Crown of a Prince (Finn Shelby)

92.

Like going from the frying pan into the fireplace, it was from one battlefield to another. But for Barney Thomason, the alley behind the Garrison really was a battlefield. Like Danny Whizzbang used, he was convinced that he was back in France, that Johnny Dogs and Isiah who tried to get him to drop the gun were German infantry.
 
“Barney!” Tommy called out, going past the others and grabbing Barney’s attention straight away.
 
“They’re not fucking voices!” He screamed but when he saw Tommy, he stopped. He dropped his hand down to his side and stood up straight, like a soldier standing to attention.
 
“Put down the gun, at ease, come on” Tommy told him, taking the gun from Barney’s grip and throwing it to Finn.
 
“At ease soldier, at ease” Tommy ordered him, grabbing Barney by the face and forcing him to look at them.
 
“They’re on our side look” Tommy gestured towards the men around them “There’s Jeremiah, Liam and Niall”
 
Barney’s wide, panicked eyes started to calm once he saw past the decade of changes and recognising his old friends.
 
“There’s Finn, you remember our Finn” Arthur reminded him, gesturing towards Finn who had Barney’s weapon safely away from him.
 
Barney’s eyes focused in on Finn and then on the girl beside him. She was beautiful and she looked tough as nails, but Barney didn’t know her.
 
“Finn” He nodded, starting to remember the little boy who had been there when they came home from France.

But then he moved his eyes to the girl beside Finn who was standing beside him, his arm reaching across her in a protective manner. She was small, but had something quite strong and womanly about her, something quite mature in her eyes as if she had seen a lot in her life. She looked quite vibrant against the smoke and shit of Small Heath, from her dark lipstick to the peacock blue of her coat. Green eyes stared back at him, making Barney feel like she was looking straight through him, seeing that he might not be the madman the others thought. But he didn't recognise her, not for who she was.
 
“Is that that girl who gave you the clap in France, Arthur?” Barney asked, nodding towards Ailbhe who reminded him of a girl they had come across in the war.
 
“Jesus Christ, Barney” Arthur snapped back, while Finn just laughed with Ailbhe’s brothers.
 
Even Tommy almost cracked a smile.
 
“That’s our Ailbhe, Barney” Tommy reminded him, giving him a pill to take which he swallowed immediately before having another look at Ailbhe.
 
“Oh my days” He sighed incredulously. It was hard to put the memory of the little girl, eternally barefoot and who could barely speak English with the young woman who stood in front of him.
 
“Sorry, Ailbhe. Sorry Sergeant Major” He nodded towards them but Ailbhe just shook her head, knowing he hadn’t meant any insult. The drugs that were in his system were messing him up until they had him dried out completely.
 
“Get him to Charlie’s Yard, before he falls down” Tommy told Isiah and Jeremiah, already feeling Barney start to go limp in his arms.
 
Finn was still smirking beside her when she elbowed him into the ribs.
 
“Shut up” She warned him jokingly. He knew that the similarities between Ailbhe and this French girl with the clap were probably minimal, but he still thought it was still funny.
 
“I hope she was at least pretty, Arthur” She warned him jokingly.
 
Liam shrugged, keeping an eye on Barney who was almost asleep between Jeremiah and Isiah.
 
“She was pretty enough to give Niall the clap too” He reminded them, earning a shove from Niall who told him to shut up.
 
Finn looked across at Ailbhe, her arms folded across her chest, but her fists were clenched too. The way her and Tommy had stormed out of the pub, he knew that Michael had gotten under their skin.
 
“You alright?” He asked her, his hand finding the small of her back.
 
She sighed, pulling her eyes away from Barney and back to Finn.
 
“Michael thinks I belong in a facility like Barney. Maybe he’ll get us adjoining padded cells when he’s chairman and master of the fucking universe.”
 
She answered sarcastically, not mentioning the idea that Michael also thought that Ailbhe would take her own life when the voices got too much. Finn didn’t need to hear that.
 
Finn was quiet, not able to answer while Tommy interrupted them all. But he thought about it, about how Ailbhe had that whole gift that could drive a person mad, God knows it had drove his mother mad. But Ailbhe was stronger than that, surely. She had to be.
 
“Alright, now a subsidiary meeting of the generation of men who actually do the work” Tommy called them, heading back towards the garrison that they hoped would be empty.
 
“Ailbhe” He called her, nodding towards the door. That meant that she was expected there too.
 
