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Birmingham was a cold place. A grey place. Full of smoke and frowns. Like an old casino, whose once brilliant colors and loud slogans had dulled, run dry, and now the only patrons were skeletal people, running on a pattern they could not break and who wanted to bother with no one and nothing. It was the perfect city for her.
She fingered the shred of black cloth she held. Ran the tips of her fingers over the even blacker stitching in its middle. Oscar Fletch. She put the cigarette back between her lips. Inhaled. Exhaled. It was a crude name. It belonged to a crude man. She never asked what they did. Or why their name appeared in black thread on black cloth. She didn’t ask because she didn’t care. The answer would change nothing.
She was a killer, not a cop.
Every person needed to have something, some currency, to sell or to offer, and she had realized early on she didn’t like the currency of her flesh. Some women found power in it. She hadn’t. No, Maggie Penn was not a good whore. She was a good killer. The first had been an accident and one she had capitalized on. Into a business of killing had been an easy swing from there. Black cloth named the target, black cloth covered the dead man’s face. Men were the easiest to kill. They followed the swing of her hips, the tilt of her lips, the slight fluttering of her lashes or the tuck of her hair so intently they barely noticed the rope she wrapped around their necks. She always thought men would learn to fear women one day, but lucky for her, they hadn’t learned yet.
A flush of water echoed off the walls and smiling she ground her cigarette out. It left a smudge on the dirty wood. She rarely used ashtrays.
The door creaked open and Oscar Fletch entered the room. A slim man. Warm eyes. Worn hands. He didn’t bother to re-latch his belt. He figured it was going to come right off again anyways. How right he was.
“You ready to get started?” he said.
“I love it when they ask,” she said.
She put the cloth down. Turned. Smiled. This was a job like any other. She met his warm, crinkled eyes and undid the top button of her blouse. The beginning was always her favorite.
He was dead an hour later. The floorboards creaked as she moved from the bed. The windows had fogged over some time ago, and she touched the cold panes, pleased at the tingle that shot through her. She liked the marks her fingers left there. She was naked and cold. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor, but she moved over them towards the dresser and picked up a pack of cigarettes. She set one between her teeth and struck a match. Smoke began to curl up and it brought a bit of light into the room.
That first exhale was always the best. It blew out all the wrong. Evened her out.
Oscar Fletch.
The belt was still around his neck. His eyes bulged out. A cold and lonely sight. No indication that she had shared that bed only moments earlier. Even the scent of their act had vanished. Foggy panes and cigarette smoke and a crumpled pile of clothes were the only remnants of it.
A black shred of cloth was on the dresser.
She picked it up. Watched it flutter down over the body. Black cloth with a black name. Once she’d smoked the last of her cigarette, she gathered her things, and left.
She was Maggie Penn. The Mantis.
***
Tommy Shelby was a brutally elegant man. He had three brothers, one of which was older than him, but it was Tommy Shelby that ran the family gang, the Peaky Blinders. It was a gambling racket, with a side business in booze and security. It was a family business and he was a family man.
He had a way of doing things that was unpredictable at times, but he was always confident and so people followed him. He liked to stand with his hands behind his back and he had pale blue eyes. There was a sharpness to him and a knowing. Too knowing almost.
There had been problems lately. In business and in life, but it was the business that concerned him. He exhaled a long stream of smoke and tapped the ash off the end. He wanted to make his livelihood legitimate. He didn’t like violence. Didn’t condone it. But he was a family man, and he was a businessman and sometimes business demanded violence. He needed a hit done. He didn’t need the Shelby name attached to it. His strict orders were that his family and his business were not to be involved at all. Which meant he had needed the best and she had been named the best.
It was his office of sorts. A shut off room in the Garrison pub. A small circular thing filled completely by one table and rounded bench and it was here he met her, because it was only supposed to be business. She sat across from him and smoked.
