Born Bad: A gritty gangster thriller with a darkly funny heart
Born Bad: A gritty gangster thriller with a darkly funny heart
Marnie Riches
A powerful, darkly comic novel set in the criminal underworld of Manchester from bestselling author Marnie Riches.The battle is on…When gang leader Paddy O’Brien is stabbed in his brother’s famous nightclub, Manchester’s criminal underworld is shaken to the core. Tensions are running high, and as the body count begins to grow, the O’Brien family must face a tough decision – sell their side of the city to the infamous Boddlington gang or stick it out and risk losing their king.But war comes easy to the bad boys, and they won’t go down without a fight. So begins a fierce battle for the South Side, with the leading Manchester gangsters taking the law into their own hands – but only the strongest will survive…
Born Bad
MARNIE RICHES
Copyright (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Marnie Riches 2017
Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008203931
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008203948
Version 2017-01-20
Praise for Marnie Riches: (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
‘Fast-paced, enthralling and heartrending; I couldn’t put it down’
C. L. Taylor
‘A strong, edgy debut that deserves to do well’
Clare Mackintosh
‘Fast, furious, fantastic…One killer thriller!’
Mark Edwards
What the reviewers said: (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
‘A truly exciting new arrival in the world of Euro Crime! (https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3GV4NBXDK92SX/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U1K18VY&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=341677031&store=digital-text)’
‘I bit my nails all the way to the end!’
‘Breathtakingly brilliant’
‘Reminds me of the best Scandinavian crime writers like Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson’
‘Truly outstanding’
‘An intricate, fast-paced and utterly compelling thriller (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/RVNB9MR5ZGYAA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
‘Without a doubt a true 5 star read! (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R2WVMXPPJGZ4RX/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
‘Work of art’
‘Intelligent, moving, filled with tension and entertaining (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/RPRBE8Z2IO4PX/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
Dedication (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
For Caspian
If my name is on the spine, and the story comes from my heart, then you are surely the lungs of this book, since you have breathed life into all of my words. In a world full of bollocks, you’re the dog’s, Mr Dennis. Never forget it.
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud8f2a096-c35c-5e2f-917a-08df33171cf2)
Title Page (#uaea24b5a-5cfe-52d0-b7b2-6acdfdad46bc)
Copyright (#u08770221-277b-5c06-9a53-213a54db540b)
Praise for Marnie Riches: (#u1dbc1ea1-4f10-5a6f-ba49-9fa7611cd95a)
What the Reviewers Said: (#uffb7ab26-b105-5f1d-ac2d-e33460e1efbb)
Dedication (#u24985d44-6abe-52de-9bdd-e1009007e37a)
Chapter 1: Sheila (#u589bc4dc-490f-531e-8ba4-57804297b26e)
Chapter 2: Conky (#uf29cc87c-d331-56b3-8667-94ca8fc6ff39)
Chapter 3: Paddy (#u76f7cc1f-7dae-53d9-a819-7b3cd295929a)
Chapter 4: Jonny (#u995129cd-7a83-5fc7-9213-ff13a57b2dc1)
Chapter 5: Irina (#u9a637110-4e3b-5bb3-91d4-86bb72bd7d04)
Chapter 6: Lev (#u93e38c35-b9e4-5937-a5ee-8b82e394fa94)
Chapter 7: Gloria (#u9a2f399e-ee39-58d7-80aa-a752c45e305c)
Chapter 8: Paddy (#uf4572bf3-ea99-5f86-b228-01a7727cde54)
Chapter 9: Sheila (#udd79b9e6-3869-5e0a-8c56-ac1992a49861)
Chapter 10: Lev (#ufa667dd7-0a32-5541-b4d4-1460a0ccf483)
Chapter 11: Conky (#uc812727a-252f-57e4-adba-543056992e77)
Chapter 12: Lev (#u42339266-6766-5d01-aec4-2756494251e4)
Chapter 13: Jonny (#u83a1345a-4b21-5585-a156-2c801aa95de6)
Chapter 14: Jack (#u0050524a-8391-5e91-ae06-b1f9ead12509)
Chapter 15: Paddy (#uea9d08e0-f9a7-587b-8174-7a7494dde9c5)
Chapter 16: Lev (#u527c629c-c3e4-59d0-8ff3-7232a3ea6ded)
Chapter 17: Conky (#uf77a7886-8749-598c-ae62-0da9b05d743a)
Chapter 18: Lev (#u5cb8f267-7710-5286-aade-d1c4f001d848)
Chapter 19: Irina (#u42f137fa-884f-58ff-9d75-efb6c352f7fc)
Chapter 20: Lev (#u904f9992-e431-52a3-a451-a61ee5bb4c93)
Chapter 21: Sheila (#u3a6255ae-46d1-5611-b136-91a90d4aac14)
Chapter 22: Lev (#u00ba24c1-c5a9-5aac-b3ec-5e946c39233d)
Chapter 23: Sheila (#ub628fa5b-00b4-5d4a-a1b8-f30975570d79)
Chapter 24: Gloria (#u54d9db19-cd3d-58e4-a3e4-e4789bcb314b)
Chapter 25: Lev (#u965d8791-f752-5e8b-b597-aa0538f1f6cb)
Chapter 26: Conky (#u9754aa17-051b-5cab-81d3-2ebaac920026)
Chapter 27: Sheila (#u59cb0c3a-09a7-5370-a57b-72e64d5d1b5f)
Chapter 28: Lev (#u1be422f4-f519-5e19-8ef9-59b39f4f19a9)
Chapter 29: Paddy (#u043cc330-c255-5f5b-b984-33ae1130c4ec)
Chapter 30: Frank (#ud2e1353a-dcac-56d8-9a9d-f1da4db789bd)
Chapter 31: Tariq (#u473e6150-8929-5b9f-941e-e4739285f5ca)
Chapter 32: Gloria (#u8c8fd000-1655-5e83-8ce4-86cb13bf76e4)
Chapter 33: Jonny (#u184eadb3-b9fa-5393-a633-df78aa86eee8)
Chapter 34: Asaf (#ua5f54bc3-ac91-50c7-af5c-b042c4461551)
Chapter 35: Frank (#u1fc81d5d-9e5e-5c7e-9a74-ff69a9f1f860)
Chapter 36: Asaf (#uaa288bbe-0398-5a2b-83ed-70423255dc06)
Chapter 37: Conky (#u775561e7-138d-50a8-88f8-753f0cb13857)
Chapter 38: Jonny (#u8cbc4850-e55e-5dca-b7b1-58ec66660441)
Chapter 39: Sheila (#u849ec5ff-dd5f-50c5-b17e-9108d4ae00e0)
Chapter 40: Lev (#u5c04f7d6-ad85-576a-b4ff-e0f7999fb77a)
Chapter 41: Lev (#ubca0d224-15db-53d1-aeaa-2e60e5bb73ac)
Chapter 42: Frank (#uef4803a2-38db-5aec-9de0-712fe09bd16a)
Chapter 43: Sheila (#u138fa31f-3fc7-5ede-a979-6f9a92d48f97)
Chapter 44: Conky (#u39bbafad-3f23-58f0-9c68-3adc46e0b754)
Chapter 45: Conky (#u6014d339-a78b-541c-9a9a-dfbca8bf11ba)
Chapter 46: Sheila (#u0cb1ec37-1b72-543a-9656-dcfb458c5d75)
Chapter 47: Frank, Then Katrina (#u98a22865-42ab-5c8f-b58e-3d26e269172a)
Chapter 48: Conky (#u3f051672-52a1-5332-bb3a-55e9bd981e2d)
Chapter 49: Conky (#u5de515a4-7cca-52b4-a99f-7154c77db9d5)
Chapter 50: Sheila (#u95613582-4241-5a52-930a-bb6373cf1dbb)
Chapter 51: Conky (#u0919a1bb-b77b-5bbd-95a8-5a8e524382eb)
Chapter 52: Conky (#uab2302cd-0aa2-527d-80c8-8a14963ed190)
Chapter 53: Lev (#u20cb5a0b-e47f-5652-99d2-2c539dd58491)
Chapter 54: Tariq (#uc45c597b-d112-5537-8f20-8aba82bfd4f2)
Chapter 55: Sheila (#u98d7db00-6529-5ecf-8e57-ac79316eb46b)
Chapter 56: Katrina, Then Paddy (#u021d636f-6af0-524c-a196-c95d1fce9075)
Acknowledgements (#ua68d7228-8726-56bc-8c04-2cbd3b556f9c)
Keep Reading … (#u3ce2535b-655f-5a65-8329-6d36eac8bf41)
About the Author (#u16e6762c-dd06-5523-9bc7-6a646e172ec5)
By the Same Author: (#ue411f5b0-c359-5415-99c4-f4e21777aaf6)
About the Publisher (#ue54616a5-4a6a-59a0-be5c-cb3f3e22cffe)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_469dcc7a-de67-55c0-b36c-9cb57064e15d)
Sheila (#ulink_469dcc7a-de67-55c0-b36c-9cb57064e15d)
The leather case containing the guns was cumbersome and heavy, making her shoulder muscles scream with the effort of pulling it towards her. Looking around to check that she wasn’t being watched, she tried to drag it out of the boot of her Porsche Panamera. Dead weight. Looked around again towards the garaging. The doors were closed. No sign of his car, thankfully.