Back inside, the pub was completely empty. Smoke curled up from the ashtray where Polly and her son had left cigarettes but they were gone. Ailbhe hadn’t been convinced Michael would finally do as he was told and leave but thankfully, he had listened for once.
 
Polly had slapped her son across the face, barely recognising him as he stood there and betrayed Tommy after everything they had been through, spoke about Ailbhe like that after everything he had already put her through. But he was her son, and if it came down to it, Polly wasn’t sure where she would stand.
 
Finn pulled out a chair for Ailbhe, throwing himself into one beside it and Ailbhe had to almost smile. He did things like that, little gentlemanly gestures so unceremoniously and quietly that he almost hoped no one would notice.
 
Tommy pulled out a cigarette, setting between his lips and taking a deep breath as Arthur went rummaging for some of the ‘good stuff’.
 
Finn lit a cigarette for Ailbhe, passing it to her with a wink and lighting one for himself.
 
“Alright, item number three” Tommy announced, sitting down on one of the bar stools, a lot more relaxed now it was just his family, his real family. The ones he could trust.
 
“An introduction. Except now you’ve already met him” Tommy gestured towards the alley where they had just met their guest of honour.
 
“In France, Barney was our comrade” Liam explained for Johnny Dogs and Aberama’s benefit, the others remembered Barney, even if he didn’t remember them.
 
“What the fuck is he now, Liam?” Johnny Dogs asked, a trace of humour in his voice but a baffled look on his face.
 
Whatever Tommy and Ailbhe had broke him out for, Johnny Dogs wasn’t sure he was up to it. He didn’t seem up to anything, let alone something important. But Johnny knew better than to doubt a plan of Tommy’s, especially with Ailbhe’s head in the mix too.
 
“He’s a man we could use, Johnny” Tommy explained but Ailbhe heard the edge in Tommy’s tone.
 
He didn’t like the idea of using anyone, especially an old friend but they needed Barney.
 
“For what?” Aberama asked, his raspy voice coming from the table he sat at near the door “We gonna put him in a ring with a bear and take bets on the outcome?”
 
Raising a finger he added
 
“I tell you, I wouldn’t put much money on the fucking bear!”
 
Ailbhe froze, her hand with the cigarette in mid-air between the table and her lips. She had thought the very same thing about Bonnie once. Thinking about him was the same always, it brought a sting of pain that hit her right in the chest and made her think about the young man whose life had been snatched from him, a life of victories and triumph, a life of married bliss and children.
 
“Aberama, that man is a trained Royal Marines Sniper” Tommy explained, as Arthur put a glass down in front of him. But Aberama pushed it aside, he had no need for a drink this morning.
 
“Furthermore?” Ailbhe added, prompting Tommy’s explanation. There plenty of snipers, plenty of good snipers sitting among them, Finn included. But they had more reasons for choosing Barney.
 
Tommy bit the inside of his cheek, Ailbhe looked at him until he continued.
 
“Furthermore, he has a criminal profile which will make his actions explicable to the police” Tommy explained, pulling his eyes away from Ailbhe.
 
Looking up, Tommy saw Charlie’s dark eyes glowering back at him.
 
“What actions?” He asked, not sure if he even wanted to know.
 
“A killing” was all Tommy said, was all he would say before Aberama interjected.
 
“And since when did you worry about the police?” He asked, not following anymore.
 
The Peaky Blinders lived beyond the law, the police were in their pocket. So, why did it matter now. Not a person in that room had been law abiding citizens, all of them with their fair share of arrests and slaps on the wrists.
 
“Barney Thomason is going to kill an MP” Tommy broke the news, knowing that the only person who knew this plan already was Ailbhe, and if Tommy knew her at all he knew that she would have told Finn.
 
Niall just started laughing, putting his head down in his hands. He couldn’t help but think about how perhaps his family hadn’t come that far at all. His father had been arrested and killed for resistance against the British occupation in Ireland. Since then, Niall and Liam had fought in France in the King’s army, had lived in Birmingham for years and became part of England’s upperclass somehow. And here they were, plotting an assassination of an MP.
 
“Possibly, the future prime minister of Great Britain” Tommy continued, shrugging his shoulders.
 
“What the fuck, Tom” Charlie grumbled, in disbelief until he remembered who he was dealing with. Why wouldn’t Tommy plot to kill an MP.
 
Tommy pulled out a seat at the table, sitting down beside Charlie, opposite Ailbhe and Finn. He looked tired but he always did now.
 
