Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys. (8 page)

“What is it?” asks Adam.

“That is the last known correspondence from Shane Mills.” The two teens look at each other, Adam wide-eyed, his jaw on his chest. Ember’s raised eyebrows and slight shaking of her head expressed her scepticism.

“It is a recording he made over eighty years ago. Countless people have died protecting it, even though none have ever watched it. I have kept it for twenty years, hoping for this day.”

Ember is even more disbelieving now. Adam looks stunned. “Why hasn’t anyone watched it?” asks Ember. “Why would people die for something when they don’t even know what is on it? Plus if it’s authentic it would be priceless and highly illegal.”

“Oh, it’s authentic and they do know what’s on it, Miss Jones,” smiles Raphael. “
The Truth!
That is what’s on it. The reason no one has watched it is because it wasn’t for them.”

He pushes the wrapped parcel over to her. Ember picks it up and reads the faded writing on the front.

For the attention of Miss September Jones
.

It is signed in the same handwriting.

Shane Mills

Stoke Prison, present day

“Hear a lot, see everything and say nothing.”

Since the events of his first day, Shane has had a comparatively quiet couple of months. Besides the two horizontal thugs, Errol and Bird, both of whom had been moved up to the high-security wing for some previous misdemeanours, he has not had issues with any inmates. Of course, the fact that he so easily dispatched the two most feared prisoners on the wing did not go unnoticed and all the lags give him the utmost respect: a type of respect that only comes from fear. But Shane has not exploited his new-found status and he has been just happy to be left alone. This has confused most of the others. In prison the toughest guys call the shots; they make the rules, they get all the benefits and extras. But Shane is not interested in becoming the daddy; he just reads his books and has kept his head down. An unlikely friendship with the old Jew he had rescued from the pair of would-be assassins is something else that puzzles the inmates. These two have become strange cell-mates, competing in daily chess matches and whiling away the hours in conversation.

Shane sets up the chess board as he waits for Leo to join him. He has learned some fascinating facts about the old man over the last couple of months. Leo Verdi was the personal accountant assigned to Pope Benedict XVI. Shane feels Leo is still sussing him out before he is prepared to confide in him why he would break into a jeweller’s shop then wait patiently for the police to arrive, only to assault a young officer. Leo also avoids the issue of why he left the Vatican twenty-four hours before the Pope announced his retirement. Although Leo is shy when it comes to relaying information he certainly is not averse to asking questions. Shane gets the feeling that Leo is in some way interviewing him but for what he has no idea. Every game of chess turns into an inquisition. How? What? Where? Who? It is unrelenting. Yet strangely, Shane doesn’t mind. He likes Leo and more importantly he trusts him. Shane has nothing to hide and although he’s usually uncomfortable discussing his past, he eventually opens up to Leo, telling him all about his upbringing on the notorious Ballymun estate in Dublin and about his drug-addled mother who attempted to raise Shane and his baby sister Chloe.



To say his childhood was traumatic would be a gross understatement. His mother, Ainne, was addicted to heroin long before Shane was born and for a long time after. At first she managed to balance her addiction and live a comparatively normal existence but when Shane was three years old his sobbing mummy held him and told him, “Ya da has died. He’s been killed.”

His father, Tommy Mills, a well-known tough guy from north Dublin, was shot dead in a row over a missing car. On reflection, Shane lost both his parents that day. Without Tommy’s income to feed Shane and more importantly her own drug habit, Ainne resorted to selling her body and with it, her soul.

Of course at such a young age Shane was not really aware of his mum’s addiction or the trade she plied to pay for it. He was under the impression she was just poorly and had a lot of male friends. Ainne loved her little boy, and she would never have introduced Patrick O’Hagan into the family unit had she any indication of his schizophrenic personality. Patrick started out as a just another punter. Then after a couple of months he moved in with Ainne and Shane. It didn’t take long before Ainne fell pregnant and within a year of Patrick moving in, Chloe was born. Shane didn’t remember any trouble before Chloe was born but soon after her birth the relationship between his mum and Patrick became very volatile. Patrick would kick her out to earn money and then kick her head in for the way she earned it.