‘Come on, Sheila,’ she counselled herself. ‘Grit your teeth, girl.’
With a grunt, she heaved the case out. Dropped it heavily onto the gravel, narrowly missing the peep toes of her purple suede Louboutins. Slammed the boot shut, chipping a nail in the process.
‘Bastard thing,’ she said, lugging the guns awkwardly across the courtyard and up the steps to the front door. She would definitely have a couple of bruises on her shins by tomorrow. Shit. But at least the determined Mancunian rain wasn’t falling on her freshly blow-dried hair.
Inside, her house was silent and pristine. The wooden floors shone. The smell of furniture wax was pungent in the air. The cleaners had gone for the day and the gardener wasn’t due until Friday.
‘Anybody home?’ she called out. Her voice bounced off the hard surfaces of the glazed banister and naked oak of the staircase. No response, though she hadn’t expected one.
Flinging her keys onto the sideboard, Sheila kicked off her heels, carrying the guns to the lower level of the house. She bypassed the spa area and pool to enter the cinema room. It smelled of stale cigar smoke and the dregs at the bottom of Paddy’s empty single malt bottle and dirty tumbler. She made a mental note to chastise the cleaners for having missed it. Wrinkled her nose at the manly stink that reminded her too much of the Green Room in her brother-in-law’s club.
‘Hide it with the other guns and surprise him with it after tea, or leave it out for him to find?’ Sheila contemplated aloud, setting the leather case on the coffee table and clicking open the antique silver locks. She appraised the delicate metalwork of the shotguns, studded with semi-precious stones. Both guns were safely ensconced in their own blue velvet bed. Not her cup of tea, but she knew Paddy would appreciate these Ottoman flintlock rifles. Seventeenth century, the dealer had said. They’d go with his collection of swords, pistols and other shit, he had assured her. It was a perfect apology. She’d forked over a pile of her own cash for them, hoping they would be the ultimate oil to pour on troubled waters after Paddy had ‘discovered’ the email she had sent to Mam and Dad.
All those years she’d fantasised about reforging the bond with her parents that Paddy had insisted she jettison. Decades of being desperate to tell her folks about the girls; about her life; about how much she missed them every single day. Bloody typical that Paddy had gone snooping through her email account when she’d finally had the balls to contact them on the quiet. She made a mental note to change her email password. Couldn’t hide anything from that nosey old bastard. Still, he had her best interests at heart, didn’t he?
‘Paddy, Paddy O’Brien,’ she intoned, looking over at the oil painting of her imperious husband that made him look a good deal less hatchet-faced and more sanguine than he really was. ‘You difficult, moody sod.’ She snapped the gun case shut. ‘I hope to God these cheer you up.’
The sound of a door slamming against a wall and a trill of what she was sure was a woman’s laughter made her freeze. Sheila stood tall. Breathing in shallow gasps, she strained to work out where the sound had come from. The spa, perhaps? There was certainly somebody in the house with her. Snatching one of the antique long-barrelled flintlocks, she held the gun out ahead of her and stalked towards the spa. Heart thudding. Forcing herself to be brave. No way of creeping back upstairs to see from the alarm keypad if there had been an intrusion via another zone in the sprawling Bramshott mansion.
To speak, or not to speak. That was the question.
‘Who’s there?’ she said quietly. Unconvincingly.
The thick grey carpet swallowed the sound of her shoeless footfalls. Just ahead loomed the glazed door that separated the cinema room from the spa area and pool. A glimpse of the turquoise glittering pool, its spot-lit ripples dancing white and silver on the vaulted brick ceiling. There was the laughter again.
‘Oh, Paddy!’ shouted a woman’s voice.
Paddy’s low voice, rumbling. Saying something indistinct. More laughter.
Sheila edged open the spa door, shaking with adrenalin, poised for fight or flight. Her sharp eyes darted to the left. To the right. Scanning the tranquil scene. Clean, pale grey tiles. Perfect azure water, still but for the gush of the filtration jets set into the sides of the pool. Teak loungers, arranged at an artful angle. There was nothing to see. And yet, she had not imagined the voices.
Her heartbeat bounced her forwards, almost audible in a lofty space where only the air-conditioning unit buzzed quietly in the background.
‘Come here, you dirty girl. Come to Paddy.’
And there it was. No doubt in her mind. Paddy’s voice, thick with the lustful intent that she recognised immediately. Blatant, inconsiderate bastard. Shitting on his own doorstep. This was a new low.
Though she knew the flintlock was not loaded, she kept the heavy gun hoisted high on her shoulder. Deciding how to tackle this situation. Her options were: walk away and pretend she had not happened upon what was almost certainly a clandestine coupling; shout, ‘Hello!’ announcing her presence, giving them time to make themselves respectable and fashion some bullshit excuse; or creep up on the bastards and give them the fright of their lives.
Padding towards the sound of heavy breathing and the rustle of fabric, Sheila realised the sauna held her husband and his extra-marital mate. The door was standing open. The sound of giggling and Paddy’s lascivious groaning slid out on the steamy, seamy air.
Following the gun’s line of sight, Sheila held her breath. Anger grabbing her natural reticence by the throat and squeezing the apologetic life out of it. She took a noiseless step into the cedar-clad cabana and hefted the gun up to Paddy’s head. His eyes were shut. A beatified smile was plastered across his lying, scheming face. At his feet, a naked young blonde was crouched, gobbling his cock with some enthusiasm. The soles of her feet were dirty, the heels crusty with dried skin.
‘Surprise!’ Sheila said, savouring the sight of her sexually incontinent husband grabbing at his heart and almost leaping clear of the cabana bench.
With a yelp, the young woman – no more than a girl – jumped to her feet, covering her silicone breasts with splayed fingers. Bitten fingernails. Not a mark on her belly, though. This one had certainly not borne children. But then, Paddy always liked them young.
‘Who are you?’ the girl shouted.
‘I’m his damned wife,’ Sheila said, intoxicated by the heady bloodlust. She swung the barrel of the flintlock towards the girl and dug it into her right breast. ‘That’s who I am. Mrs Bleeding O’Brien. And you’re trespassing in my house and on my husband.’
The girl’s face wrinkled up into an expression that threatened tears or a bout of hysteria. But there was something familiar about her.
‘Sheila. You’re out of fucking line!’ Paddy said. ‘It’s not what you think. You’re frightening her, you bullying bitch. She’s only a kid.’
