Nothing Personal.

Mikey was cat-napping in the debris of his unmade bed when he
noticed the footsteps outside: steady, business-like steps that stopped
ominously outside his peeling, unnumbered door. There was no knock.
Swinging his legs down through the sea of mugs and discarded papers, he
crept across the room and whispered:

"Who's there?" There was no response. Swallowing hard, Mikey tiptoed to
the grubby window and looked out. His heart sank as he saw the huge
Mercedes parked half on the pavement with its door open and motor
running. Left with no choice, he slipped off the safety chain on his
door and peered out. He didn't like what he saw.

"Oh, Volcano!" Mikey tried to adopt a cheerful tone. "What is it.. does
Mr Bowyer want to see me?"

The squat, impassive man in the expensive suit nodded briefly and
flicked a thumb towards the car behind him. Mikey nodded helplessly and
stepped, blinking, out into the harsh afternoon sunlight. You didn't
keep Volcano waiting any more than you did his boss - any supposed
slight on the servant was taken as a personal insult by the master and
was certain to attract instant retribution. Everyone round the manor
knew that.

Mikey slipped into the passenger seat alongside the driver and closed
his eyes as the plush limousine barged out into the traffic. It didn't
look good: Volcano only handled important business. Mikey had no idea
of his chauffeur's real identity, and possibly the fearsome Mr Bowyer
didn't either. He only knew how deadly accurate the nickname was - it
described perfectly how unpredictable and violent the quiet man's
outbursts were likely to be if he was crossed. Mikey wasn't going to
cause trouble, no matter how much he feared Bowyer.

Feeling distinctly sick, he walked up the narrow, badly-lit staircase
behind the pub while Volcano manouvred the colossal car into a tiny
parking space with remarkable precision.

"Ah.. Mikey. I need a word." Bowyer had swung round to inspect the
ashen-faced newcomer.

"I.. I wanted to explain, Mr Bowyer," Mikey stuttered. "The Hoxton job,
your brother, it wasn't my fault!"

"No, of course not." Bowyer's thin-lipped smile was anything but
convincing, and Mikey thought briefly of flight before abandoning such
a stupid notion. Bowyer was a very important man locally, implicated in
most of the businesses that mattered. Those, legal or not, that made
good money. Even in this depressed, dank east East End borough there
were plenty of those waiting to be exploited by the ruthless and
unscrupulous: Bowyer was undoubtedly both. As a bonus, he combined
these qualities with a streetwise brand of intelligence that had kept
him well ahead of the opposition that snapped relentlessly at the heels
of such operators, watching for the slightest sign of weakness. There
could be no escape from such a man, not for a kid with no place to go,
and Mikey was only too aware of the fact.

"Please, Mikey, sit."

"Thank you." Dry-mouthed, Mikey seated himself in the only vacant seat.
He was aware of other figures in the shadows, but ignored them in
favour of concentrating on the vulpine smile on Bowyer's face. "Look,
I'm really hacked off about that verdict. It was outrageous, right?
Twelve years, it was a joke."

"Am I laughing?" Bowyer asked quietly, his voice loaded with menace.
Mikey shivered involuntarily.

"No, Mister Bowyer. I never meant.."

"My brief reckons there's a good chance of getting it reduced on
appeal," Bowyer interrupted before leaning across his desk. "Anyway,
maybe you didn't bottle out and leave Kev up to his neck in it after
all. Maybe I heard it wrong."

"That's right!" Mikey almost shouted. "We was ambushed, Mister Bowyer.
Set up. Somebody squealed, and it weren't me. God's honest!"

"Yeah," Bowyer nodded slowly. "Someone's gonna pay for it, sure enough.
Now, you can remove any lingering doubts about your loyalty by doing a
little job for me."

"What.. about Hoxton, right?"

"That's right. Sort things out once and for all. You're handy with a
shooter, right?"
"Yeah," Mikey nodded enthusiastically. Things were suddenly going
better than he'd dared to imagine.

"You better be. You familiar with this?" Bowyer had slipped open a
drawer without attracting Mikey's attention, and the youngster flinched
as the hand came up with a small Russian automatic cradled in it. "You
frightened or something, Mikey?"

"N.. No, Mr Bowyer. You startled me, that's all."

"Good. Check it, then." Bowyer positioned the weapon on the polished
desk carefully, reversed it without taking his eyes off Mikey's
sweat-drenched countenance, and pushed it across.

"Right. Nice weight." Mikey caressed the familiar weapon before
checking it over. He'd known from its weight that it was fully loaded,
but he removed the bullets before carefully replacing them to show his
master that he knew his way round these Eastern-bloc jobs.

"Don't go pointin' it at me now, Mikey!" Bowyer laughed, neatly
forestalling any thought of trying to shoot his way out on Mikey's
part. "We don't want it goin' off, now, do we?"

"I'd never do that!" Mikey declared, deliberately pointing the gun
away.

"Not a big flash job like those South-of-the-river gangs use," Bowyer
growled, nodding at it. "But it's plenty good enough at close range.
And it's clean. Fresh in from Croatia this week."

