he wondered where he could get a good high-cholesterol breakfast he would burn off later. He would find some diner and call Mal down in the minibus with the kids to make sure they got a good meal before heading for the hills. He hoped to find somewhere that done a full English breakfast, which Rabbie considered to be the most important meal of the day and remembered whimsically the gigantic fry-ups they wolfed down when he had been a marine.

The marines were the British military’s marauders…brave soldiers who took on and tackled the impossible that other units were not trained or capable of undertaking, but God bless them for trying, Rabbie thought, having seen the bodies of young infantrymen lying dead on the streets of Basra. No good training and professionalism paid off when you were at the sharp end and in the gunsights of ruthless fanatics.

The apartment had been quiet when he left, and he was surprised when the elevator stopped on the third floor, thinking he had got a headstart on the rest of the occupants. As the doors opened that’s when he got his first sight of Luca Sonia Alexandria Sofia Natasha Valendenski. A young woman, a very pretty young woman, he decided, wearing a round fur hat straight from a James Bond movie in different shades of brown and umber, with a matching half-length coat. Long legs encased in tight pink hipsters and short black boots with a high heel. Long brown-umber hair, which hung in a ponytail over her left shoulder. He estimated her to be in her early twenties but later learnt she was twenty-seven.

She was carrying a large, flat case that artists used to convey their drawings and in her right hand a canvas holdall that looked heavy as she leant over on it. It wasn’t a large elevator, and she got jammed half in and out as the doors tried to shut on her. Rabbie grabbed the holdall off her, at the same time pressing the button to keep the hungry doors apart. She smiled sweetly from curvaceous lips and squeezed in.

Tank you sooo, so much, she breathed in a foreign accent as they descended. Dose doors alvays try da gobble me up.

He grinned back at her, No problem, the pleasure’s all mine.

But she wasn’t listening to him. She was wearing earphones attached to her iPod and swaying to the music and mouthing the words of a song. On closer inspection, he decided she was drop-dead gorgeous. Tall, maybe five foot ten, high cheekbones, clear, almost translucent, skin and of course the fantastic dark umber hair.

He studied her face again, sneaking covert looks. It was perfection personified. Even-featured, well-defined and alluring. Her nose was straight and noble and there was a slight healthy bloom to her cheeks that no expensive make up could ever attempt to imitate. But what enticed him most was her sparkling dove-grey eyes. Large and flecked with blue and silver, perfectly spaced and ringed with impossibly long, dark lashes, making her look very exotic. From what Rabbie could see of her figure, she was well-toned and slender. He wondered what her breasts were like. Although liking very much what he saw, he grimaced inwardly. She must be a model and after Juliette he had had his fill of models. New York seemed to be full of them or dreamy eyed model wannabes.

At the ground floor she stumbled getting out, and he caught her by the elbow and hefted the holdall up and carried it towards the lobby.

I am soo clumsy, she laughed, delighting him all the more. She was alluring, he decided, liking the word. Yep, she was alluring him.

Reaching the mailboxes, she stopped and took her earphones off and turned to face him.

I am sooo sorry… You must tink me very rude, da, but I trying to learn Bonnie Tyler song. ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, da.

Rabbie reckoned she had probably eclipsed a good few hearts in her short years on the planet. That’s an old song… I remember that when I was just a cub.

I am Luca…Luca Valendenski, and she proffered her hand, which he shook. You know da songs don’t get old. Dey have no physical substance like us poor mortals. A song lives forever. It doesn’t die. People in generations to come vill hear Bonnie Tyler’s music for the first time whilst we will just be dust in da ground. Are you new here?

Rabbie Hamish DeJames. Fifth floor. Just a few weeks, he replied, realising he was still holding her hand and released it reluctantly. She had certainly given him a new perspective on the endurance of music for the future. There was an interesting depth behind her beautiful eyes.

She laughed musically. Vell, yes… You come down from above. I am 3B, yah. I thought you might have been da burglar vith da big sock and rope you got. How you say, lazy and not leave by da window.

He laughed at her sense of humour, admiring her svelte accent, trying to place it. Ukraine maybe?

No such luck, Luca. I’m taking a gang of rowdy teens climbing.

He waited as she checked her mailbox, amused as her expression changed as she sorted through them.

Da American Dream, she scoffed, half serious. Da bills, da bills and da pizza ads!

Rabbie watched fascinated at her pursed lips and the slight crease in her brow as she ended going through her mail, until her expression became animated and happiness crossed her lovely features. Luca waved a letter in triumph.

At last, da letter from my mama. She smiled impishly. I’ll get all da gossipski from my home now.

That’s great, Luca. Listen, have you far to go? Would you like me to hail you a cab?

Agh. No, Rabbie. You are so kind. I only work da few blocks away. Wondering how you could hail a taxi with hard rain. It must be a colloquial thing from where this interesting guy originated, because he definitely was not a native New Yorker.

He was still trying to place her accent. Bulgaria? Serbia?

Tell me. Are you from the Czech Republic or perhaps Hungary?

No, Rabbie, I am from da Lithuania, but I am originally a Russian. I am hungry and I am going for da breakfast. She laughed musically, My stomach is all rumbly like da volcano about to erupt, and it needs to be seriously dampened wiv da good food.

He saw an opening there. He debated with his ying and yang. One won.

Actually, I’m looking somewhere myself to eat. Can you recommend a good diner?

Vell, I am going to my pal’s diner. Mama Jocelyn’s. Is best breakfast in da Big Apple. Vould you come vith me?

Something magnetic drew her to him. He had vowed against getting involved with glamorous young women but he felt a strange sense of déjà vu where Luca was concerned.

Yeah, that would be great, he decided, and he lifted her holdall and headed out into the chilly March morning. Let’s go and get your volcano quenched.

She followed him. Quenched? Interesting word. It rolled nicely in her head, not having a clue what it meant. She would find out later.

He thought she looked pleased. The holdall was heavy, and he wondered what was in it. Maybe parts of a body wrapped up in trash bags and Luca was a female serial killer. Nothing would surprise him in New York, and he smiled at the absurd thought. She took his free arm when the walk sign showed, and they crossed the already heaving six-lane road. Her high heels clicked in time to accompany the tread of his heavy boots.

Is soo, so unnerving these wide avenues, da? she observed.

Yep, New York can be pretty overwhelming. Have you been here long, Luca? Your English is very good, he replied. Never heard a Lithuanian accent before. This town is such a mix and match of cultures. Do you miss your home country?

She gave a lovely chuckle, which he would get to know so well. "Vell, yah, but I was born in Moscow, so I guess I am Ruski-Litho. Your