Only a kid. Only a kid. That’s where she knew the girl from. She scrutinised the line of the girl’s eyebrows beneath the heavy, dark eyebrow pencil. Noticed the shape of her lips beneath the now-smudged Ronald McDonald red lipstick.
‘Didn’t you go to school with my Dahlia?’ she asked, pushing the barrel hard into the girl’s breast bone. ‘Stacey Wheelan.’
‘Tracy Wheelan,’ the girl said. A meek, almost infantile voice, as her false lashes flickered shamefully down towards her vajazzle and back up towards Paddy. Pleading eyes, clearly wishing her sugar daddy would sweeten this bitter confrontation and make Sheila somehow dissolve clean away.
‘Get out,’ Sheila simply said. ‘Go on. Sling your hook, you little slag.’
‘Go on, love,’ Paddy told the girl. His voice was soft, but Sheila could see from the hard set of his mouth that he was seething. And his livid gaze was trained directly on Sheila, scorching its way through her skin.
The storm was coming. Sheila felt suddenly far less brave. Knew instinctively that the unloaded flintlock would be her undoing.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tracy Wheelan said to neither of them in particular. She grabbed her cheap clothes and scuffed stilettos and shuffled over to the subterranean spa exit. Clattered up the stone steps to ground level. Was gone.
Paddy grabbed the barrel of the gun and wrenched it out of Sheila’s hands.
‘You bitch,’ he said. On his feet now, his nakedness in that enclosed space felt suddenly oppressive. The roundness of his belly pinned her up against the sweaty wall. His erect penis stuck into her navel like an angry thorn. She could smell beer and cigarettes on his breath. He had spent lunchtime in the pub, clearly. Probably some shithole in Parson’s Croft, where he and Conky had swung by to collect protection subs.
‘I was only doing her a favour. Giving her a bit of a shoulder to cry on. Her mam’s just died, for Christ’s sake. She was cut up. I was tense. I’ve been working all the hours God sends and getting no comfort off you. I was giving you space, She.’ Paddy’s eyebrows knitted together. His nostrils flared as he breathed rapidly. In, out, in, out, like a panther waiting to pounce. ‘There was no harm in it. But you’ve just scarred a young girl for life, you jealous, snooping cow.’
Realising she could not easily make a bolt for freedom now that she was pinned against the wall, Sheila whispered, ‘Sorry, Pad.’ Defensively, she raised her hands to her face.
Paddy rammed the butt of the flintlock into her ribs. The air escaped her lungs in a hiss. The pain was intense.
‘Nasty, bullying bitch.’ Spittle flew from Paddy’s mouth as he brought the flat of the stock down onto her cheekbone.
‘Stop, Paddy!’ Sheila cried, clasping at the side of her face. ‘That’s going to bruise, for Christ’s sake! I bought you the guns to say sorry. I’m sorry, Pad!’ Tears streamed from her eyes, though she struggled hard to hold them inside. Didn’t want to show him how much she was hurting or how frightened and vulnerable she suddenly felt.
He stopped abruptly. Stared down at the gun, as if only noticing it then for the first time. Turned the weapon over in his hands, running stubby fingers over the filigree metalwork.
‘Ottoman?’ he said, raising an eyebrow. He raised the flintlock to his shoulder and stared down the barrel at Sheila. Pulled the trigger. ‘Bang.’
Sheila winced.
Paddy winked.
‘Nice gun,’ he said. Then, he hit her over the head hard with the barrel.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_82defd09-a321-5976-ab52-090131e44bdb)
Conky (#ulink_82defd09-a321-5976-ab52-090131e44bdb)
‘I’ll be down in a tick,’ Paddy shouted to Conky McFadden, poking his head out from one of the doors on the galleried landing. Fastening the cuffs of his shirt. On his bottom half, he wore only his pants. Hairy, freckled red legs on show. ‘I’m just going for a shit.’
‘You take your time, boss …’ Conky said, peering down at the shine on his new shoes. ‘… While I hang around like a fart in a trance,’ he added, lowering his voice to a half-whisper. ‘Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do at eleven pm on a Friday night.’
Conky stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands folded behind him, sighing. Remembering how Paddy had stunk their cell out when they’d done time together, all those years ago. He had always laughed that it was the evil coming out. Bloody hell. Nothing changed, did it?
Glancing into the oversized mirror by the cloakroom, he double-checked that his trusty hair-piece was still reliably fixed into place, with his own dwindling hair successfully combed over the artful construction. He poked at it gently. It was robust, with no visible bald bits. Excellent. He must pay that bean-counting eejit, David Goodman, a little intelligence-sourcing visit soon, while his hair was looking quite so regal as to be almost intimidating. Maureen Kaplan’s son-in-law always blabbed a little louder with proper use of The Eyes, the power of The Hair and, of course, a pistol in his flapping mouth.
Conky tried to lessen his frustration by focusing on his thoughts about A Brief History of Seven Killings – the Man Booker Prize winner he was meant to finish in time for his book club. Which he had missed tonight because of Paddy. He checked his watch. There was a Dutchman waiting at the club to discuss the supply of mephedrone in the northwest. A big meeting, called at short notice at Paddy’s behest. But Paddy loved to keep people waiting. Conky, however, liked to be on time. Trapped in the punctuality paradox of being Paddy O’Brien’s muscle, Conky scratched at the nervous rash that started to itch up his neck beneath his best shirt.
‘Alright, Conks?’ Sheila said, emerging from the kitchen.
He turned around to greet the boss’ wife with a warm smile. Pushed his Ray-Bans up his nose to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled of exotic home cooking and perfume. He drank her aroma in and tried to commit it to memory. Her small, soft hand felt like a child’s inside his. He prayed his palms were dry. And that she wouldn’t see his irritable rash morphing into a blush.
‘Sheila,’ he said. Not knowing what to say next.
‘Want something to eat? I made a lovely paella. I’m just putting aside the leftovers. There’s plenty.’ She started to untie the apron from her tiny waist.
‘Aye. I could eat the arse of a baby through the cot bars, so I could,’ he said. Normally, she trilled with laughter when he used those old Norn Iron turns of phrase from his Belfast boyhood. Tonight, there was not even the glimmer of a smile. ‘I was only going to grab a burger at the club. Paddy’s due there in ten. So, I might have to eat it on the hoof, if you don’t mind, Sheila. The boss—’
‘Paddy can wait,’ Sheila said in a low voice. The lines either side of her mouth seemed etched deeper than usual.
She turned away from him. He followed her diminutive gym-honed form over to the range cooker, never taking his eyes from her. Savouring the opportunity to look without being seen or judged. But there was something unusual about her gait. She was walking gingerly.
‘Are you okay, She?’ he asked.
Turning to face him, Sheila’s gaze only reached as far as his chin. ‘Fine. I overdid it at the gym.’
He took several strides towards her and raised his glasses to his forehead, putting aside any self-conscious discomfort in knowing she would be able to see his protruding eyes. Stooping, he scrutinised the delicate bone structure of her face in the bright sparkling light of the chandeliers. Could see the ghost of a livid green bruise on her forehead, lurking just beneath a layer of heavy makeup.
‘What happened?’ He stroked her cheek gently.
She didn’t retreat from his touch but nevertheless refused to meet his gaze. She was blinking rapidly. ‘I tripped over my step in aerobics. Landed on one of my five-k barbell weights, face first, didn’t I?’
She looked furtively over at the kitchen door, as though she expected Paddy to be standing there, eavesdropping. Started to dish paella clumsily onto a plate, treating Conky to more uncomfortable silence, as though she resented him for drawing attention to the obvious.
‘If there’s anything you need to talk about, Sheila,’ he said, feeling the pressure of so many unspoken words, accumulated over years, pushing behind his thyroid eyes.
Her body stiffened suddenly. She turned back to the cooker. Busy with her frying pan.
