The Devil's Duet: Chapter Two

This novella contains scenes dealing with violence, profanity, sexual and drug abuse, which may cause some readers distress. Please be warned. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. It is a work of cautionary fiction.

God Save the Queen | (Thou shalt not kill — Deuteronomy 5:13)

Chapt 1 | Contents | Chapt 3

ara's hands were bloody.

But then they had been bloody for a long time.

He had even gotten used to the coppery scent he bathed his hands in, and sometimes if the man truly deserved it, then his blood smelt better than his ex-missus's handwash.

There had been one time that he had enjoyed the killing so much he had left the bastard's bloods on his hands for a week.

He thought again of the little body the fire crew had pulled out from the devastation the bomb bad wrought on their Church. Stone could be replaced. A church could be rebuilt, better than before. But the loss of a child? How did a family rebuild after that?

Dara was sorely tempted to leave the blood on his hands, and to walk the streets of Blacklion as a warning. He'd only returned home for a short sojourn to visit his Da's grave, before heading back out to some city or other.

He was always in high demand, because of his unbeatable success rate. He had a talent for making people disappear. When someone wanted a problem to go away, they called on him. He was being called away now, and to fucking England of all places. But he always started a new job with clean hands.

He took a bowl from his kitchen cupboard. It was his ceremonial confirmation bowl. His old Da had made it for him, and he thought of how proud he'd looked watching his son take the sacrament.

Would he be proud of you now, Dara?

He filled the bowl with water from the Jordan River, which he'd had delivered specially for this purpose from the Sea of Gallilee. It was a ritual of his, to bathe his hands in it, as though he were doing God's work. He washed his hands slowly, as he recited the Lord's prayer. He rubbed his sticky, crimson palms in the water, until the clear liquid took the dead man's blood, turning wine red, and his hands were clean again.

Would that sweet, gentle man be proud of what his son is now, Dara?

He took his black crucifix from around his neck and twisted it open. There was a little cavity inside the corpus where he kept a small scroll of paper. He kept the number of hits on it, like the notches on a gunman's belt. He never showed it to anyone, and no one knew his exact number of kills, excepting himself, of course. He added another single stroke with a red pen, adding to the ones already there.

Well, would he?

Then he picked up his scrambler phone to call his cleaner. His music studio was a bit messier than usual. The walls would need mopping.

Dara smiled to himself. He had gotten carried away, But it was the least he could do for the family.

This had been free. A gift. He'd have asked to do it as a fucking favour, if it came to that.

Yeah, he replied back finally, to the troubled voice of his conscience.

Me old Da would have been fucking proud of this one.

aba Mamba was sitting down in a disused phone box that stood at the edge of Downland. Decorated with the usual graffiti and cracked windows, as most of its kind were these days, it remained standing as a derelict testament to the arrival of the smartphone, as though crafted by an urban artist and left on public display.

But this phone box had one unusual feature. Some practical mind had managed to fit an old office chair inside its reinforced plastic frame, so the weary could sit down and rest their tired feet.

That was why Baba Mamba was sitting down on it now.

But he wasn't making a phone call. The phone hadn't worked for years. Loyal knight, Danny B was kneeling at his feet providing the usual service.

He was polishing something, but it wasn't Baba Mamba's shoes.

And boy, he was good, Baba Mamba thought, as he gave a final grunt and finished in Danny's open and waiting mouth.

He could give Caleb a run for his money.

But then, anyone could these days. Caleb was quickly becoming, what they called in the trade, used goods. His old man had well and truly turned him into second hand gear. That no one but the most desperate innkeeper would take in.

"What we doing exactly?" Danny B asked, his Irish accent coming out as a gurgle. He hastily wiped his mouth and stood up, and looked around quickly to see if anyone had seen, somewhat shamed, suddenly. He must need another fix. "When do I make the call?"

Baba Mamba gave him a small smile, and got up off the chair in his slow, laborious style, still unzipped. He clicked his fingers at Danny, indicated for the boy to zip him up.

"The call's already been made, Danny boy. It could be today, it could be--"

"Tomorrow?" Danny said, as he fixed Baba Mamba's snake back into its hole.