“After the killing, there will be an investigation by special branch and by intelligence forces. There’s a lot of powerful people as angry as fucking hornets and we need there to be no connection to us.”
 
Tommy explained, clutching to his cigarette like a lifeline.
 
 
“Barney Thomason is registered as criminally insane. He broke out, he’s an old solider with known grievances who got his hands on a gun...No one will question the assassination was carried out by anyone important, it will appear to be a single gunman acting alone”
 
Tommy explained to them, his family nodding as they began to understand the plan.
 
“You’d sacrifice an old friend, an old comrade?” Aberama asked, still trying to figure out Thomas Shelby.
 
“What if he gets caught?” Liam snapped, his arms were folded across his chest and his brow furrowed. He didn’t like the plan. He despised the idea of his old comrade being caught.
 
“They’ll fucking hang him Tommy” Liam warned him. If Ailbhe was set to be hanged for hiding the murderer of an MPs son, surely Barney Thomason would be hanged for murdering an MP.
 
“No they won’t Liam, I’ve made sure they couldn’t!” Ailbhe promised him, she wouldn’t have broken Barney out if there was even a remote possibility he would be punished.
 
“If they catch him, they won’t hang him, on grounds of insanity” Ailbhe explained, having checked a thousand times that they wouldn’t be able to harm him.
 
“They’ll just send him back to where I found him and he’ll have had a very eventful holiday that he’ll probably believe never even happened” Tommy explained, knowing that Ailbhe had made sure of it.
 
“Barney won’t get caught” Ailbhe shook her head, she knew that if it came down to a run, Barney would win every time. It didn’t matter he’d been bound up for a decade. He could outrun anyone now he was free.
 
“And where will this killing take place?” Aberama asked, full of questions for a new man at the table.
 
Arthur looked at his brother, standing up and rummaging in his pocket for a flier that he handed to Aberama. Although, Ailbhe wasn’t sure why. Aberama couldn’t read or wouldn’t read, either way it meant nothing to him but Ailbhe noticed the cold face of Mosley and knew it was a flier for his rally.
 
“Lots of witnesses” Aberama mused, knowing that it would be a packed event for an assassination to take place.
 
“During the rally, an anti-fascist demonstration will take place. Amidst the confusion, a shot will be fired” Tommy told them, his voice quieter now.
 
“RIP Sir Oswald” Liam joked, raising an eyebrow at Ailbhe who would be surely glad to see the life drain out of him.
 
She certainly would be.
 
“And where will you be, Tom?” Johnny Dogs enquired, knowing that if chaos was on stage Tommy wouldn’t be far from it.
 
“I’ll be down on one knee, cradling his head while the life drains from him. I’ll make a speech saying that the cause he died for must continue safe in my hands”
 
Tommy recited, having decided already what would happen and the order it would happen in.
 
“Jesus Christ Tom” Niall sighed, finding it hard to believe they were going to be doing this.
 
“Does your ambition have no limits, Tommy?” Aberama asked incredulously but if he’d knew Tommy better he’d know it was a pointless question.
 
And Aberama’s part in this little story was about to crop up, the part he wanted to play more than anything.
 
“Jimmy McCavern will be running security at the event, Mr Gold” Ailbhe promised him, knowing that Aberama’s attention would switch on like a light.
 
“He’ll be in the wings and you can take his life in any manner you choose” Tommy explained, knowing that the thirst for Jimmy McCavern’s blood hadn’t faded in the slightest.
 
And judging by Aberama’s eyes, he looked forward to watching the life drain out of McCavern’s evil face. Anyone in the room would love to pull that trigger or do that killing. Jimmy McCavern had killed their friend, their man Bonnie Gold and he would be punished accordingly.
 
“What about us, Tom?” Johnny Dogs asked, gesturing at him and Niall and the others who awaited instruction.
 
“Arthur, Johnny and Niall. You’ll be in charge of getting Barney into position” Tommy told them, having it all planned out. They would need at least the three of them to keep him steady.
 
“We’ll need chains and twitch, Tom” Johnny cursed, not wanting to have to control the wild animal that was Barney Thomason now.
 
“No! I will medicate him” Tommy groaned, knowing that when Barney took that shot, he’d be alright.
 
Aberama almost laughed.
 
“So, he’ll take that shot cross eyed?” He asked whimsically. To anyone else, to anyone who hadn’t seen Barney in France it would seem like a suicide mission. But Liam, Arthur, Niall and Tommy had seen him, seen what he could do.
 
