Scenes from a Violent Story

 

1.

Lenny sprinted up the narrow alley, breathing hard. The hand was in the carrying case, he was pretty sure, but he wanted to stop and make doubly sure. After several backward glances and seeing no pursuers, he stopped running. Unlatching the case, he peered inside and – yes! – Osgood’s hand was there. He took off again as his thoughts veered out of control.

Why did he go to the meeting? It had nothing to do with him. Stupid, stupid decision! Osgood was the one meeting Marissa and her dull brother. Lenny had known she was trouble the first time he saw her at Greater Aldershot. He should have minded his own business.

Lungs near bursting, he reached the crest of the alley where a wide strip of overgrown grass lay between him and a busy road. He waded into the grass.

 

2.

Lenny Marlin had been in Small Loans for nearly ten years and seen everything there was to see in the industry. A loans applicant had to only walk through the main door, cross the floor and take a seat. By the time Lenny came over and sat behind his desk, he would have sized the applicant up. Everything that happened afterwards was either a formality (listen to their pitch, ask some questions and bring out the forms to be filled) or politeness (listen to their pitch, ask some questions and say that, regretfully, they are not eligible for a loan).

On that particular day, Marissa Tomazewski slithered into the office in an olive dress and paused long enough for a quick visual survey of the half-dozen peons (including Lenny) in the Small Loans Department of the Greater Aldershot Bank. He had noticed that it wasn’t a particularly expensive dress – the material was the giveaway – but it was the perfect one to show off her generous curves. The half dozen peons consisted of four women – all in their fifties, who looked up at this embodiment of womanhood they did not relate to nor represent and went back to their computer screens – with Chilifers Osgood on the far side, bent over some papers, with his hair hanging in curls on his forehead and Lenny himself, wearing Lennon glasses, an oversized white shirt, skinny black tie and trousers. He was looking at Marissa. As soon as their eyes met, she turned decisively and headed in the opposite direction. By the time she shook hands with Osgood – who produced a cat-having-suddenly-been-given-a-fresh-bowl-of-milk smile – and set her shapely rear on the chair, Lenny had read her. One word flashed in a hedge of red bulbs inside his brain. Trouble.

The conversation at Osgood’s table went on for some time. But it was well out of earshot and Lenny, curiosity and impatience getting the better of him, got up and walked to the coffee machine half-way between his and Osgood’s desks.

Osgood, looking up to see Lenny close by, called him over. There was giddiness in his voice.

“Lenny old boy, meet Miss Tomazewski! Lenny Marlin here is our most senior Loans Officer. This lovely lady is interested in securing a small loan to upgrade a butcher’s shop her family recently purchased.”

“Really?” Lenny began, as if he was noticing her for the first time. He had already made up his mind about this potential transaction but continued, “What do you do for a living, Miss?’’

He looked into her eyes. It was invitingly green. She was beautiful no doubt, but there was also something exotic about her that was explained when she answered in an Eastern European accent welded onto imperfect English.

“I am a butcher, Mister Marlin, like my brother. We are interested in loan for our new shop.”

“I’m sure we can help in some way,” Lenny said without meaning it but was unable to prevent his eyebrows arching up in surprise.

Her unique occupational choice had been discussed already as a knowing smile broke on her face and Osgood chuckled.

“It’s a Tomazewski family trade apparently, starting with the grandfather back in the old country. Anyway, do you happen to have that new form we are required to give applicants? What’s it called? The R2-D2 something was it? I’ve given all of mine away.”

Lenny wondered which was the old country being referred to as he returned to his desk, saying, “The R2 Application Form. Yeah, I’ll rustle one up for you.”

Osgood was the top salesman in the bank and he literally gave away application forms and secured bags of customers in return. And he’d only been at Greater Aldershot for a year-and-a-half.

Lenny remembered Osgood’s first three weeks in the city clearly. London was new and strange for a guy from the coast. As he learnt the ropes at the bank, Osgood needed cash and company and had found the Senior Loans Officer, a veteran of the profession and the city, a massive comfort. Lenny meanwhile found in Osgood, someone who actually needed his emotional and financial support, a situation which had never occurred previously nor since.