Conky realised Paddy had appeared, and was now standing behind them.
‘Leave the grub, mate,’ the boss said, eyeing him carefully. ‘She’ll probably poison you with all that foreign shit anyway, won’t you, She? I nearly dropped my guts down that carsey.’ Paddy strode over and slapped his wife’s behind. Treated her to an aggressive kiss on the neck that she pulled away from.
Glad to leave the awkward atmosphere behind, Conky bid Sheila farewell and drove the boss beneath the fool’s gold of the streetlights down the A56, away from the leafy Cheshire suburbs, through Stretford and towards Manchester’s trading-estate wastelands. They ringed the centre like a shit city wall – identikit, corrugated iron super-sheds, punctuated only by the terraces of Old Trafford, the space-station-like construction of the Emirates cricket stadium and the gaudy blue dome of the Trafford Centre in the distance. All of that invisible as night fell in earnest, leaving only anonymous, hulking grey boxes behind high iron fencing that rusted in the Mancunian drizzle.
M1 House looked like any other premises, but for lasers that seeped skywards from the Perspex lights in the roof and the thump-thump of dance music that emanated from within.
‘Alright, our Pad,’ Frank said, greeting his older brother at the door deferentially. He thrust a full whisky tumbler towards him. ‘Come on. Come on, man. That Dutch bloke’s been waiting hours and he’s boring as fuck.’
Conky eyed the gaunt, twitchy figure of Frank O’Brien, wincing as Paddy grabbed the drink from him with one hand and administered a brotherly blow to his kidney with the other. Frank was already waxy-faced from whatever cocktail of drugs the daft wee fecker had managed to lay his hands on that evening, dressed like a 1990s throwback in a baggy long-sleeved top and cargo jeans. Shuffling through his giant temple to dance music in grotty old sneakers. A reluctant Pontius Pilate, Conky mused, serving beneath Paddy who was always channelling Tiberius on a good day; Caligula on a bad.
The bass-heavy music enveloped him, pulsating through the hot, damp air – it was almost tangible. Deafening shite. It was certainly no Dvorˇák or Mozart – it made Conky’s teeth sensitive and aggravated the pains in his legs whenever his thyroid was out of whack. Strobe lights flick-flickering all around, dimmed only slightly by the tinted prescription prisms in his Ray-Ban lenses that mitigated some of the thyroid eye disease that plagued him. Lasers flashing green and red in precise fans, pointing upwards, moving downwards to slice through the fog of the dry ice. Everybody caught in nanosecond freeze-frames. Hands in the air. Shaking that thang. Fecking eejits. Staccato dancing like possessed puppetry where the DJ was the puppet master.
‘Make some noise, M1 House!’ the DJ shouted as he blended the groove of one track into another, perfectly maintaining 128 beats per minute.
Jack O’Brien. Son of Frank O’Brien and number one nephew to Paddy. An accidental Adonis thanks to his dead mother’s Balearic colouring. The crowd worshipped this man, turning towards him in unison. Screaming and cheering up to the distant warehouse ceiling – above the lighting rigs, through the corrugated Perspex to the night sky beyond; out into the universe where their love would mingle with the stars.
Frank cheered. Pointed towards him.
‘Spin those records, son!’
The heaving sea of firm, slender young bodies parted to let them through. As they did so, Conky spotted the enemy: a mixed-race lad with a lightning flash shaved into the dark stubble of his scalp. Bell something, if memory served. A biblical name. Deuteronomy or something of that ilk. Paddy elbowed Conky in the ribs and nodded, giving the order. Dutifully, he grabbed Frank by his baggy top and yanked him at speed through the cavorting crowd to the backstage area.
At his side, Paddy had thunder behind his eyes.
‘Twat!’ He cuffed Frank on the side of his head.
Frank was ashen-faced. ‘What’s up, Pad? How comes Roy Orbison here has got a grip of me? I babysat your supplier, didn’t I? I wanna go and vibe with me adoring public, now. Know what I mean?’ Frank toyed with the sleeves of his top.
‘Who’ve you got dealing tonight?’ his older brother asked, gesticulating towards the dancefloor, visible beyond Jack in his booth.
Frank shrugged, still twitching as though he had withdrawals from the dancefloor. ‘Business as usual, man. You know? The Parson’s Croft kids. Degsy and his girls. Nicky, Maggie. They’re flogging Hong Kong Colin’s latest batch of E and meth, like you told them. Dealing some super-fine super skunk. Few baggies of coke. Making the happiness and contentment go round, man.’ He drew a heart in the air, ending with both hands making the peace sign.
But Paddy looked anything but peaceful and content. He smashed his whisky tumbler on the floor. Grabbed his younger brother by the back of the neck like a mother cat taking its wayward kitten in its maw. Pushed his face towards the crowd. ‘It’s crawling with Boddlingtons, you dozy wanker.’ Slapped him on the back of his sweaty head with a freckled, hairy hand.
Narrowing his eyes, Conky refocused on the sea of faces. The boy with the lightning flash was palming tabs in a baggie onto some girl and pocketing cash. That much, he could see. Very shoddy procedure.
Frank opened and closed his mouth. Rolling his head, as though panning for an explanation in his empty druggy head like a prospector hoping to find an elusive gold nugget in the mud.
‘I don’t know how he got past the fellers on the door, Pad. Honest. Maybe someone let him in the back. Maybe he just slipped through with a group of people. There’s two thousand kids in here. I can’t keep tabs on them. Know what I mean?’
Turning to Conky, Paddy’s thin lips arced downwards into a scowl.
‘Find Degsy. And get that little Boddlington shit back here. I’m not having stray dogs pissing on my territory.’ Hunched shoulders beneath the suit said he was bristling with anger.
‘Well, strictly speaking, Pad, it’s my territory,’ Frank said, wide-eyed. ‘As long as people are having a good time, I’m not bothered, me.’
‘Fucking dickhead.’
The slap that Paddy gave him across his face clearly had some weight behind it. Frank rubbed his cheek, suddenly looking like a small boy. Conky knew better than to intervene.
‘Get that Boddlington arsehole and Degsy back here,’ Paddy said.
Amidst a flurry of disingenuous apologies, Conky returned with Degsy and the Boddlington interloper, kicking them at the heels to make them move forwards with his gun trained on their backs. Taking pride in the fear he instilled in Degsy, at least. He was the O’Brien firm’s Loss Adjuster. He had a reputation to uphold. All who came before him in the Conky McFadden court of justice quaked in their boots.
‘This is Leviticus Bell,’ he announced, pushing the Boddlington low-level dealer to his knees. Not Deuteronomy, but still a biblical-standard cheeky arsehole. ‘And our very own lovely Derek.’ He poked Degsy in the back with the barrel of his gun.
Paddy cracked his knuckles. Took something shining from his breast pocket and slid it onto his hand. A knuckle duster. Degsy, a tall bundle of oversized G-Star Raw and Diesel with spots around his mouth that said he smoked just as much meth as he sold, paled instantly.
‘On your knees, you lanky twat!’ Paddy said, breathing heavily through his nostrils.
Degsy’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down in his scrawny neck.
‘Sorry, Mr O’Brien. I don’t know why I’m here, like, but whatever it is, I’m sorry. I told Mr McFadden.’
The left hook that Paddy delivered to Degsy’s temple sent the dealer’s head spinning to the right with a crack. Blood spatters clinging in a jaunty red to the black nightclub walls.
‘Christ, Pad. There’s no need for that,’ Frank said, wincing.
‘Shut your trap, Frank. I don’t give a stuff if Queen Elizabeth’s name’s on the liquor licence above the door. I’m the boss here. Me.’ He dug into his chest with a stubby thumb.
Paddy dragged Degsy to his feet. Though he towered above even Conky, Degsy seemed small next to the King. ‘You want to work for me and stay alive, Derek, you keep Boddlington scum out of my venues, right?’