She had blonde hair, which he decided he didn’t like, and grey eyes. There was a reservation to her, a foggy grace. Like a lighthouse. Alluring and alone. It was difficult to conjure up an image that she was a killer, but he knew better. Anyone was capable of killing. He had meant it to just be business, but the talk between them had come easy, comfortably, in a haze of smoke and whiskey. She took hers with ice. Unusual, but not unlikable.
“The Mantis. You’re not quite what I expected,” he said with a smile.
“Oh? You do know why I’m called the Mantis, don’t you?” she said.
“No,” he said and took a drag of his cigarette.
“Will you tell me?” He said.
She smiled, sad and soft. “It’s an oriental bug. Referenced in Chinese literature and praised for its prowess as a predator and a fighter. The female also devours her mate. Post-coital. Or sometimes mid.”
“Is that a thing you do?”
“A whore, I found, has no say in what happens to her body once or sometimes even before she’s taken the coin. I have every say“ she said. “A final taste of life and pleasure is a small thing to offer if both parties are open to it.”
His cigarette was tucked into the corner of his mouth. His chest was open, arms slung across the backside of the bench, a golden chain hung from his pocket. It was a tailored outfit. Slimming without masking. Her lips pursed around her smoke, eyes downcast. She exhaled in a long slim stream and looked up at him from beneath her lashes.
A black piece of cloth slid across the table.
She tucked it in her coat and downed her whiskey. They shook hands. There was something electric there. Something new. An awakening of sorts. It lingered long after she had gone.
The hit was done a few days later and to his satisfaction. He thought to see her again.
***
It was late June. He’d called a few times on her services. She always answered. Knew she shouldn’t. It was becoming too casual. Too commonplace. She rarely had the same client more than twice, yet how many times had she seen him in just the last few months?
She clicked her cigarette case open and stuck a smoke between her lips. A match flickered to life, cast shadows in a shadowy room, sputtered and died. She leaned back into the armchair and puffed smoke. Head thrown back, her hair tumbled down like a disheveled halo. Was she the angel in hell or the devil in paradise?
Another black cloth fluttered to the ground.
How long until his name was on one? Business was hurting. This was her first hit in months. People were starting to assume she had loyalties. How long until they would test that? How long until they considered her a threat and not an asset? Tommy Shelby. A soft name. A hard man. Tommy. His name lived on her tongue like honey. He wasn’t even using her to kill half the time. Cajole, distract, bribe, but not murder. She had become one of his. It wasn’t just business anymore. She met with him at pubs. At races. She’d sat beside him in a pew and watched the stained glass cast patterns on his face. In a car that had rumbled beneath them both.
“Where’d that come from?” She had asked.
He had touched his temple. Rubbed the blood between his fingers. His sleeves were rolled up and his hands were scarred. A fighter though he didn’t look it. Short, with pretty boy looks.
“There was trouble. Another fire I had to put out,” he said.
“You should have been a firefighter,” she said.
“Because it’s less dangerous?” He asked, with a cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth.
“No, it’s the same job,” she said. “Just legal.”
He had chuckled and taken her to the Garrison. There had been dancing that night and he had pressed his hand into the small of her back and been so close she could smell the whiskey and smoke. She had danced with other men too, but she was always aware of Tommy. He was a patient man, one who knew the power of silence, of slow deliberate movements, of taking the moment to observe and to learn.
She was falling for him.
And it scared her.
***
She entered the room. Radiant as always. It was hard not to notice her. Like a lighthouse. All the lost ships at sea knew instantly to look for her. She wore a wide brimmed hat and clutched it to her head with a laced hand. The sun focused on her like a jewel in the sand.
His brother Arthur noticed the direction of his stare and cracked a joke. Polly glared in disapproval. But he didn’t care. He pushed himself off the railing and strode to collect her. He had a horse in the race and he knew it was going to win. He took his cap off and run a hand through his hair. His hands were scarred. He was a man who knew how to use his hands, to work with them. How to build things. How to take them apart. But he didn’t know her. She had a soft smile. It made him anxious for her and he sheltered her as they made their way inside.
“You wore a green dress.”
“You suggested it,” she said.
“I have an excellent eye. You look beautiful,” he said.