Osgood had bunked on the floor (and sometimes in the bed) of Lenny’s modest, thirty year-old brick-fronted flat. They shared left-over pizzas for breakfast and rode the tube together from East Putney to the Loans Office every working day that spring.

It didn’t last. Osgood moved out as soon as he could afford it. By the end of his first month, he had set the first of many records – the best one month sale by a Loans Officer in the history of the bank. In subsequent weeks, he continued to attract management’s attention with his successes, cementing his reputation as the bank’s rising star. There were some questions raised – in hushed voices – about his tactics. But upper management was pleased with his numbers and didn’t want to hear anything against the No.1 performer. Osgood was doing exactly what upper management wanted – securing tons of loans – so awkward questions simply petered out the higher up the chain it went.

From that point onwards, Chilifers Osgood had ridden steadily on a rising golden gradient. He bought a posh apartment, whizzed around in a 2013 silver Toyota and established a reputation as a ladies man. It was a long way from his first three weeks as a naïve outsider in London, beholden to Lenny’s generosity.

Lenny snapped out of his reverie. The R-2 form was limp in his hand. Coming back to the present, he swivelled to look at Osgood and the butcher woman. Marissa now wore a different expression. Lenny, through his Lennon glasses, could see clearly that her cheeks had reddened as she stood stiffly by her chair. His brain whispered: Something’s happened. He started to walk over.

Meantime, Osgood got up in a rush, came over to Lenny to grab the form and went back to Marissa, putting his body between the figure in the olive dress and his colleague.

“If I were you, I would seriously consider the idea, Miss Tomazewski. Here’s the form you’ll need.”

He handed her the R-2 which she took and headed out the door without a word.

Lenny turned to Osgood with a question but the former was already striding back to his desk. One of the girls, another Loans Officer, called out that Osgood had a call come in while he was speaking with the lady in the olive dress. He had reached his desk and stood waiting for said call to be transferred over.

Lenny swivelled instinctively and headed out. The elevator door was open and he saw Marissa enter. He broke into a run. She turned once inside, saw him coming, and gestured with a finger downward. He nodded emphatically. She held the door open. He got in and she said immediately,

“Your colleague Mister Osgood is not very nice person.”

Lenny looked directly into Marissa’s eyes. Her eyes said something had gone very wrong in the office.

She began softly, “You are different. I can see that. When you look at me, it’s different. Mister Osgood, he is typical man,” she rolled her eyes knowingly, “After I make my request and give good references and explain how my brother and I will pay back loan, he is rude to me.”

She finished her sentence with her voice rising and the finger of her right hand stabbing the air in front of her dangerously.

Lenny didn’t say a word. He looked straight ahead and listened. Marissa drew a deep breath. And then, she told him exactly what Osgood had said to her in the office. In her Eastern European accent, it actually sounded worse.

“No!” his pupils grew large behind his glasses, “He didn’t say that.” The elevator was approaching the ground floor.

“Yes he did!” she said, and proceeded to get her dissatisfaction off her chest, “I tell Mister Osgood we are immigrants. We are only butchers. Nobody respects butchers in this country. But I tell him, if we make a promise, we keep promise! Do you know how hard it is to run butcher’s shop twenty kilometres outside London? It’s expensive! If we make no renovations, we get no customers. We use all our savings to buy shop. If we get no loan to make renovations, we are finished. But man like Mister Osgood thinks we are beggars he can push around.”

Her rant over, Marissa tossed her head back, folded her arms and stood facing the door. Lenny noticed that several strands of her hair were out of place. He resisted the urge to reach out and put the strands into place.

The elevator dinged to signal their arrival. Lenny managed to hide the fact that he was incensed, and spoke in a measured tone,

“Miss Tomazewski, you don’t have to deal with Osgood. Our bank respects all our customers equally. If you will give us a chance, we can do business without this sort of low-class behaviour.”

The door opened and they stepped out together. Just like after an air raid, the atmosphere was calmer.

“Mister Lenny was it?”

He handed her his business card. She took it.

“I will consider what you said. Thank you.”

