The Mirror - J. Morris (beginner reading books for adults .txt) 📗

        “Hey there’s a beer in the fridge.” said Jimmy. “Get me one while you’re there.

Danny opened the fridge door and took a piece of three-day-old pepperoni pizza from the box and held it in his mouth while he grabbed two beers.

  “Down to the last six pack” mumbled Danny as he tossed one to Jimmy. “Looks like we might have to go out tonight.”

        ‘Going out’ in Southsider language meant rolling a few drunks for their wallets, or bailing up some ‘rich folk on their way to the opera’ as the gang likes to put it.

“Yeh,” Jimmy replied “the boys should be coming around later. We’ll head out about eight tonight. We haven’t done Chelsea for a while. The cops shouldn’t be scoping that area much.”

        Danny sat on a couch and switched on the TV. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and, finding nothing worth watching, he switched it off and leaned back on the couch to catch some sleep.

        Two hours later he was woken by the loud voices of some other gang members, Robbo, Mick and Skunge. Nobody knew how Skunge got his nickname and he couldn’t remember who gave it to him or when. His real name was Lance. Skunge was 18 years old. His front teeth were missing and the rest were almost black. He was 6 feet 1 inches tall with a wiry physique and blonde matted hair to his shoulders.

        Mick was a bit shorter at 5 feet 11 inches, with a ‘beer gut’ and goatee beard. At 25 years old he was older than the others by at least 4 years. Intellectually he was younger than the rest. He also had a temper that could kick in at the slightest provocation.

        Skunge went to the fridge and got the remaining six pack and took it back to the others, handing them around.

“Hey Jimmy” said Mick, “did you hear about the excitement the other night?”

“What’s that?” replied Jimmy.

“Me and Skunge. Ripped off a BMW. We were cruising along the motorway when a couple of cops spotted us.”

“So how did that work out for youse?” asked Jimmy.

“We tried to lose them but they were right up our arse. We finished up taking an exit and went down a side road. They were still with us so we drove through a fence and into a stream. We jumped out and swam across to the other side. We knew them wankers wouldn’t want to get their arses wet just to catch a couple of car thieves.”

“Good one” said Jimmy with a grin.

“Too right” said Mick. “The car floated to the middle of the stream and sunk. It was a long walk home though.”

“Mustn’t have been very far,” said Jimmy. “You didn’t work off that big guts of yours.”

Everyone except Mick laughed.

“Very funny” said Mick, not finding the remark very humorous.

“Hey Jimmy. Is this all the beer we’ve got?” asked Skunge.

“Yeh,” replied Jimmy. “We’re running low on funds. We need to go out tonight for some currency. Me and Danny were thinking maybe the Chelsea area. We haven’t worked that area for a while. Everyone happy with that?”

        They all grunted or nodded in agreement.

“Ok,” he continued. “We’ll head out around 8 o’clock. We’ll split up individually, each doing a different street. There’s five of us. We each roll one victim, and then disappear before anyone even has a chance to call the constabulary.”

“Sounds good to me” said Danny. “That’s always worked in the past.”

The events of the coming night would change Danny’s life forever.

     At 8.15pm the gang boarded a train to South Kensington station and then walked to their preferred area in Chelsea, each armed with a knife. They had carried out this same technique countless times, each operating a different street, hitting up someone who looks like they might be carrying a bit of money, maybe someone who was carrying a Harrods shopping bag. They would follow them until they were in the right spot and then show them the knife and demand their wallet or handbag. Or perhaps they would spot someone getting out of a luxury car in a carpark. They would bail up the driver or passenger before they had even locked their door. They would then race through the back streets to the Underground station and head home. The operation was so fast that the police had no chance to get there in time to catch them, unless they were actually in the vicinity at the time of the robberies, in which case the boys had to use a bit more cunning to escape. But they had never been arrested in all the time they had carried out the routine.

        The boys separated and Danny headed to Regal Street. There were a lot of people around on this particular night, which gave them a lot of victims to choose from but also made it more difficult to isolate them for ‘processing’ as they gang liked to call it.

        Danny spotted an elderly man getting out of a late model Mercedes in a poorly lit carpark. He moved silently behind parked cars, through the shadows and came up behind his victim. When the old man turned around Danny had his knife pointed at him at chest height.

        “Give me your wallet and there won’t be any trouble,” Danny instructed.

The old man stayed calm. “You don’t need to do this, Son” he said. “If you need money I’ll give you some.”

“You’ll give me the wallet” said Danny and moved the knife closer to the man’s chest.