Degsy nodded contritely. Seemed a little dazed. Touched the blood on the side of his head that now seeped onto his clothing.
‘Yes, Mr O’Brien. Sorry. It won’t happen again.’
Struggling against Conky’s grip, the young mixed-race Boddlington interloper spat at Degsy.
‘Parson’s Croft piece of shit!’ he shouted at him. Turned to Paddy and Frank. ‘I’m not bleeding scared of yous, man.’
Conky cuffed his ear with his pistol. ‘You’d better be, you wee shite. I’m gonna enjoy putting a bullet in you.’ His practised words came out automatically as he dwelled all the while on his missed book club and the strangeness of Sheila’s behaviour. Decades of doing the same job could do that to a man.
The boy turned to Conky, frowning. ‘Oh yeah? You want the Fish Man to come and fillet you, old man? ’Cause that’s who you’re dealing with if you lay a frigging finger on me.’
‘What’s your name again, son?’ Paddy stepped closer and grabbed him by his chin. Pushed his face upwards, examining his delicate bone structure to see if nobility was hidden in his genes.
The boy spat a second time on the floor at Paddy’s side. ‘Leviticus Bell.’
‘Plucky little bastard, aren’t you?’
The boy somehow wriggled free of Conky’s grip. Lunged at Paddy. A flash of something metallic, under the dim backstage lights. Red, spreading quickly through the suit-fabric covering Paddy’s forearm. The boy, running away; sprinting like a hunted gazelle through the emergency exit.
‘Boss!’ Conky shouted. He pushed his glasses onto his forehead to get a better look at the wound. His breath coming ragged with an accelerated heartbeat as he stared down at the gash.
‘It’s just a scratch!’ Paddy said, pressing his fingers into the wound.
But then, something more sinister, as Paddy’s look of surprise and anger turned into a wide-eyed hundred-yard stare. Clutching at his chest, he began sinking to his knees.
‘Jesus. I feel—’ he said. Grimacing, then, his eyes clamped shut.
‘Call an ambulance!’ Conky barked at Frank.
As Frank punched 999 into his phone, he seemed to be watching with part-glee, part-dread as his brother slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_6cccba04-90cf-5d99-8066-3318576eaa79)
Paddy (#ulink_6cccba04-90cf-5d99-8066-3318576eaa79)
The heart monitor beeped in syncopation with the bing of the oxygen saturation gauge. Constant noise, in those bloody places. Bright lights that made Paddy squint. And that smell. He hated that smell.
‘What is that stink?’ he asked Katrina. ‘Do you reckon it’s …? I dunno. Floor cleaner like Mam used to use and … human shit, maybe?’ He sniffed the air. Wrinkled his nose. Felt tired. ‘I can’t stand it. I want to go home, Kat. Tell our Sheila she’s to come and get me.’ He shuffled uncomfortably on the hard, rubber mattress. ‘My arse has gone dead.’
At his side, Katrina sighed and patted his hand. Her freckled Celtic skin looking so pale next to his. Her nails had been bitten down into utilitarian submission. Requirements of the job.
‘Ah, Patrick. You always were a terrible patient,’ she said, smiling wistfully as she watched his jagged heart rate peak and trough and peak and trough in a thin blue-green line. ‘Remember that time when you were doubled up in pain in the middle of the night and Mam called the doctor on you? You couldn’t have been more than ten.’
Paddy smiled weakly. ‘Eleven. I told him I was just constipated.’
‘It was peritonitis.’ Katrina smoothed her navy habit. Her hand travelled down to the large, silver crucifix hanging over her heart. She tapped it thoughtfully. ‘You’ve always played the hard man, Paddy O’Brien. Trying to impress Dad.’
A mental image of their father foisted itself on Paddy’s memory. A stocky little hard-nut of a man, who robbed the local bookies and did two years in Strangeways. Smelled of Marlboro cigarettes and stale ale, with breath like a dog’s fart. His hands and the pores on his face had always been ingrained with motor oil, when he could get work as a mechanic. Chasing him and Frank down the street with a tyre-iron for a laugh. Taking a swing to test their reflexes. They had been thirteen and seven.
‘Dad was a pure bastard,’ Paddy said. ‘At least he laid off you, though. You were his favourite because you were clever.’
Katrina smiled wryly. ‘Well, you can pretend all you like. I know you tried to live up to his expectations. But now this ridiculous life you lead is catching up with you. Time you made some changes.’
He rolled his eyes. Remembered how much he hated his sister’s well-meaning sermons. Yanked at the wires connected to his chest in irritation, scratching at the itch from the gel adhesive pads. ‘Save it for your flock, Sister Benedicta. I just need to get out of this dump. I’m fine.’
Brandishing his notes, Katrina looked down her nose through her thick-framed, plain glasses, as though about to give a schoolboy a ticking-off. She tutted loudly. ‘A heart attack, Patrick. And a stab wound. You are absolutely not fine. Too much of the high life, too much of the low life and too much stress.’ She hooked the clipboard of notes indignantly back onto the end of the hospital bed. Sniffed pointedly as Paddy’s heart rate picked up, ragged and hasty, as though it were somehow trying to flee the scene of a crime. ‘You carry on like this and you’ll not make sixty.’
‘I am sixty.’
‘Smart Alec. You can’t die on me, Patrick. I’ve got the Lord’s work to do. I’m not babysitting our Francis. That’s your responsibility.’
Paddy tried to shuffle himself up the bed. Didn’t have the energy. Hated himself for being weak. ‘I’m a businessman. I do business.’
His older sister leaned in close until he could smell the convent’s nursing home on her. A permanent whiff of institutional dinners, industrial laundry and maybe talc.
‘Dirty business,’ she said, frowning. ‘The heavenly Father is watching, Patrick.’
Paddy started to cough violently. Beep, beep, beep, complained the heart monitor. Bing, bing, as his oxygen levels took a dive. Too many cigarettes and fry-ups, he knew. He could feel his sister’s well-meaning eroding his conviction.
‘It’s taken its toll, hasn’t it? Admit it. It’s time to get out.’ Her well-scrubbed face – perhaps handsome in her youth, but never beautiful – was etched only with fine lines, far fewer than could be expected for a woman of her age. The face of a woman who had never seen drunken debauchery at 3am in Ibiza or a sunbed or a surfeit of gin. The face of a woman who slept nights with a clear conscience.
What did she know about real life?
‘It’s alright for you,’ he said. ‘The church takes care of you. I’ve got a family and the firm, all looking to me for money, support, leadership. I’m the heavenly fucking Father in this town, Kat. I’ve got the O’Brien name to uphold.’
Abruptly, Katrina stood up, shaking her head and glowering at him, as though she was channelling the displeasure of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. She scraped the visitor’s chair noisily along the lino. Smoothing down her drab navy skirt, her feet perfectly together in those ugly flat shoes they all wore. Prim and righteous – no different from when she was a kid, Paddy mused.
‘I’ve not got time for any more of your nonsense, Patrick,’ she said, dabbing at her nose with a white cloth handkerchief. ‘You should be thinking about your future. Carry on like you have been doing and you face an early death, and worst of all, the eternal fires of damnation.’ Her voice was quiet. Considered. Deadly. ‘Sheila and the girls will be left to fend for themselves. Francis will end up in jail, overdosed or killed. But that’s fine, because you’ll be gone, you selfish, thoughtless man. Think about how you could be spending your ill-gotten millions in a more meaningful way. Do it, Paddy! Make the changes before Death comes for you early, like it did for Mam and Dad.’