She walked out of the building and into the sunlight. Lenny stood shaking his head in the semi-darkness of the building lobby, momentarily livid. Here was an example of Osgood’s questionable tactics, but the first time Lenny had heard it directly from a potential client’s mouth. It’s not the way the bank did its business. More accurately, it wasn’t the way business was done at Greater Aldershot pre-Chilifers Osgood.

He looked outside. Marissa was out of sight. Was she really a butcher?

3.

It was Tuesday and Sergeant Albert Whistle thought it was amusing to visit a butcher’s shop on police business instead of for the purpose of stocking his refrigerator. He found the place effortlessly, having remembered it was next to an alley that broke the shop-houses on David’s Road into two sections, called East and West David’s Road for convenience. An ambulance was parked outside. A small late-morning crowd began to reluctantly disperse as soon as he drove up.

He brushed past a few hangers on and went inside. Two medics were crouching over a prostrate, curly haired young man who was drenched in sweat and moaning in agony. One of the medics was forcefully holding the man down while the second was injecting a sedative into his right arm. His left arm, also held down by force, looked odd with a big towel cupping its end. The towel was so red that you wouldn’t believe it had been white to begin with. From the shape of the towel at the end of the arm, it looked like the hand itself was missing.

The medic who had delivered the sedative, seeing an immediate relaxation of the sweating man’s convulsions, half-turned and saw the uniform behind him.

“Lost his hand,” he said, matter-of-factly. Then, as an afterthought, added, ‘Chopped off.’

“Where is the hand?”

“Well, it’s not here,” with a smile, “but if we don’t hurry, he could bleed to death.”

Sergeant Whistle turned his attention to the shop’s other occupants. A brutish, square-jawed man with close cropped hair in a smudged butcher’s apron was standing with crossed arms next to a table by the glass window. His thick arms looked like they had undergone several years of hard labour. Whistle noticed cut meat arranged in rows behind price tags in glass cases behind him. A woman was sitting on a chair beside the tough man, her legs crossed and head down. She was wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt underneath her own butcher’s apron. Interestingly, her apron had a generous splatter of blood down the front. Marissa lifted her head up, tossing her dark frizzy hair backwards. She saw a tall, snow-white haired policeman looking at her.

Whistle saw her dark green eyes for the first time. It reminded him oddly of lush ferns under a rain-cloud and seemed to go well with her wild hair. He also saw the markings on her arms – certain types of tattoos – that were familiar to an experienced policeman.

“Do you own this place?” he addressed the man and woman at once.

“Yes,” Marissa got up nodding and stood next to the stout man who was a full 6 inches shorter than her.

“Can you explain what happened here?”

And she did, very briefly, as follows:

Two Small Loans officers had come to speak about their application. Her brother (she introduced him as Bodan) and she had recently bought the shop from a retiring butcher and wanted to renovate. During discussions, she alleged that one of the officers, a Mister Lenny Marlin had, with no warning, picked up a knife and chopped-off his colleague’s hand. Just like that. Then, he apparently had run off with the severed hand.

She gave the name of the victim on the floor as Osgood. Looking at the blood-soaked towel with pity, she shook her head, “When cut with butcher’s knife, no chance.”

Whistle had several questions popping into his mind simultaneously, including “Is she really a butcher?” but he picked another one to ask.

“Where did this Mister Lenny get the knife from, would you know?”

“It’s from my brother’s carrying case.”

“Your brother carries around a butcher’s knife in a case?”

“It’s working knife,” Bodan spoke for the first time. Marissa completed his sentence, “in case anyone needs to have a chicken or goat butchered suddenly.”

Whistle thought it strange for butchers to bring their tools in a carrying case. Do they actually get requests for their services while away from their shops? But he moved on,

“Why would Mister Lenny cut his colleague’s hand off?”

Bodan and Marissa returned puzzled stares to Sergeant Whistle. The policeman noticed that only Marissa had been blessed with those green eyes. Bodan’s looked plain brown. Or black. There were no similarities between the two except the accent. In fact, if he hadn’t been told, he would never have suspected that they were siblings.