He knew it wasn’t wise. That what he wanted wasn’t even possible. For them to exist. To both quieten and settle, to leave the whole life behind, but that wasn’t for them. People like him, like her, would always be embroiled with darkness. Caught by old grudges or old debts. No, the world she and he were building with their hands, with their actions, it wasn’t for them. It was for the next generation.
She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it.
He loved watching her. He didn’t really understand the importance of the hat, or the laced gloves, or even the green dress, she was wonderful in anything. Because he understood her. Maggie. Slow and dangerous. Like a lighthouse. Maggie.
He was falling for her.
Like a desperate ship captain in a stormy sea.
He was falling for her.
***
The building behind her pulsed like a lightning bug. She stood outside in the cool air alone, a joint between her fingers. The stars were far away tonight. Hidden by fog.
A door clanged shut and Tommy came to stand beside her. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match aside. She had gotten away from him sometime in the night. She had needed air and some time to think. A group walked by them into the pub and she saw the women eye him. Tommy Shelby. A soft name for a hard man. Other women were always eyeing him.
Her cigarette was done and she threw it to the side, sighing when she found no others in her pack. He handed her his. Lit another one for himself.
“Want to go home? I can drive still,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“No, I can’t drive? Or no, you don’t want to go home?”
“No, I don’t want you driving me home.”
“Ah,” he said. “Why?”
She glanced at him. He was right on the edge of himself, sort of spilling over her, into her, and it was new and frightening, because she was used to him always being constrained, displicined. A man of willpower and reserve. But he was giving some part of himself now and she had to make a choice.
“I have a job,” she said.
“This evening?” He asked. “Or in the morning?”
“The job’s a job until it’s done,” she said in an exhale of white smoke.
He turned away, one hand in his pocket, the other by his mouth. “What are you doing here then?”
Pretending, she thought. She didn’t answer him outloud, but took another long drag instead and held it until she couldn’t anymore. It was unusual and unheard of, but she loved him. He was agitated now, coming loose. She could tell. He was a man who took what he wanted, and the rest, he left it to wilt or to wait. The pub behind her pulsed with light and life and dark moving figures.
But he stayed.
And in his own stupid way, that said exactly how he felt.
***
It had been a good day at the races. The Peaky Blinders were at a profitable incline and business was stable, with small footholds of legality gained at every turn. Maggie had been there.
He walked her home that night. Shoulder to shoulder. Elbow to elbow.
It was a grey night with a heavy moon. The walls of the street seemed to curve and lean in, block him and her from view of everything but the sky. Big sad stars up there. They looked ready to fall at the brush of a cloud.
They were in Small Heath. He was king on this street, but truly, she ruled here. Her presence was sunk into every street crack or alley or slanted house he saw. This was her area in his territory. He had never known that. Her door was grey like her eyes and when she turned in front of it, he kissed her.
Somewhere a bell chimed and drunk men stumbled out of pubs. Arms thrown about each other’s shoulders in jubilant camaraderie, slurred voices raised in the celebration of shared woes and hardship.
His was not a kiss of questions. Of if it would happen between them, or when, or even how. It was possessive and reserved. A note that she was already his and he was simply waiting for her to catch wise to that. He was patient. He could wait.
There was something undone about her now. She fumbled for a cigarette and the hand that swiped the match to light it trembled. Her lips parted with the exhale and her eyes caught his. Grey uncertainty.
“No Tommy, we can’t.”
“We already are.”
She made a short sound. A scoffing chuckle.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, but he didn’t budge. Didn’t give her the space. He had put it out there many times, in many other ways already. It was time to be direct. He was not the type of man to ask for things, but he would, for her.
“I want to fuck you,” he said.
“No Tommy,” she said.
His name was soft on her lips, the way he knew her mouth was. The cigarette darted in and out. Grey smoke. Grey door. Grey eyes. She was like a lighthouse. He should turn away.
“You don’t want to fuck me. You want to own me,” she said.
He wanted to loosen his collar and press her against the wall and fuck her until she was rags, so yes.
