Chapter 1
pIt was 1 month after the shooting of Alfie Solomons. 1 month since the war ended. 1 month into Tommy's holiday and it was not working out as planned. Tommy had not found peace. The demons were clawing at the door and creeping in the shadows, the days and nights passed in a drunken stupor locked in the parlour. Tommy was all alone with his own mind. He had lost control and could not get it back, the blood on his hands just wouldn't wash off. The killing of Alfie Solomons is what has tipped him over the edge and he knows it deep down. No matter how much he was able to reason with himself at the time that it was a mercy killing, the fucking cancer would have been a worse death, it didn't get rid of Alfie's blood on his hands. The blood of his friend felt thicker, fresher, impossible to ignore, much like the man it once belonged in. Not the way Alfie should have met his end after a life of such violence, misery and death. Granted much of this they brought upon themselves but the cancer was caused by something completely out of their control, the fucking mustard gas, the war thats what would kill all of them in the end./p
pHe watched Alfie get weaker through all the meetings and negotiations, watching Alfie rely on his cane more and more until it seemed he struggled to walk without it. Never asking about it, just business he told himself. He wishes he had done something, anything really so it didn't end up the way it did but he had given Alfie Solomons more chances than he had ever given anyone. Tommy didn't want to think about why he had. That was a whole other problem he thought had been burned out of him by the war. He would never admit to himself that he needed someone just it could be useful to have Alfie alive right now./p
pHe was sick of making all the decisions and having sole responsibility for every fucking little thing. Every fucking plan. Every fucking life. Of which there had been so many and granted in war there are casualties but all laid on his shoulders, all those fucking bodies, it was so much to carry, he was weighted to the floor with no hope of ever picking himself up. The bodies piled around his ankles so his feet were bolted down. He was buried in enemies he has killed and friends who have died for him. The only person who could ever have understood him is lying dead in the sand. On a beach. In fucking Margate. Fuck. How had he gotten so caught up in all this. Gin a drink for incurable sorrow indeed. He finished the rest of the bottle that was clutched in his hand and laid, well more like tumbled to the floor and closed his eyes, trying to shake the thoughts of Alfie from his head./p
pSleep was a distant memory unlike the war, the shells in the middle of the night. The shovels, fucking shovels, constantly there in the corners of his mind. Head full of smoke and ears deafened by the guns. No one could get through, no amount of smoke or gin or whiskey could stop the hell in his head. Idle hands and all that. And even with all that going on when he finally fell into a broken and tortured slumber the image of Alfie Solomons' body laid limp like a ragdoll, blood mixing with the sand on the beach. Dying the sand and tainting the air with the scent of copper and gunpowder. It was this scene that had Tommy waking drowning in sweat and shaking like a leaf in the tumultuous winter wind that whipped up the factory smoke back home in Small Heath. He would never admit to himself that he was this weak but he was trapped in a completely unfamiliar place. When he was completely lost in his own mind he would find himself talking to a spectre with a beard and a cane helping him through, trying to bring him back, bring him past the fear but it just made him angry with its taunting and jeering and constant talking in a loud brash voice about absolute nonsense./p
pThe dead of night is what brought all of his pain and sins to the forefront of his mind in an inescapable whirlwind of regret and blood, this lead to him stumbling and rampaging in a drunken state through the small parlour he had sequestered himself in. The whirlwind in his head left a scene akin to that of a natural disaster in its wake. The furniture broken and mirrors destroyed. All Tommy could see when he looked in a mirror was his face covered in dirt and blood with tear tracks streaking through the grime. So all the mirrors were smashed, fuck the bad luck it would bring. Nothing to could get any worse for him. His arms were bloody with scratches from ragged chewed fingernails biting in trying desperately to make him feel real, draw him back into his own body. When this ceased to work the broken glass of the mirrors cut deeper, exorcising his demons until he was dizzy from the blood dripping crimson down his arms./p
pThis is how Tommy found himself in the weak morning light. Surrounded by shards of glass from broken bottles and mirrors, staring into nothing, bleeding into the rug beneath him. Except Tommy wasn't staring at nothing. It was Alfie back from the dead but looking like he did when they first met wearing a loose fitting shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows exposing his strong forearms and hairy chest just a bit and then the open woollen waistcoat, eyes glinting dangerously and that slight smile hidden by his thick beard, hair unkempt and thick. Tommy is just as broken now as he was then except this time there was nobody sat across from him, there was no deal to be made, no more deals ever needed to be made. But god does he miss the banter and the negotiations. He replays that first meeting on an almost constant loop in his head the electricity and tension in the room was palpable but watching the large hulking figure of Alfie Solomons towering over him was an impression he would never forget./p