It seemed to Shane that every night he would be woken by his mum’s screams as she and Patrick fought. He would wake up and go straight to Chloe, his beautiful little sister who Shane felt an overwhelming obligation to protect. She was a little bundle that would cry and cry unless her big brother held her and sang to her. She had big rosy cheeks and, although unkempt and often mucky, her cuteness shone through. Always either smiling or crying, she was a ‘mischievous wee skitter’ as their neighbour Fat Beryl described her.

By the time he was eight Shane was aware that his mother was a junkie and a whore: he just wasn’t sure what that meant. Patrick was not a drug addict. His weakness was alcohol and when he had a lot he liked to believe he was either Elvis or Bruce Lee. Shane preferred his Elvis impersonation as the Bruce Lee one usually ended up with Shane being punched unconscious. Patrick completely ignored Chloe, and Ainne was generally either working or out of her head so Shane would change, feed and bath his little sister. Looking back, they were the happiest times of his childhood. Patrick would be unconscious from a late-night binge and Ainne would be shooting up before midday so that left Shane and Chloe safe and together.

Shane was a very extroverted and chatty little boy, always mucky like his sister and wearing hand-me-downs from people on the estate. They looked like they had walked out of an old war orphans photo. Everyone on the estate knew them and commented on how good Shane was with his little sister. Together they would spend most of the day out on the estate with Shane shoplifting any of the things he thought his sister needed. He would take her around to Fat Beryl’s, the local matriarch, who would let him hang out and get warm. Beryl knew Shane and his sister’s situation but still Shane would tell her, “Me Ma’s not well so school have given me time off. She will be better soon.”

As Shane told these stories in prison, Leo’s eyes would widen in horror and pity but he really was a happy child back then, who loved looking after his baby sister.

It was two days before Chloe’s third birthday that it all went wrong. Shane had nicked a small doll from the toy shop and was looking forward to seeing Chloe’s face when he gave it to her. The two of them left Fat Beryl’s at around 18:00. She had given Shane some tea and he had fed Chloe. They entered the lift, which took them up to their seventh-floor flat but as Shane pushed the buggy out Chloe had cried, “Don’t want to go home.”

Shane understood what she meant; he always dreaded going home and just prayed his mum was straight and that Patrick was out in some pub. But on this day his mum was far from straight and Patrick was home and extremely drunk, even for him. Shane entered the flat and put Chloe safely into her room then sat on the torn settee praying that Patrick was Elvis tonight. He could hear him shouting at his mum.

“You fucking whore, you spent all the money on that shit.”

The sound of Patrick slapping his mum no longer startled him. However, this was particularly loud and he seemed to be smashing the room up as well. After what could have been half an hour of screaming and smashing, the room went silent. Ten minutes later Patrick came out wearing his tracky bottoms and Ainne’s kimono-style dressing gown. The bandanna wrapped around his head confirmed that tonight he was Bruce Lee.

To see this man mimic Bruce Lee would be funny for an outside observer. He would mouth words then say them in a terrible attempt at a Chinese accent. Then he would go through his efforts at martial arts patterns, which bore no resemblance to any real kung fu. Most the time he would fall over as he tried his version of the crane or the crouching tiger. Regularly he would use Shane as his punch bag. “Here, stand up, ya wee cunt, ya.” Luckily Patrick was usually too pissed to actually hit him. When he did though, it was a fully grown man hitting a child and Shane had been knocked unconscious more times than he could remember. Still, not once did he cry or show the bastard any fear.

On that particular day, Shane thought he might have escaped the punches and kicks as Patrick seemed even less lucid than normal and not very interested in their usual “game”. Instead he mumbled something under his breath and then went back into the bedroom. Shane didn’t know if he should sit back down. Was it over? Unfortunately it wasn’t. Patrick leaped out of the room shouting his version of Bruce Lee’s war cry, “aaaaayaaaay”, with some recently purchased nun-chucks. Shane thought of running out of the flat but that would have meant leaving Chloe. He stood there as the sticks whistled past his head.

“Stop fucking moving, I won’t hit you, I’m a fucking master,” Patrick reassured him.