Alone in that side room in the hospital, Paddy wept openly, perhaps for the first time since he was a small boy. Let the fear of losing everything flood through him. I don’t want to die, he thought. Wiping his eyes on his crisp bedsheet, he rifled among the scores of Get Well Soon cards from neighbours, friends, family, lackeys and sycophants on his bedside cabinet. Drew out the framed photograph of Sheila and the girls. Taken at Christmas time last year, when he had paid for them all to spend a fortnight at the Rayavadee Resort in Krabi. They had been snapped by their waitress, dining as a family around a table situated on the beach, their togetherness framed by the limestone cliffs that rose sheer out of the turquoise Andaman Sea and the lush jungle green that fringed the shoreline. Amy and Dahlia, fully grown now, with lives of their own. One at university and one working a proper job in the City of London. But they had still found time to be with their old dad, hadn’t they? It had been the most perfect time in his life. Turning sixty, surrounded by his girls. After six decades of struggling to get as far away from the grime and stink of his childhood home and those foetid, rotten roots, that trip had epitomised his success.
He clutched the photograph to his chest. Tried to conjure the smell of the sea and the sound of the palms, rustling in the warm Thai breeze. At his side, the beeps of the heart monitor spread further apart. Slowing, slowing until they settled into a gentle rhythm.
Paddy knew what to do.
‘What do you mean, you want to sell up?’ Sheila asked, her baby-doll beautiful face freezing mid-smile. Paddy was relieved to see she had covered up the bruising to her forehead. No need to remind him of that.
She dropped her oversized handbag onto the hospital lino. Flung her slender frame onto the seat that Katrina had occupied earlier. Michael Kors or Armani or whatever it was she wore, clinging to her curves. Fur. Leather. Silk. Louboutin stilettos that cost him a small fortune. The antithesis of his sister. When she dared to get angry, it made him want to conquer her.
Paddy forked baked potato into his mouth enthusiastically. Chewed the fluffy mush with relish, as though this was the first time he had ever really tasted food. Sheila would come round. She always did as she was told with a little persuasion.
‘I’ve thought it all through, She. I’m selling the business.’ He set his fork down authoritatively on the tray. Grinned.
But Sheila’s scepticism was etched across her face. Those fine eyebrows raised archly.
‘It’s not a sodding barber’s or a chain of corner shops, Paddy.’ She lowered her voice. Looked over her shoulder, though they were alone, with the hustle and bustle of the ward on the other side of a heavy fire door. ‘It’s a Criminal. Fucking. Empire.’ She leaned in further with each word. Tapped every syllable out on his dinner tray with almost perfectly manicured electric blue nails – one shorter than all the rest.
Undeterred, he ushered more potato into his mouth. Pictured the tropical paradise of Krabi, so very far from Manchester’s never-ending rain and Frank’s idiot schemes and the daily grind of having to look over his shoulder continually. Spoke with his mouth full.
‘Tariq and Jonny. They’ll have it. I bet you. I reckon ten mill, and me and you can just get on a plane and swan off to Thailand. Open a bar.’
Sheila shook her shining blonde mane.
‘You’re tapped,’ she said. ‘You think the Boddlington gang are gonna shove you ten million quid for something they’ve spent the last twenty years trying to nick for free?’
Paddy nodded, beaming at his own brilliance. He felt happiness register itself in his groin, overpowering the agitation that she had dared to call him tapped.
‘Suck us off, She.’ He pointed at Little Paddy, making his presence felt beneath the honeycomb blanket.
Eyes narrowed, Sheila was folding her arms. Paddy mused that the blow-job was looking unlikely. He didn’t have the energy to insist otherwise.
‘Tariq Khan and Jonny Margulies are a pair of thieving bastards, Pad. You’re a thieving bastard, too, or had you forgotten?’
‘They’ll snatch me bleeding hand off, She! Especially if they think there’s a chance I might sell to some hip-hop, drive-by snot-rag from London with his arse hanging out his trousers. Or some Scouser. It’s what they’ve always wanted, Tariq and Jonny. They’ve got north Manchester and now I’ll sell them the south. Fair and square. The gambling dens, the pharmaceutical side, the guns …’ He started to count his interests on his fingers, as though this would somehow curry her favour. ‘… The endangered species shit that the Chinese love, the nail bars, the moody art, the lot! Bollocks to it. If they pay up, they can have our kid’s club and your cleaning business too.’
Out of her chair like a jack-in-the-box.
‘My frigging company?’ She shook her head. Waggled her finger. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no you don’t, Patrick O’Brien.’
Her pixie chin stuck out defiantly. Reminded him of the time he had asked her out on that first date, after a Wednesday night at the Haçienda’s Zumbar. He’d spotted her during the intermission – before the cheesy cabaret act had come on. Parading down the catwalk, modelling clothes from some local fashion school wannabe. Legs that went on forever and tits that had a buoyancy all of their own. She had been seventeen. He, thirty-seven – old enough to have his minions selling drugs in clubs, but too old to enjoy them himself, as a rule. But it had been Frank’s birthday that particular Wednesday, with his band playing downstairs in the Gay Traitor bar, so Paddy had relented. His cash hadn’t impressed young Sheila, but he had worn her down with sheer romantic persistence and, later, rightful dominance. She’d relented in the end, just as she would relent now, he felt certain.
‘You can get a new hobby in Thailand, babe. I’ll buy a big fuck-off villa. You can get it done out like a five-star spa hotel. That’ll keep you busy.’
‘Nine years, Paddy,’ she shouted. ‘Me and Gloria have built that sodding cleaning company up over nine years! I’m just about to get a healthcare contract, cleaning a big private hospital. I’ve done quotes this week for two law firms in town and a bank! It’s not a hobby, you cheeky bastard.’
‘Hey! Wind your fucking neck in, woman, or I’ll wind it in for you!’
‘I’ve got women relying on me.’ Her generous, pink lips had thinned and were now arcing downwards.
‘They’re bloody trafficked skivvies from Um Bongo, aren’t they?’
‘The Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrick. Not bloody Um Bongo. And some of them are from Nigeria and Ghana and are legal, actually! Gloria knows them from church, the Ghanaians and Nigerians. They’re glad of a job. I am a responsible employer.’
Paddy snorted. ‘What? You don’t reckon you’d be leaving your nice African ladies in good hands? You think Tariq Khan and Jonny Margulies are incapable of screwing over slave labour and refugees as good as you? Do me a favour!’
Sheila glared at him. She clearly thought she could gain the upper hand, while he was laid up and at the mercy of a medical team. Cocky bitch.
‘I care about my staff.’
‘You’re full of shit, is what you are, Sheila O’Brien.’ Paddy picked up the framed photograph taken in Thailand. Thrust it towards her. Pointed at the girls. His heart rate picked up pace, as it occurred to him that – for perhaps the first time ever – without his being able to squeeze the defiance out of her physically, Sheila might put her foot down and refuse to bend to his will. ‘This isn’t about money, She. We’ve got enough to last us ten lifetimes. This isn’t about some scrubbers you don’t even know, or that nagging, sanctimonious bitch, Gloria. This is about me, staying alive for our daughters. For us. Family.’
Sheila’s face had a pinched look to it as she chewed her bottom lip. Her gaze flicked from the photo to Paddy and back. She was refusing to make eye contact with him and staring intently only at his chin or his forehead. Nostrils flaring gently, as though she were processing some internal argument.
‘You’ve made your mind up, haven’t you?’ she asked in a quiet voice.
‘Yes.’ He held the photo to his chest. ‘For better or for worse, She. How bad could twenty years of tropical sunshine be?’ He grinned triumphantly. ‘I’ll buy you an elephant.’
‘Piss off, you daft bastard.’
‘You’d save a bomb on the sunbed.’
She dropped her gaze to her eternity and engagement rings, running her index finger over the large, solitaire diamond. Closed her mournful eyes.
‘If I agree, does this mean you’re getting out for good? No controlling the business from the end of a phone or a laptop? A clean break?’
He nodded. Felt his neck muscles start to relax.
‘It’d better be a damned big elephant, Paddy O’Brien.’