“He won’t miss” Liam replied, shaking his head and taking a shot from the glass Arthur poured him as he remembered France, just flashes of it but enough to make him reach for the glass.
 
“In France, he never missed. No matter what they gave him. He’ll have plenty practice and before he takes the shot, Arthur will give him some cocaine to sharpen him up”
 
Tommy further explained, knowing that he’d trust Barney Thomason.
 
“Let me get this straight” Aberama laughed, holding his hands out and looking between Thomas and his brothers, even Ailbhe who didn’t seem to be laughing.
 
“You’re going to be up on the stage while this criminally insane gunman filled with cocaine takes aim at a man just a yard away from you”
 
When it was put like that, it did seem like a ridiculous plan. But it was the best they had.
 
“Welcome to the family, Aberama” Tommy said dryly, his back turned to them now as he faced the bar.
 
“Told you it was gonna be a busy few weeks” Liam nodded at Niall who sighed, grabbing the bottle and filling another glass for each of them.
 
“A Kennedy involved in the killing of a British figurehead... what a shock” He sighed dryly, tipping the caramel-coloured liquid down his throat.
 
Ailbhe almost even laughed. Their dad would be proud.
 
“One for my record” Ailbhe joked, looking at Finn who rolled his eyes at her. Of course, now would be the time she decided to start joking about her own brushes with the law.
 
“They’ll build a fucking shrine to you back in Ireland soon” Finn rolled his eyes, laughing as Niall passed the bottle to him.
 
“What about me then, the man with the broken fucking leg?” Charlie asked dryly, not having heard anyone tell him where to be and when. His orders usually came eventually.
 
“This is where it gets good” Ailbhe interjected, loving it when a plan came together.
 
“After the assassination, every copper in Birmingham will be sent to Bingley Hall. We use that opportunity to get that boat full of opium to Southbridge Loughs, there you will be met by some Chinese gentlemen with two suitcases of cash. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds”
 
It all sounded so easy, so perfectly fitting but Ailbhe knew as well as anyone that plans went wrong all the time.
 
“Every man in this room will receive thirty thousand pounds in cash in recognition of extra services” Tommy promised them, knowing well that Ailbhe was included in that ‘men’ reference.
 
Between them, Finn and Ailbhe would have sixty thousand pounds in cash for themselves, for whatever they now wanted. The way he looked across at her and smiled, she wanted to know what Finn had in mind for their share of the cash.
 
“Holy Mary Mother of God. Good man Tom!”
 
Johnny Dogs exclaimed in glee, slamming his fist down on the bar with utter enthusiasm. If he had to put a collar and leash on Barney Thomason, Johnny was going to get this job done and get his cut.
 
“Anyone who wants to leave, leave now” Tommy warned them but Ailbhe knew that anyone who was there now, was in it for the long haul.
 
“Anyone who is tired of this old-fashioned back street fucking razor gang. Anyone who is tired can fucking stop”
 
He warned them, but despite everyone in the room being tired to the point of exhaustion, not one of them wanted to stop. This was who they were. And they didn’t care if sometimes it made it hard to sleep at night. It was what they were born to do.
 
“Alright. Good” Tommy sighed, knowing that they wouldn’t have walked out but felt he had to say it to prove a point. Michael wasn’t going to beat them.
 
“Charlie, go to the yard and light a fire. Johnny, bring the van round” Tommy asked of them, moving swiftly onwards.
 
“What’s the fire for, Tom?” Charlie asked but Finn was already getting to his feet and Johnny was finishing his drink, ready to get the van.
 
“There’s an item number four” Tommy reminded them.
 
There was one more problem to be taken care of, the one that Arthur and Ailbhe had already spoke about this morning. The way Arthur looked over his shoulder at Ailbhe, she knew by his face that Tommy had confirmed her suspicions.
 
“Black cat dream is never wrong” Tommy murmured to himself, turning his head and catching eyes with Ailbhe as Finn got to his feet beside her.
 
“Sometimes I wish they were” She sighed, knowing she was meant to stay for this part but she desperately wanted to leave. She didn’t want to see what was going to happen next but Arthur had told her they needed to be sure, needed her to be certain and Tommy needed a second opinion before he killed a man, not always but when it was his own man he wanted to be sure. And despite Ailbhe yet to be wrong when it came to a feeling, she wished she was wrong for this one.