Whistle summarised the information he’d received for his own benefit,

“So these two Bank guys came in to follow-up on your application. You were all sitting and talking around that table and suddenly, one of them grabs your brother’s knife and hacks off his colleague’s hand. Then he picks up the hand and runs off.”

“Into the alley outside,” Marissa finished it.

“He runs off into the alley outside” Whistle continued, “…and the front of your apron is spattered with blood. Why?”

“Some is from incident just now with bank people. The rest of blood is probably from chicken I was cutting up before,” she explained.

If Marissa had been shocked by the incident, she had regained her composure. Only her hair remained disheveled, loose strands everywhere. Whistle felt the urge to pull out a comb and set it in order.

Meantime, the medics had brought in a stretcher for the victim – who had passed out – and were wheeling him out.

“Officer,” the medic who had spoken earlier called out as he was leaving, “if you do find the hand, could you please send it over as soon as you can to Gurney General Hospital. Pack it in ice.”

Before Whistle could answer, they had left the shop. He started to follow them out but paused. He was not finished with the pair inside.

4.

Lenny was on his haunches in the long grass. His phone had rung several times. It was a number he didn’t recognise and he had turned it off. The sun shone relentlessly over his naked head, leaving his lips cracked. He would have willingly accepted being tortured by standing under a burning sun as deserved punishment if it would erase the events of that morning. A feet away, on a patch of dry earth, was the butcher’s carrying case, bloody knife and hand stuffed inside.

His mind rapidly replayed several scenes in a loop as he sat hidden in the tall grass – good times with Osgood in the early days, Marissa appearing at the bank, the meeting at the butcher’s shop that same day and a bloody Osgood, curled on the floor. Lenny cringed at the end of each cycle.

He wasn’t in any shape at all to move. He left the carrying case where it was, praying that the tall grass would protect him from the world until he found the will to move.

Since Osgood hadn’t told Lenny about his planned meeting with Marissa, showing up unannounced had seemed a good idea initially.

However Osgood, oozing charm and confidence, had taken the presence of both Lenny and Bodan, Marissa’s brother, in his stride. He had brought a silver box of chocolates to the ‘meeting’. Bodan had placed his battered, brown carrying case on the table and taken his seat. Lenny knew what it was for. He had seen butchers boxes before. Marissa placed herself between Bodan and Lenny, facing Osgood. She seemed colder than the previous occasion Lenny had seen her. The fact that she was wearing a blood-stained apron instead of a fetching dress probably contributed to the grimmer mood. Lenny noticed that she had tattoos on her upper arms. They were the kind one saw on prisoners. An involuntary shiver raced up his spine but it was too late to leave.

Osgood was well into his pitch by then, going over the terms and conditions, slowly zig-zagging his way to the kill. He had opened the silver box and revealed rows of elongated, dark chocolates. In Lenny’s eyes, the chocolates looked like slices of cut meat.

At one point, Osgood stopped talking to Marissa and asked,

“Does your brother have any questions?”

Bodan looked no different than a large, silent boulder that one rests against in a forest after a strenuous walk.

“The interest on loan,” he muttered after a lengthy pause.

Osgood explained the rate confidently and looked once again directly into Bodan’s eyes.

“Is there any other concern?”

“I leave it to my sister,” Bodan said and backed off, physically and mentally. Osgood took this as good progress. Either the language of the contract was beyond Bodan’s comprehension or Osgood’s supreme confidence had intimidated him.

Lenny had been ignored completely by Osgood. That left Marissa – her eyes locked on Osgood – who alone mattered. This meeting was really between both of them, Osgood knew that. He took a piece of his dark chocolate slice and bit into it.

“Have you made up your mind about my offer?” he asked Marissa while offering the chocolates to Bodan and Lenny.

Both declined. Osgood then swept his hand around and held the silver box in front of Marissa, with his cat-having-suddenly-been-given-a-fresh-bowl-of-milk smile restored to his face. He rested his chin on his propped-up right hand.

5.

“Was there any problem in your discussion with the Loans Officers?” Sergeant Whistle asked, surprising Marissa and Bodan. They had turned their backs to the door, thinking that the policeman had followed the medics outside. They found Sergeant Whistle staring at them intently.