"Any time," he said, pushing Danny away. "And I wish you'd stop finishing my fucking sentences."

ante washed the soil from his hands in the bathroom.

His was filled with so many thoughts. It was as if his mind was trying to process what had happened to him in the past year. All those he had loved and lost.

His Mama. Luna. Martha. Even Angelo, although he was lost to him in a different way, was just as lost.

Addio per sempre.

Goodbye forever, he had told him when they had last seen each other. And he had meant it. The man he saw that night, wasn't the Angelo he had fallen in love with.

That Angelo he kept in his heart, and he cherished him as a memory he would not forget, but he did not love him. Dante had left Angelo around a corner that he had turned long ago.

He entered his kitchen to make something to eat, but his once famed Sicilan apetite failed him. He looked at his kitchen window sill, to where his mother's planters used to be. He had not bought replacements, but lit a church candle, instead, and kept it burning every day.

For all those he had loved and lost. In cherished memory.

ara had certain rules.

He was efficient and highly respected in his chosen profession, so he could afford to pick and choose his assignments.

His clerk, the woman who managed the files that were sent to him, knew them.

She knew them very well. It was his ex-missus.

Things between them had not gone as planned. There was something missing in the relationship, and both of them had known it. Siobhoan was a woman with the brassiest balls he'd ever met, one of the few people that wasn't intimidated by him. She'd been the first to broach the subject of a separation, and he'd agreed. But they remained good friends, and maintained a good working relationship.

So, he was surprised now to see the file she gave him. He read it, as she lit a candle from the rack of votives in the Church. They always met at her local Church in Donegal, and it had become customary for her to light a prayer candle for him before he left to work on the file.

Dara frowned, as he read. Siobhoan knew his work ethic. No women. No one younger than twenty. No one disabled. No Catholics.

For him to break any of his last three rules would need exceptional circumstances, and the first, never. Dara had never laid a hand on a woman. He couldn't even imagine killing one.

Dara looked up as Siobhoan walked over to the pew.

"What's this? You know he's Catholic right?" There was no picture in the file, but the guy was Sicilian. Codeword: The Serpent.

"Apparently not," she whispered, in a tone of voice she kept only when in God's sanctuary.

"What you mean?"

She made the sign of the cross. "Apparently he worships the Devil, grooms young children and--"

Dara couldn't help himself from butting in. A serpent, indeed. "You mean there's more?"

She nodded, leaning in to whisper, "They also said he murdered his lady neighbour. They want you there like yesterday."

Dara's jaw tightened. This fucker ticked all the right boxes. "When am I leaving?"

"Your plane ticket is in the file. Tomorrow. Two seats as always."

"What's the code phrase for this serpent?"

Siobhoan paused, before saying, "God save the Queen."

"Are you kidding me?"

"It's the paying client's choice, Dara."

Dara nodded, but said no more. He got up to leave.

"Be careful," Siobhan said.

"Aren't I always?"

"Are you ever?"

Dara grinned.

"If I wanted danger, I'd have married you. This is safer."

aba Mamba had been fighting a crisis of conscience.

This new plan didn't sit right with him. For two reasons.

It was going to cost a lot of money, for one. The more his bosses paid out, the more it ate into his own profitable pocket. But secondly, although he wouldn't admit it to anyone but himself, he knew Dante didn't deserve it.

When this whole mess had started, he had gone along with it, even though he knew it was a bad idea. What did he care about some upstart Sicilian?

Now, he cared.

His mind wouldn't process the whys and wherefores of it, but he knew it was wrong. Somewhere deep in that money chasm of a heart, Baba Mamba respected Dante, and he didn't deserve what the Bull of Blacklion was going to do to him.

Baba Mamba was no longer King of his Camelot, and there wasn't much he could do about it.

For now.

For now, he would watch and wait.

erek and his mother were waiting at the airport.

Things were strained between them. Derek knew the reason, but it lay silent in their throats, as choked up as Caleb would end up on a Thursday night during one of his prayer sessions with his boy.