"Pah!" Mikey shrugged. "Those big things are rubbish. They only want
'em for the chrome, to wave outta BMWs and frighten kids on their way
home from school. Too heavy to aim proper if you're an amateur, right?
Those guys are more likely to shoot their own dicks off than anything
else."

"You're a smart kid, Mikey," Bowyer nodded. "That's why I gave you this
chance to prove yourself. Do this right, and you're on the team
permanent. Understand? No freelancin'."

"Great! The job?" Mikey asked, desperate to ingratiate himself now, to
prove his all-too-suspect loyalty.

"You know Freddie Fratelli?"

"That ponce? I heard of him. Smalltimer."

"Yeah, but he's getting big ideas, you know what I mean? Don't seem to
know where my territory begins, like. Fatal mistake, that." Bowyer
leaned back, beaming, as Mikey eased the near-new gun into an inside
pocket. "Besides, I got the word that maybe he was behind the Hoxton
cock-up. Volcano will take you. You know the taxi office off Anderson
Street, next to that crappy caff?"

"Yeah, I got you."

"Turkish Tony'll be on alone until two. He'll say you threatened him
with the shooter to clear himself, but he never saw you proper-like.
The local CID lads'll know the score. They should do, I bung 'em enough
to play stupid. You go in and ask for a cab to Welland Road. There
won't be nobody else in, Tony will see to that. He'll open the door to
upstairs, and in the office you'll find Freddie counting his money. My
money, I should say. You needn't hang about afterwards, Volcano will be
waiting."

"The.. the money?"

"Snatch what you can, make it look like a robbery that went wrong.
Okay?"

"Count on me, Mr Bowyer." Mikey stood, but Bowyer made no attempt to
shake his hand or wish him luck. That was typical of the man. At the
foot of the stairs, Volcano was waiting impassively.

*****

"You're waiting here?" Mikey croaked, his throat painfully dry. Volcano
nodded.

"Okay.. won't be long."

Mikey patted the bulge in his jacket before climbing out onto the
rubbish-strewn pavement. As Bowyer had promised, the taxi office was
deserted as Mikey walked purposefully in. It was like any other
backstreet office of its type, the walls plastered with glamour
calendars and a background fizzle of radio squawks and garbled messages
competing with Capital on a tinny radio.

"Yeah?" The massive, bullet-headed man behind the desk asked
mechanically.

"I need a cab to Welland Road."

"Oh.. right." The man nodded towards the door in the corner, which
clicked and opened silently as the unseen catch was released. Mikey
nodded, licked his lips and took the bare stairs two at a time. As he
clattered noisily up, he withdrew the gun and checked that the safety
catch was off. Rule number one. Oiled, loaded.. In the first grubby
room off the landing, lit by a single overhead bulb as the tattered
curtains were tightly drawn, was a heavy desk. Nothing else. At the
desk sat a small, insignificant-looking man. Mikey, who'd been
expecting someone more impressive, was rather disappointed - as if this
sad little character wasn't worth all the mental effort that had been
invested in his imminent demise.

"Mr Fratelli? Keep your hands on the desk."

"Sure, you got the big advantage on me." A bundle of notes fluttered
silently to the naked floorboards as the boney fingers extended into
the piles of cash.

Mikey looked briefly, covetously, at the fistfuls of crumpled,
large-denomination notes that almost covered the desk before
concentrating on the barely-noticeable bulge in Fratelli's jacket.
There was no point in asking him to hand the weapon over: that was what
mugs did in the films, when they knew all along that they were coming
out on top. In real life, you didn't stay alive if you gave the other
guy even half a chance.

"So this is it, Mikey? You after my money?"

"No," Mikey whispered hoarsely. "The payback for the Hoxton job."

"Hoxton? Nothin' to do with me."

"Yeah, I'm sure.. say, how'd you know my name? I don't know you!"

"No, little boy, but I been expectin' you. You got some bad friends. I
got a call sayin' some punk called Mikey was on his way, after my
money. Some real amateur. Lotta cash lyin' round here, a man needs to
be careful."

"Too bad, you should've took the warning more serious," Mikey croaked
through parched lips, looking carefully around to ensure that the pair
were indeed alone. Satisfied, he leaned across the desk, bringing the
gun to within a foot of his victim's smirking features. "You're cool,
I'll give you that."

"Yeah, Cool Freddie Fratelli. You a good shot with that? 'Cos you're
hand's shakin'."

"I'm a good shot. I gotta say, this is nothin' personal."

"That's the way I see it," Freddie shrugged. "It's gotta come
sometime."

"Goodbye, Freddie.."

Click.. click, click..

Mikey looked down at his doctored weapon stupidly as Freddie withdrew
his own well-used automatic. Far too late, Mikey had realised the awful
truth..

"No!" he breathed. "Christ, no.."

"It's gotta come sometime," Freddie whispered. "Now, Mikey, just try to
understand. No stupid kid comes walkin' in here after what's mine,
right? The warning was spot on, right down to the dodgy shooter. But
relax, son.. this is nothin' personal.."