“I’m sorry, you ask something?” it was Marissa.

“Yes, did you have any problem in your discussions with the Officers?”

There was a slight delay before Marissa shook her head. Whistle continued,

“Why did this Lenny Marlin attack Osgood if the meeting was for your loan approval?”

Bodan gave a blank stare, his default look. Marissa stayed silent.

“What was said in the meeting that triggered Lenny Marlin to use the knife?” Whistle wouldn’t give up.

Bodan glanced up ever so slightly at Marissa. She seemed to hesitate momentarily.

“I think, from what I saw at bank,” her expression grew conspiratorial, “that there was something between the two Bank men.”

Whistle didn’t get what she meant and his face showed it. So she raised her eyebrows and continued, “You know, it seemed like…they used to be a couple,” a conspiratorial smile played on the edge of her lips, as if that explained everything that had occurred in the shop.

6.

The noon sun poured light and heat into the alley. Although Whistle remained as sharp and wiry as he had been on his first day in uniform, his fitness levels had dropped. Sweat on his shoulders and back made his light blue uniform sticky and he was breathing harder. He took his time walking uphill.

Sergeant Whistle felt Marissa’s final suggestion that the two men were a couple was speculative at best. There were a lot of possibilities but the two men at the centre of it – Osgood and Lenny Marlin – hadn’t given their sides of the story as yet. As a policeman, he had learnt to put judgement on hold until every piece of a puzzle was on the table, in fairness to all parties involved. That mind-set had served him well and he was going to work the same way here. He tried calling Lenny’s number from the business card given by Marissa. The phone had rung several times before being switched off.

He came upon a peeing kid who was genuinely surprised to see a policeman in his back lane. A short stop to ask a couple of questions produced no clues and Whistle, grateful for the break, continued his walk with his breathing restored to normalcy.

The top of the hill came finally where the alley ended. Whistle surveyed the scene. A barrier of waist-high weeds stood between the policeman and the main road, forming a natural boundary. Flashes of reflected sunlight bounced off the roofs of moving cars on the road, making Whistle squint. There was nothing else but blue sky with white clouds sailing by above. Whistle stood up straight, put his hands on his hips and arched his back, taking a nice, deep breath before returning to his original stance. He felt refreshed. At least the return walk would be downhill.

In the middle of the weeds, a man suddenly stood up and faced the road, his back to Whistle. His right hand was holding something which was hidden by the tall grass. The hooks of his spectacles could be seen behind his ears.

After a moment’s pause, he turned back towards the alley where he had come from and found a snow-white haired policeman standing with legs parted and gun drawn.

“Put your hands up!” shouted Whistle.

As Lenny lifted his hands, a loud thud was audible as something dropped onto the ground. Sergeant Whistle guessed what it was.

“Lenny Marlin, you’re under arrest!”

7.

Osgood then swept his hand around and held the silver box in front of Marissa, with his cat-having-suddenly-been-given-a-fresh-bowl-of-milk smile restored to his face.

Osgood offered her the chocolates and asked her once more if she had considered his proposal. He did it right under Bodan and Lenny’s noses. That took balls, Lenny admitted to himself, feeling completely out of place at the table. Marissa’s mouth parted and she asked him point blank,

“About me sleeping with you for the loan to be approved?”

Osgood was still holding the silver chocolate box out for Marissa. He didn’t retreat, didn’t look embarrassed or caught out. He simply acknowledged her question with a smug smile, which was as good as him admitting that yes, he did ask for that favor in exchange for the loan approval. Some would have called it bravado but Lenny thought it was plain reckless. Bodan stiffened visibly, not believing Osgood’s gall. Lenny, nonchalantly, slid his hand across the table, reached for Bodan’s carrying case and gently pulled it towards himself. He had heard Marissa’s words and seen Osgood’s reaction and he was pretty sure of what was going on.

Osgood’s eyes were locked onto Marissa’s. It was a dare that was being taken as far as it would go. She had challenged him in front of witnesses. He had responded boldly.