Chapter 4 (#ulink_17b58c4c-ed50-57df-bc9a-fa1ea8222113)
Jonny (#ulink_17b58c4c-ed50-57df-bc9a-fa1ea8222113)
Biting into his bagel, Jonny Margulies mused that it was a fine morning. From the vantage point of his desk, positioned by the office window, he could see the sun hitting the dreaming spires of Strangeways prison. The red brick was on fire today, giving an impression of baking warmth in a city that never thawed or properly dried out. The steep slate roofs shone – slick from the overnight rain, now reflecting sunshine like the solar panels on some distant satellite. Negative energy inside those walls, though. He imagined the poor bastards in the central building, walking round and around Her Majesty’s Victorian hotel, wondering what on earth had gone wrong with their lives. At least he was safe. And the warmth that spread from his groin to the rest of his body was genuine.
‘Not so hard, sugar,’ he said to the girl on her knees beneath the desk. ‘Flick your tongue around it while you suck. Okay?’
The blonde paused and looked up at him quizzically. Smudged eyeliner ringing her eyes looked like it had been applied days ago and never washed off or replenished. Oh well. She had a nice mouth and a sweet face and he had a hard-on the size of Texas. All was well.
‘You not like?’ she asked. Said something in Polish or Estonian or whatever the hell language she spoke. She smiled uncertainly. Cupped her small breasts. ‘You want I play?’
Jonny shook his head, batting the uninvited mental images of Sandra that encroached on the fantasy. Get out of my head, for God’s sake. Sandra, with her orange face and prune mouth. The half-starved and gorgeous Mrs Margulies – mother of his legitimate children but not sexy like this tasty little Eastern European tart.
‘No love. You’re fine.’ He set down his bagel and cupped her face in buttery hands so that she looked up at him. He mimed the technique he wanted her to adopt.
‘You want more lick. Yes?’
He nodded. ‘That’s right, love.’
The girl smiled. Her teeth were clean. He liked that. The dentist looked after all the girls’ dental hygiene well. He reached down and stroked her breasts. Felt his erection grow harder still. Wanted to put it inside her tight little pussy. He pulled her up towards him, not caring if anyone from the upper floors of the prison could see him. He just wanted to screw this girl right now.
‘Sixteen?’
‘I?’ She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sixteen. Yes.’ She rubbed her breasts on his face. Soft pink nipples brushing his stubble. Not a single blemish on her young, pale flesh. She was far younger than his daughter – but she wasn’t his daughter.
Reaching in her thong, he could feel her, soft and wet. Hot, where his finger slid inside. Two ties at the side came loose easily. She climbed onto him and started to ride him – inexpertly, but what the hell?! This was a glorious start to the day. Until …
The knock at the door was insistent.
‘Jonny!’ came a man’s voice on the other side. ‘The tax inspector is back.’ Strongly accented, pronouncing inspector as inspecter, betraying his Jerusalem origins.
Pushing the girl off his lap, Jonny’s desire cooled immediately.
‘Come in, Asaf, for Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, zipping his deflating penis into his chinos. He waved a hand at the girl. ‘Get dressed! Anyone asks, you were asking directions to TK Maxx.’
The girl looked at him blankly until he threw her clothes at her in a bundle.
‘Ah, dress. Yes.’ Scrambling to cover herself, she had at least picked up on the urgency in his voice.
The office felt smaller with the tall figure of Asaf Smolensky standing in it. Clad in his usual black double-breasted suit with its old-fashioned overdone padding to the shoulders. The thin, white strands of his ritual tassels – tzitzits – hanging outside his trousers. Scuffed shoes and a stained waistcoat juxtaposed against the immaculate cropped hair and ringletted sidelocks of the Hassids. He smelled of chopped and fried fish. He looked like he meant business.
‘Is it that tax bird again?’ Jonny asked him, feeling the blood drain from his face faster than it had from his dick. His pulse was racing. Suddenly, the half-eaten bagel in his stomach felt like lead. His brain whirred into overdrive, checking through the list of changes he and Tariq had instigated last time the stupid bitch had come calling, demanding to snoop around. They had fobbed her off, but only temporarily.
Smolensky nodded. Perched on the edge of the oversized desk, wearing a grim expression.
‘Yes. Ruth Darley. She’s come with two assistants today and some official-looking paperwork. HMRC wants your blood, Jonny.’ He toyed with his unruly beard, a thick eyebrow raised archly.
‘Tariq know?’
‘He’s at Sefton Street.’
‘I’ll call him.’ Pulling his mobile from his trouser pocket, Jonny inclined his head towards the young prostitute.
‘Do us a favour. Get Lev to get her away from here without anyone seeing. And make yourself scarce.’
Asaf stood tall and grabbed the girl by her upper arm. Said something to her in an Eastern European language that Jonny didn’t understand. The girl looked afraid, clutching her shoulder bag close as Asaf steered her through a second door in the office which led to the stone stairwell at the back of the building.
Locking both doors shut, Jonny dialled Tariq’s number. Sweat breaking out on his top lip. Tariq answered on the fourth ring.
‘What’s up, bro?’ Tariq asked. The chatter of workers was audible in the background, along with the whirring and clanking of a production line.
‘Darley’s back.’
Tense silence hung between them for too many moments.
‘I see,’ Tariq said. ‘Do you want me to come over?’
Jonny peered out of the window to the car park immediately below, avoiding looking at Strangeways, now, for fear that he might somehow jinx his precarious freedom. There were two cars he didn’t recognise parked out front, next to his own Maserati. A silver Toyota and a black Mondeo. Tax man’s cars. He willed his hand to stop shaking. Gripped the phone harder.
‘No, you’re alright. I’ve got it covered. If they’ve got eyes on the street and spot you coming out of there, we’re totally buggered. Stay put. I’ll call when they’re gone.’
His secretary’s instantly recognisable rat-a-tat-tat on the door said it was time to put on the grand performance.
Clad in a frumpy blue suit with her banana legs and fat ankles stuffed into cheap shoes, Darley was already strutting through the warehouse, examining the stock. Jonny willed himself to smile before she had even turned around to face him, lest he make it too obvious that he’d like Asaf to bone her like a haddock with his sharpest knife. In his peripheral vision, he clocked her minions – two men: one who looked about ready to retire and the other who didn’t look more than twenty. They were speaking to the workers, who were bundling the cheap jewellery into even cheaper packaging.
‘Ms Darley,’ Jonny said, adopting his magnanimous and friendly voice that he used for PTA meetings. ‘What a pleasure to see you again.’
Darley turned on her heel, a grim expression on her face that implied the pleasure was not mutual. ‘Mr Margulies.’ She held out her right hand and treated him to the iron handshake of a woman who broke balls for a living. In her left hand, she clutched an oversized accountant’s briefcase. ‘I’m here to search your premises. Please make all your accounts and employee records available.’
Jonny felt like his bowels were somehow ingesting themselves. The tell-tale sensation of needing the toilet, fast. But he wouldn’t show this bitch any fear. The authorities were like dogs; the moment they caught a whiff of guilt, they knew they had you. Tariq was relying on him. Both of their families depended on his giving a convincing performance. He put one foot in front of another and showed her to an office that looked onto the main factory floor through a large plate-glass internal window.
‘You can work in here,’ he said politely, switching on the flick-flickering strip lighting and pulling out an uncomfortable-looking brown plastic chair. It was cold in there. The thin carpet tiles were peeling upwards, revealing perished rubber underneath. Let the tax bastards suffer.
‘Where is Mr Khan?’ she asked, touching her no-nonsense brown bob. It appeared rigid and moved only slightly.
‘Family emergency. He’s been called away.’
Darley looked over her purple plastic-framed glasses, fixing him with hard hazel eyes. ‘Convenient.’
Shrugging, he held his palms aloft in a gesture of honesty.
‘Am I my business partner’s keeper?’