Shane closed his eyes and prepared for the pain of the blunt sticks hitting him.

“Stop it! Leave Shaney alone! Stop you, stop, bad daddy!”

Shane immediately opened his eyes and panic swept over him. Chloe had got out of her room and was standing in front of Patrick, scolding her daddy. Shane had told Chloe never to get out of bed when Patrick was “playing”. He looked at Patrick and saw what was coming. Shane froze as Patrick quickly turned and smashed the heavy wooden staffs down on Chloe’s head, caving in her tiny fragile skull. Everything happened in slow motion in Shane’s eyes. He watched, frozen to the spot as Chloe’s head crumpled, blood spurting from a wound, reddening her beautiful blonde locks. A loud crack followed as her skull smashed against a hard wooden table and then her tiny lifeless body flopped, her eyes still open, staring into Shane’s, holding him in a trance. He snapped out of this state when he heard Patrick scream out a crazed warrior cry. He looked at him, no longer scared, just numb. Patrick dropped the stick and grabbed his jacket and ran out the door. Shane collapsed next to his sister as all emotion flooded from his body. He had held his breath, unable to function but eventually he had to let the air enter his body. His lungs filled, followed by a scream and then a heart-wrenching cry. His mother did not move, he could see her through the open door staring up at the ceiling. Shane shook his baby sister gently.

“Wake up, Chloe, he’s gone now, wake up, WAKE UP!”

Paranoid schizophrenia, that’s what people said Patrick was suffering from. “He is delusional, he is very ill.” All Shane knew was his beautiful little sister was dead. Shane was taken into care and moved around several foster families in Ireland. All of them reported the same thing: “Shane was very introverted and showed no interest in any activities”. He spoke very little. After a year of moving from pillar to post Ainne’s sister Maggie was granted custody. Maggie was a single parent, living on the dole in England. She would not be most people’s choice for mum of the year but to Shane she was an angel. He only had his mother to compare her to and the fact she cooked dinners, cleaned his clothes and hugged him at night was enough to give her this status. Maggie’s house was on a notorious council estate south of Manchester. She managed to get Shane into the local school and informed the headmaster of Shane’s troubled past. With an Irish accent in an English school and in second-hand clothes, it didn’t take long for some of the other boys to start picking on Shane. John Edwards was two years older than Shane and he was the school’s worst bully. His family were well-known criminals but when he heard that Shane’s mum was a brass he couldn’t help but take his opportunity to inflict pain on a young pupil.

“Oi, pikey, I hear your mum’s a slapper, ten pound for a blow job.”

John had mimicked what he thought a blow job looked like and the four lads with him had laughed.

Shane had been at the school for four weeks. He had said no more than ten words in all that time. His only interaction with any of the kids was asking where the toilet was on his first day but he was about to interact for a second time.

Every bit of pain and frustration that Shane had suffered over the last twelve months went into the punches that pummelled John Edwards unconscious. The school headmaster said he was shocked that such levels of violence could come from someone so young. Shane had found an outlet for his anger and frustration.

For years to come people would not understand how a skinny wretch like Shane could knock people out twice his size. They could not realise that every punch he landed came all the way from Ballymun and every opponent he fought was paying for what Patrick had done. By seventeen he was annihilating doormen in Manchester’s city centre. He was soon defined by his violent behaviour but to Shane it was a release valve for the pain he carried and the guilt he felt.

Known as the ‘baby-faced assassin’ Shane was enticed by a local gym that had heard of his prowess and soon he built a name as a promising amateur boxer. Later a stint as a professional boxer was cut short when Shane disagreed with the ref’s decision and knocked him out of the ring before turning to his opponent and battering him to a pulp.

At a loose end and with no decent job prospects, the army seemed to be his salvation and when he was packed off to Afghanistan everyone that knew him feared for the Taliban. But Shane’s lack of control saw him break Sergeant Stone’s jaw and led to his first stretch in military prison. His reliance on violent conflict resulted in him behaving in the same way as a junkie, except that he had an insatiable appetite for breaking bones and removing teeth just like a drug addict or alcoholic he was trying to fill a hole that had manifested deep inside him.