Peaky Blinders: The Blood of Shelby
Birmingham, 1919
The chair was not comfortable.
Cal Shelby had sat in worse.
"Name."
"Callum Shelby."
"Who do you work for?"
"Currently? No one. I was between the Garrison and home when your men grabbed me. So technically I work for whoever's paying me to sit in this chair."
The fist came fast. Cal tasted blood. He worked it around his mouth and waited.
"Who do you work for."
"You already asked that."
"Answer it properly this time."
"I gave you my name. I told you where I was going. I'm not sure what else you're expecting."
"The Shelby operation. Their contacts. Their police arrangements. All of it."
"That," Cal said pleasantly, "is a very long list."
"Then start talking."
"There's just one problem."
"What problem."
"I don't know any of that."
Another fist. Harder. His cheek erupted with heat. He blinked twice and looked up.
"You're hitting me with your right hand," Cal said. "Switch to your left. You've got a fracture in the third metacarpal — I can tell by how you're pulling the last twenty percent of the swing. You'll do yourself more damage than me."
Silence.
"How did you—"
"France," Cal said simply. "You learn to notice things."
"You were in the war?"
"Tunneling Company. Three years underground. You?"
A long pause.
"None of your business."
"Fair enough." Cal tested the ropes at his wrists. Good knots. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're not in a position to ask anything."
"Humour me."
"What."
"Why did you grab me outside the Garrison?"
"Because you're Shelby."
"I am Shelby, yes. There are quite a few of us." Cal tilted his head. "Which Shelby did you actually want?"
The silence this time was the most interesting one yet.
"You," the man said. "We wanted you."
"Why?"
"Because you run their intelligence network."
Cal looked at him for a long moment.
"Who told you that?"
No answer.
"That's very interesting," Cal said quietly. He filed it. Someone had talked. He'd find out who later. "Can I tell you something?"
"What."
"You grabbed me on a Tuesday afternoon outside the Garrison. Do you know what I was doing there?"
"Delivering a message," the young man by the door said. "We watched you for a week."
"That's right. To Tommy." Cal paused. "Which means Tommy is currently being told by three separate people that his cousin didn't come home Tuesday evening." Another pause. "He'll know where I am by morning. He always does."
The room went very still.
"You're bluffing," the man said. But his voice had changed.
"Am I?"
"You're nobody."
"I said I don't run their network. I didn't say Tommy Shelby wouldn't burn this city to the ground looking for me." Cal held his gaze. "Think about it from his perspective. Someone grabbed his cousin off the street. In Small Heath. His street." He let that breathe. "What do you think he does next?"
The two men by the door spoke low and urgent in Irish.
"I don't speak Irish," Cal said. "But I speak French. And Romani. And I'm very good at reading a room." He looked at each of them in turn. "So. How do you want this to go?"
Silence.
"Because I'll tell you how I want it to go," Cal said. "You let me walk out. I go home. I tell Tommy I got lost." He smiled — small, unhurried, completely unbothered. "And you never find out what happens when you don't."
Cal worked the blood to the front of his mouth.
Looked at the man directly.
And spat.
The blood hit him square across the face.
Nobody moved.
"I'll have a cup of tea," Cal said, "while you think about it."
He was not the story.
But he was the reason the story survived.
Peaky Blinders: The Blood of Shelby
Blood isn't always loud. But it always speaks.
---
[Chapter Lenght: 3000 - 4000 words]
Deepanshu_Setia · TV
Will you be continuing Finn Shelby Reborn?