“I didn’t realize there was a difference,” he said.
Most women would shake their head at him. He would press on and eventually he would go upstairs with those women. She stared at him, placed her cigarette between his lips, and frowned.
“Tommy,” she said. His name again. Soft, like it didn’t belong to a hard man like him. To a hard man like Tommy Shelby. “It’s impossible. This idea of us, it can’t happen.”
He spat her cigarette out. “I don’t see why not.”
“I like my life. It doesn’t have many rules, but there are a few. One man can’t own everybody else’s secrets.”
“It’s business then?’ He said.
“Not since I met you. It’s all suffering,” she said with a sad smile.
It grew colder out. The first breaths of winter blew across the empty street. The moon was sinking lower like a hungry mouth ready to devour them.
“You’re the best of them, by far and with no doubts, but I don’t work with many stupid men. If I’m yours, then all of my (all of their) secrets are too. You’d know whose ordered the hits on whom. And you’re smart enough to figure out why and how to play off that information. It’d jeopardize them all. You’d know their moves and motivations. They’d kill us both for that,” she said.
His jaw tensed in calculation. It was the first time he’d taken his eyes off her all night and he wanted a smoke.
“You never hear me,” she said and rolled her eyes.
“I always hear you, Maggie,” he said, ignoring her. “I just don’t always listen.”
“One day your name will show up in little black stitches on a little black cloth,” she promised.
He looked at her then, focused and intent. In a deliberate movement he took his hands out of his pockets and spread them wide. His trenchcoat opened to show the holster around his chest. It was an invitation, a threat, and ridiculous posturing. It was cold enough to see her breath and he watched it come in small, short, puffs. There was little space between him and her. If she stepped forward it would be over. A new type of dawn would come tomorrow.
She shook her head and he relaxed. There it was, he thought. Acceptance.
“Don’t come round again,” she said in warning and closed the door in his face.
That grey door.
He stared at it for a bit. It was thin wood. He could shove his hands in his pockets and kick it down like yesterday. He tucked a smoke into his mouth and lit it. It was too early to go home. Nothing but an empty bed and shovels and pickaxes awaited him there.
“Fuck off,” he said to the door. He knew just the thing he needed. Lizzy. And whiskey. And more smokes.
***
Maggie Penn was dressed her best.
Black slip, garter, stockings, bra, and panties. A long black dress to cover it all. Jewels at her ears and throat. She even wore rouge. A shred of black cloth lay on the table. She had moved in a few months back. To a flat outside town in a small village. She didn’t usually receive her targets at home, but tonight was a big deal. The request had been very special and very specific.
She stuck a cigarette between her lips and went to set a record on. It crackled and staticked before it settled. A melancholy tune. Old music. And classical. She felt free tonight. Heightened and aware. The world was in color.
The black cloth lay on the table.
Maggie picked it up. Ran her bare fingers over the stitching in its middle. Black thread on black cloth.
She wondered if he’d come.
***
The car rolled to a stop outside a small townhouse. It was early in the evening. The grey of the sky just turning to orange and red. Like a pill of blood in a lake. The house was brown and there were flowers on its window sills. Pink and purple blossoms that toppled into one another, spilled down the front. Smoke curled out of the car’s passenger side as it idled there.
“You shure about this?” John asked and Tommy glanced at him.
“Positive,” he said.
John sighed. There was an innocence about the younger man that never seemed to be erased. It didn’t matter that he’d gone to war. Or that he was a Peaky Blinder. John was John. Boyish, simple. Tommy envied it sometimes.
“It’s just I don't trust her. None of us do. You shouldn’t,” John went on to say.
Tommy waved him off. His cigarette was almost done. He was eager. Distracted. The sky was getting redder. He left the car and exhaled the last of his smoke, before he tossed it in the street. He looked intently at his young brother.
“Don’t come back again. I’ll find me own way home,” he said and slapped the side of the car.