The analogy was more than apt. The closer his relationship with Caleb had become, the more his mother had begun to show her agitation in minor ways. She had been all for it, at the beginning, so he had no idea what her problem was now.

Caleb didn't even cost him anything these days. The neighbours he passed him on to were happy to front his expenses for a little taste of his behind. And as long as they funded him, he didn't mind if they fucked him, too. Caleb was so well trained, Derek knew his dog would always come back to his door.

And, yet, now he had his mother's attitude to deal with. A snide little comment here. A derogatory remark there. An are you sure dear suffixed phrase, which she always latched on to the end of her sentences, when what she really meant was that she knew it was a bad idea.

Not to mention her constant moaning about how many favours she'd had to pull for him.

This idea now, to hire an effective solution to what had escalated into a surprising problem, was one of those.

"I know this is for the best, as long as you're sure."

And after a short pause. "Are you sure, dear?" She asked for the umpteenth time.

Here we go again.

Derek suddenly wished he could make his mother go away, and briefly wondered if he could do a deal for two hits for the price of one.

But his mother was still useful to him. So, he simply nodded.

He was pissed as hell, though.

But you wouldn't know it to look at him.

efore Dara had entered his current profession, he'd lived on the streets.

He hadn't been homeless, and while the sanctuary of a Church stood in Ireland, no one was ever really homeless. But the streets had become his father. It had kept him, nutured him and taught him ways and means that had come in very handy as a problem solver. But he still hadn't learnt how to handle the problem of flying.

He was about to press the attendant call button above him, when one came over and asked him to put on his belt. They were preparing to land. Dara politely asked for another extension belt.

"I'm afraid it's still too tight with this one you gave me."

She nodded. "Of course, sir. I won't be a moment."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Dara hated flying, and it wasn't simply because his large frame was an inconvenience for the small seats. It was the food. The sitting still. The non-smoking signs. The small windows. The entire make-up of a plane emulated a long white coffin. He fidgeted in his seat. He preferred the ground beneath his feet. A wall against his back.

He had discovered that there were times the only thing you could trust was the wall you put your back against in a fight. It was the way of the street. Put your trust in someone, then don't expect to survive.

He could deal with anyone that faced him, and deal with them permanently.

Hit first. Hit hard. That was his motto. He never deviated from it and it had served him well.

This street wisdom meant that Dara didn't make friends easy, but he'd made one very good friend in the streets of Ulster, who had moved to England. He'd called him the minute he's accepted the assignment. He couldn't stomach being in England, and it would be good to have a familiar face to see while he was there.

The stewardess came back with the extension belt.

"Shall I help you with it, sir?"

Dara's pale white skin blushed for no discernible reason.

"Thank you, ma'am. But I can manage," he said.

ante awoke to a thumping sound.

He remained still, listening in the darkness. He heard the distant chatter and laughter in the street. Angelo's friends.

Then, suddenly, a muffled groan came from behind his bedroom wall. It was followed by a squeal, and what sounded like a zimmer frame falling to the ground.

Was his elderly neighbour having a seizure of some kind again?

Dante listened out, preparing to go and help. But the eerie silence had returned.

He yawned, and stretched. Sat up suddenly.

He said out aloud to himself, "Is that a burning I smell?"

He tried to sniff at the air, but fell into a sudden state of unconsciousness before he could finish his thought.

He slept.

The thumping resumed.

ara looked down at Derek, and felt an immediate and intense dislike of what he saw.

His honed killer instincts told him there was something very wrong with this man. He would need his back against a good strong wall with this one.

Hit once. Hit hard. Then hit twice more just for the pleasure of seeing his nose crack into his skull.

"Hello," Derek said, as though he were speaking to an equal.

Dara ignored him, and turned to the woman standing next to him. "Ma'am?"

Derek's mother understood. "God save the Queen," she said. But couldn't help adding, "May she rest in peace."

"I'm sure she's resting quite peacefully with God's grace," Dara replied, politely.

My old Da is spinning in his poor grave, Dara thought.

These clients were fucking crazy. He made a mental note to ask Siobhan to take England off his route.

What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

Published 10 May, 2026

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