Bodan, initially distracted by Lenny’s move for the carrying case, had recovered from the shock and decided to act first on the original problem,

“So it is true? You are trying to sleep with my wife for this loan? You bastard!” It was the loudest he had spoken. There were an equal measure of disbelief and menace in his voice.

Osgood’s smile was snuffed out like a lamp by Bodan’s reference to Marissa as his wife. He realized that Bodan was telling the truth. But of course, he should have guessed it from the beginning. Proclaiming that Marissa was single ensured many things got done that otherwise wouldn’t be.

Undaunted, Osgood raised his voice as his bravado returned like a surging wave,

“Don’t blame me! Look at you! What kind of life do you have? You have limited career opportunities. With a woman like her, you should be prepared to make full use of her assets. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Isn’t that why she told me that you are her brother? I understand why you did that. As far as I’m concerned, for your loan application, my request was only for this one time. I’m not asking your wife for a regular…”

A powerful arm came out of nowhere and gripped Osgood’s right hand. Caught off-guard, Osgood let go of the silver box. The dark meat-like chocolates fell on the table. A flash of light swung from his right in an arc towards his restrained hand. Sudden, excruciating pain surged up his wrist, spreading like wildfire along the entire right side of this body. He felt the nerve points of his hand exploding in flame. He nearly blacked out. Through wet eyes and indescribable pain, he blinked repeatedly to see the end of his arm, with no hand attached, involuntarily send blood spurting onto Marissa.

Bodan was frozen with panic in his eyes. Lenny, eyes burning with ferocity, looked a different person entirely with a butcher’s blade glinting in his hand.

The images around him, particularly the sight of his missing hand, drained life from Osgood. The magnitude of the pain and throbbing had become unbearable.

He tumbled to the floor. Through pinpricks of stars, the blades of the ceiling fan above him twirled hypnotically. Osgood feared if he passed out, he would never wake up again. He fought the oncoming blackness but it was hard to resist. The last thing he heard was Lenny’s barely controlled voice in his ear, full of smouldering anger,

“You bloody ungrateful bastard! After everything I did for you! Don’t you remember everything we did together? Have you forgotten the food and lodging you mooched off me? You wouldn’t have made it through a single bloody week in London without me coddling you. You needed me then, didn’t you? You know you did! But now you think the world is your bleeding oyster, yeah? I don’t care if you think you’re too good for the likes of me but curse it, I’m not going to let you get away with insulting me to my face with your lecherous behavior.”

Mercifully or otherwise, the stars faded and everything went black for Osgood.

8.

Chilifers Osgood passed away that day in hospital. The operation to reattach his hand had come too late. Said hand had been severed for far too long and fatal blood loss had occurred in the interim.

Lenny Marlin was brought in with the carrying case containing Osgood’s hand and the knife. Only his and Bodan’s prints were on it and Lenny, having no spirit left for a fight, confessed to the crime of passion – what else could you call it ? – almost immediately.

Shortly thereafter, Marissa and Bodan Tomazewski had their loan approved by the Greater Aldershot Bank. The bank didn’t want stories of their employees’ various indiscretions – both personal and professional – to find their way onto any form of media, on-line or otherwise. The fact that Osgood had been a star salesman with questionable tactics over a period of time with no admonishment from top management, did not reflect well on the bank’s carefully cultivated image of integrity. The Tomazewskis’ lawyer suggested as much during final negotiations, which helped persuade the bank to speed up the approval.

Lenny Marlin was sentenced to 15 years in prison. And during his long, lonely stay there, he had plenty of opportunities to replay the most vivid scenes in his life, most of which have no relevance to this story of ours. But inevitably, his thoughts would return to memories of Marissa. Lenny recalled that she was the one who had phoned him and told him about Osgood’s planned visit. She had insisted that he come to the meeting.

His recollections always culminated with the scene at the butchers’ shop with Lenny, Osgood, Bodan and Marissa seated around the table. The box of chocolates. The butcher’s case. The direction of the conversation between Osgood and Marissa. And moments later, the exchange between them that had set Lenny off.

He had guessed right the very first time he saw her dark green eyes and wild hair, in her olive, figure-flattering dress.

Trouble. Flashing in a hedge of red bulbs.