Straightening his coat he stared at the house. There were two guns at his chest and a knife in his pocket. He wore a long trench coat with a red inlay and a black tailored suit with a red tie. A gold pocket watch was tucked into his vest and everything was pressed and clean. He took his cap out and pressed it down upon his head, checking for the hidden razors beneath the lid of it.
Tommy Shelby was dressed his best.
He wondered if she was there.
***
He didn’t knock when he entered. Just walked in and threw his hat and coat down on the nearest chair, as if he was the owner and not the guest. He was just as she remembered him. So elegantly brutal. Controlled in everything he did.
“Scotch or Irish?” he said and held her up a glass.
It was from her own bar, but she played along. “Irish, please.”
“You still like it cold?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
He grunted, but made it anyway. She stood and placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it before fixing one herself. He traded her a glass for the favor and they settled and sat as if was all routine. As if house, and family, and shop were all they ever talked about. As if the outside world had dulled and vanished and the only thing that still existed, still mattered were the two of them. They laughed. Smoked. One glass turned to two and three.
“I want to do something,” he finally said.
She sipped her glass. He was focused, intent on her. His hand propped up in that classic pose of his, white smoke wafting upwards from the cigarette between his fingers.
“From now on,” he said, studying her, “no questions. Just statements.”
“Ok,” she said.
“Ok,” he said.
“I’ll start.”
She watched him relax, become untucked in someway, and it made her anxious for him, over him. She had always known him in a violent or unflinching context - racketeer, mob boss, owner, leader - this mode was new. She smiled.
“I don’t like horses,” she said and sipped her glass.
He nodded. “Good.”
“I thought you’d say differently,” she said.
“No.”
“Well that is good, then.”
“I know plenty of people who like horses. It doesn’t mean we always get along. I get along with you,” he said.
“Good.”
“It’s getting late in the evening.”
“Yes,” she agreed and looked anywhere except at him.
“I’ll be here till morning,” he said.
“I thought you said no more questions.”
“I did, and it wasn’t.”
She looked at the black cloth on the table. He watched where her eyes went and chuckled. Brought his cigarette up and exhaled slowly. She wanted to kiss him so badly. He was liquid there. Blue eyes and long lashes. Slouching with the ease of authority. A man who rarely asked more than twice. Tommy Shelby. A man who always got what he pursued.
She wanted him and he wanted her.
She rolled towards him like a wave claiming the shore. She knelt and took the hand from his knee to hold it in her own. She rubbed her fingers over it. The knuckles were scarred. He had rough palms and he wore his sleeves rolled up. He liked to work with his hands she remembered. He liked to build things but he also knew how to take them apart. He was a man who would get stuck on things and when he did, nobody but he could get himself unstuck.
“Tommy,” she said. Testing his name. Liking the way it lived on her tongue.
He tensed beneath her touch, not in resistance, but restraint. A way of holding himself back from consuming her then and there. She could feel the pressure building. Could see the predatory look in his eyes. It made her reckless. Bold.
She put her hands on his chest, felt his body. It was taut and firm, like a warrior. A soldier. She moved her hands up the length of his neck and felt him shudder beneath her fingertips as she moved them. She touched the hard angles of his jaw, the soft parts of his lips that fell open at her touch. Everything about him was tight. Controlled. He watched her closely, earnestly, frightened of whatever it was she would say to him next. She could feel it, deep inside her. The power to destroy him, to drive him away.
“I want this,” she stated. “I want you.”
And that was it. The breaking point, the snap, the transition from man to primal need. He pulled her onto him and crushed her there. There was a hand on her ass and the back of her head and he kissed her hard. Demanding submittal. It was over eager and messy, she felt their teeth clack, like they were youngsters in the first throes of passion. It made her want to laugh. How simple it was. She broke the kiss and grabbed him, led him up, to the back, to the boudoir. They would do things properly, she thought. First there, then here. Who knew after that. They had till morning.
The forgotten record spun with static.
In the glow of love she undressed.
***
His clothes were crumpled on the floor of Maggie Penn. And for the second time in his life since the war, the shovels were quiet.
Tommy Shelby was at peace.