p"Put Him down Ollie. Put him down mate. He's only little. You come alone?" Alfie asked in his thick South London /
"Seems like it," Tommy replied, being a man of few words and /
/p
p"Well you're a brave boy int'ya, wanna take a look at my bakery, we bake all sorts here mate. Did you know we bake over 10,000 loaves a week? Can you believe it. We bake the white bread. We bake the brown bread, We bake all sorts, would you like to try some?" Alfie said leading Tommy further into the bakery. When the reached the trial area of the bakery where the 'bread' was laid /
/p
p"Bread? Yeah?" Alfie asked with a smirk glancing at the bottles of rum, his eyes flicked back to Tommy boring into him with an intensity he had never seen before, the glint just behind the eyes gave Tommy the feeling of staring into the eyes of a dog half starved and bordering on /
/p
p"Alright" Tommy answered never breaking the eye contact, he could hear his own pulse hammering behind his skull, reasoning that was to do with the recent run in with the /
/p
p"What would you like, Brown or White?" Alfie asked, still eyes fixed on Tommy's, Tommy turned his gaze to the bottles of /
/p
p"Try the brown." Tommy answered in a cool tone,br /
/p
p"Brown,right." One of Alfie's men poured the brown into 2 glasses, Tommy took his as did Alfie however Alfie never took a sip. Watching Tommy's every move with a burning curiosity. As Tommy took a sip not a single facial muscle moved, he knew next to nothing about rum. Not his drink of choice. However neither was gin at this point in his life, that was a new revelation, gin for sorrow and death, rum for fun and /
/p
p"Not bad," Tommy replied looking back into those crazed /
/p
p"Not bad eh? Not bad? It's fucking awful that stuff, Brown stuff it's for the worker's that mate." Alfie grimaced at that. "The white stuff yeah? Now that's for the bosses, Come along." Alfie lead them further into the bakery past the crates all packaged up ready for shipping to wherever they were destined for./p
pOnce they were both seated in Alfies office, just a glass box with the usual office stuff in the back of the bakery really, nothing too fancy much like Alfie Solomons himself, wearing the loose fitting shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows exposing his forearms and chest just a bit and then the open woollen waistcoat. Made more of a statement than Tommy's full suit. It was the outfit of someone so sure of himself he didn't need to look like he meant business with his wardrobe because his entire demeanour screamed business, the fact he was in fact built like a brick shithouse and had that dangerous glint in his eyes meant he struck fear into most men. The fact Tommy didn't even flinch when Alfie pulled the gun on him, didn't even make a move to wipe the blood trickling from his nose seemed to surprise Alfie more than any other action he could have decided on. Obviously that awful business with Billy Kimber was brought up since that is how he seemed to be known in London back then all those years ago. Alfie would be right not to trust him, however he must have seen something in Tommy that made him willing to take the risk. Tommy wishes he had asked when he had the chance. He wants to see ALfie one last time and have a conversation, an honest normal conversation. Alfie was there when he needed him with the Russians. That was a fuck up from start to fucking finish, fucking Churchill. /p
pTommy shook from his mind and looked around the room trying to find what had entered his conscious mind, he turned to see his maid, Frances stood there with that concerned and slightly frightened look in her eyes, "There is a man here to see you Mr Shelby. He has been quite persistent. Old friend apparently. Alfie Solomons?" Tommy just turned his head and fixed her with wide eyes at the mention of his deceased business partner./p
pShe left the room and closed the door with a slightly shaking hand. In Tommy's head Alfie Solomons was alive and well stood in the corner smirking at him with the fire light dancing in his eyes from under his hat, both hands atop his cane steady and solid and warm. Except he wasn't really there, so the warmth was completely fictional. He began to smile back at the ghost in the corner but he was broken out of his revery again when he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps accompanied by the light tap of a cane on his polished wooden floors. Must all be in his head, wouldn't be the first time he has heard things that aren't real or seen things that aren't there, hell he even has conversations with the imaginary Alfie Solomons. He heard the door open again, standing there in the doorway was Alfie Solomons, alive and well, looking better than he did the last time he had seen him all things considered. Maybe a little more aged around the eyes but being dead would do that to a man./p
p"You look fucking disgusting mate, what's happened to your face Thomas? Missed me did ya sweetie." Alfie said with something akin to pity in his voice or it could have been pain, could be a mix of both, Tommy has never been good with emotions, bury it, hide it, seal it into a box. However this cannot be real, Alfie is dead. He shot him and left him to bleed out on the beach./p
pAlfie is walking towards him now, slightly unsteady on his feet, bending down with knuckles white on his cane Alfie places a warm solid hand on his shoulder and with a squeeze just uttered, "Silly boy, what have you done to yourself?"/p