        The old man looked at the knife, now only an inch from his chest. He took his wallet out of his pocket and held it out for Danny, who snatched it out of his hand and turned and hurried away without another word. He had only taken a few steps when he heard the man gasping. He turned and saw him on his knees holding his chest. Danny knew he was having a heart attack and ran back to him.

       “Are you ok?” he asked, kneeling down and putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

The old man shook his head, unable to speak. Danny ran to the street.

“HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!” he screamed. He frantically took his phone out of his pocket and called emergency, then ran back to the man.

          Jimmy had finished robbing a victim and was in a side street not far from Regal Street when he heard Danny calling for help. He raced to the carpark and found Danny kneeling next to the man, looking distressed and trying to comfort him.

“COME ON! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!” he called.

Danny shook his head. “No. I can’t leave him. What if he dies?”

Jimmy ran over to him.

“There’s nothing you can do. I can hear the sirens. Help is on the way. Forget him. Let’s go!” He tried to drag Danny to his feet but Danny resisted. Jimmy was undecided what to do. The sirens were getting louder. He could hear the siren of a paramedic’s vehicle and the distinctly different siren of a police car. He turned and ran out of the carpark and disappeared.

         The old man was in pain and clutching Danny’s wrist in a vise-like grip.

“You’ll be alright Sir,” said Danny. “Help is nearly here.”

         The ambulance screeched to a halt next to them and 2 paramedics jumped out and rushed to the man with their equipment and a stretcher. After ascertaining the man’s condition and making him comfortable they placed him on a stretcher and took him to the ambulance.

“Well done, Lad” said one of them to Danny as he passed. “You probably saved his life.”

         As the paramedic climbed into the back to sit with the old man, Danny held out the wallet.

“This is his,” said Danny. “Can you give it to him?”

        He walked out of the carpark and watched the ambulance as it sped down the road, siren screaming. He saw a police car approaching, also with its siren blaring and lights flashing, rushing to the scene of one of the robberies. Danny walked out in front of the police car and waved it down.

The cop wound down his window. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“I want to hand myself in,” said Danny. “I just robbed someone.”

 The cops looked at each other. They pulled to the kerb and Danny walked over to them.

        They got out with their notebooks and began taking details. Danny told them about the old man and how he caused him to have a heart attack. He asked them if they could find out if the old man was ok.

“We’d better go to the station,” said the cop. “We need to get a formal statement from you. We’ll go from there.”

        Danny nodded and they took him to the station where they charged him with robbery with a deadly weapon, going armed in public so as to cause fear, and grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to 3 months jail, with a minimum of 2 months with time off for good behaviour. The magistrate told him it would have been much longer but for the fact that Danny was remorseful and had stayed at the crime scene and given assistance to the victim.

He also noted that Danny refused to provide the names of his accomplices. If he had co-operated more with the police and divulged those names, he would have gotten off with community service and probation.

“You have 3 months to decide what you’re going to do with the rest of your life, Mr Jackson,” said the magistrate. “I suggest you put that time to good use, because if you ever come before me again, I assure you that I won’t be so lenient.”

Danny hung his head. “Yes, Sir. Thank you. You won’t see me again.”

                                        Chapter 2

           Mary Oswald had never had a boyfriend. Deeply introverted and shy, with poor social skills, she lived in a world of her own, rarely leaving her apartment except to go to work. Work was something she couldn’t avoid because she had to earn a living. She avoided parties and social gatherings. She avoided people in general. She was not generally seen as attractive to the opposite sex. At five foot eight inches tall, she was a little overweight, her waist not much smaller than her hips. Her legs were chubby and her round face was framed by her mid-length mousey hair which was dry and straw-like, wiry and parted in the middle because that was how her hair naturally fell, and she found it pointless to try and train it to do otherwise. She wore large round glasses. Her looks were unremarkable but she had a clear complexion.

Mary had an air of innocence and honesty about her. Her big brown eyes shone and sparkled with youth and imaginative wonder.

          She lived alone in a cheap apartment in London and worked in the mail sorting room at the local postal distribution centre. Mary’s only friend was a work colleague, Adele, who managed to encourage her to chat a little in the lunchroom some days. The world didn’t see Mary; she was overlooked in favour of the more sociable and outgoing ones, and it was the world that missed out. But Mary quietly watched the world as most introverts do, and she saw the beauty in everything. She saw much more and knew much more than the world realised.

         Now 22 years old, Mary’s hormones had long ago matured her body, and her mind and body craved personal interaction with a guy, socially and physically. She craved love, and everything that goes with it. Daytime fantasies, crying over romantic novels, self-relief and role playing had become her world, a world of her own, a world she had created. In the confines of