Jonny wished he could run away. Give it all up. Hide on a beach in Israel or South America or even crappy Marbella would do right now. Silently, he cursed Tariq for having chosen that morning, of all mornings, to visit their other place, leaving him to sort out this gargantuan shit-storm on his own.
As the day wore on, Jonny felt his spirit ebbing away, answering intrusive questions and observing his book-keeper, old Mohammed, delivering box after box of files to the temporary hub of HMRC investigation.
Knocking timorously on the door, he popped his head in to see Ruth Darley busily going through a sheaf of invoices with a determined look on her face. Her underlings flanked her, like Padawans studying beneath some great Jedi. Jonny looked at his watch pointedly.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘Would you like my secretary to bring you and your colleagues a coffee?’
Darley looked at him and slid her glasses further up her nose. Glanced at Jonny’s wrist. ‘I don’t need a Breitling watch to tell me what time it is, Mr Margulies.’ She offered him a grimace that was an approximation of a smile. ‘We’ll be leaving in ten minutes, but we’ll be back tomorrow.’
Jonny folded his arms. Imagined for a second that he could hear the inmates inside Strangeways jeering at him from behind their barred windows.
‘Back? Oh. You haven’t seen everything you need today? I thought Janice had given you access to the full monty. We’ve got nothing to hide here, you know.’
Ruth Darley stood and held a separate sheaf of invoices aloft. Invoices written in Chinese, by the looks of it. At that moment, a sweat broke out on Jonny’s top lip and he wished, however improbably, that he knew the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese. Had the invoices somehow got mixed up? Maureen would surely never allow that to happen.
‘I have found anomalies, Mr Margulies.’ Her smile was genuine that time.
Shit. Those were the last words he had wanted to hear.
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Marnie Riches
A powerful, darkly comic novel set in the criminal underworld of Manchester from bestselling author Marnie Riches.The battle is on…When gang leader Paddy O’Brien is stabbed in his brother’s famous nightclub, Manchester’s criminal underworld is shaken to the core. Tensions are running high, and as the body count begins to grow, the O’Brien family must face a tough decision – sell their side of the city to the infamous Boddlington gang or stick it out and risk losing their king.But war comes easy to the bad boys, and they won’t go down without a fight. So begins a fierce battle for the South Side, with the leading Manchester gangsters taking the law into their own hands – but only the strongest will survive…
Born Bad
MARNIE RICHES
Copyright (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Marnie Riches 2017
Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008203931
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008203948
Version 2017-01-20
Praise for Marnie Riches: (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
‘Fast-paced, enthralling and heartrending; I couldn’t put it down’
C. L. Taylor
‘A strong, edgy debut that deserves to do well’
Clare Mackintosh
‘Fast, furious, fantastic…One killer thriller!’
Mark Edwards
What the reviewers said: (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
‘A truly exciting new arrival in the world of Euro Crime! (https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3GV4NBXDK92SX/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U1K18VY&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=341677031&store=digital-text)’
‘I bit my nails all the way to the end!’
‘Breathtakingly brilliant’
‘Reminds me of the best Scandinavian crime writers like Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson’
‘Truly outstanding’
‘An intricate, fast-paced and utterly compelling thriller (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/RVNB9MR5ZGYAA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
‘Without a doubt a true 5 star read! (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R2WVMXPPJGZ4RX/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
‘Work of art’
‘Intelligent, moving, filled with tension and entertaining (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/RPRBE8Z2IO4PX/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00U5NU62E)’
Dedication (#ua2eea6f1-bb8f-53eb-9dd9-65695182cf7e)
For Caspian
If my name is on the spine, and the story comes from my heart, then you are surely the lungs of this book, since you have breathed life into all of my words. In a world full of bollocks, you’re the dog’s, Mr Dennis. Never forget it.
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud8f2a096-c35c-5e2f-917a-08df33171cf2)
Title Page (#uaea24b5a-5cfe-52d0-b7b2-6acdfdad46bc)
Copyright (#u08770221-277b-5c06-9a53-213a54db540b)
Praise for Marnie Riches: (#u1dbc1ea1-4f10-5a6f-ba49-9fa7611cd95a)
What the Reviewers Said: (#uffb7ab26-b105-5f1d-ac2d-e33460e1efbb)
Dedication (#u24985d44-6abe-52de-9bdd-e1009007e37a)
Chapter 1: Sheila (#u589bc4dc-490f-531e-8ba4-57804297b26e)
Chapter 2: Conky (#uf29cc87c-d331-56b3-8667-94ca8fc6ff39)
Chapter 3: Paddy (#u76f7cc1f-7dae-53d9-a819-7b3cd295929a)
Chapter 4: Jonny (#u995129cd-7a83-5fc7-9213-ff13a57b2dc1)
Chapter 5: Irina (#u9a637110-4e3b-5bb3-91d4-86bb72bd7d04)
Chapter 6: Lev (#u93e38c35-b9e4-5937-a5ee-8b82e394fa94)
Chapter 7: Gloria (#u9a2f399e-ee39-58d7-80aa-a752c45e305c)
Chapter 8: Paddy (#uf4572bf3-ea99-5f86-b228-01a7727cde54)
Chapter 9: Sheila (#udd79b9e6-3869-5e0a-8c56-ac1992a49861)
Chapter 10: Lev (#ufa667dd7-0a32-5541-b4d4-1460a0ccf483)
Chapter 11: Conky (#uc812727a-252f-57e4-adba-543056992e77)
Chapter 12: Lev (#u42339266-6766-5d01-aec4-2756494251e4)
Chapter 13: Jonny (#u83a1345a-4b21-5585-a156-2c801aa95de6)
Chapter 14: Jack (#u0050524a-8391-5e91-ae06-b1f9ead12509)
Chapter 15: Paddy (#uea9d08e0-f9a7-587b-8174-7a7494dde9c5)
Chapter 16: Lev (#u527c629c-c3e4-59d0-8ff3-7232a3ea6ded)
Chapter 17: Conky (#uf77a7886-8749-598c-ae62-0da9b05d743a)
Chapter 18: Lev (#u5cb8f267-7710-5286-aade-d1c4f001d848)
Chapter 19: Irina (#u42f137fa-884f-58ff-9d75-efb6c352f7fc)
Chapter 20: Lev (#u904f9992-e431-52a3-a451-a61ee5bb4c93)
Chapter 21: Sheila (#u3a6255ae-46d1-5611-b136-91a90d4aac14)
Chapter 22: Lev (#u00ba24c1-c5a9-5aac-b3ec-5e946c39233d)
Chapter 23: Sheila (#ub628fa5b-00b4-5d4a-a1b8-f30975570d79)
Chapter 24: Gloria (#u54d9db19-cd3d-58e4-a3e4-e4789bcb314b)
Chapter 25: Lev (#u965d8791-f752-5e8b-b597-aa0538f1f6cb)
Chapter 26: Conky (#u9754aa17-051b-5cab-81d3-2ebaac920026)
Chapter 27: Sheila (#u59cb0c3a-09a7-5370-a57b-72e64d5d1b5f)
Chapter 28: Lev (#u1be422f4-f519-5e19-8ef9-59b39f4f19a9)
Chapter 29: Paddy (#u043cc330-c255-5f5b-b984-33ae1130c4ec)
Chapter 30: Frank (#ud2e1353a-dcac-56d8-9a9d-f1da4db789bd)
Chapter 31: Tariq (#u473e6150-8929-5b9f-941e-e4739285f5ca)
Chapter 32: Gloria (#u8c8fd000-1655-5e83-8ce4-86cb13bf76e4)
Chapter 33: Jonny (#u184eadb3-b9fa-5393-a633-df78aa86eee8)
Chapter 34: Asaf (#ua5f54bc3-ac91-50c7-af5c-b042c4461551)
Chapter 35: Frank (#u1fc81d5d-9e5e-5c7e-9a74-ff69a9f1f860)
Chapter 36: Asaf (#uaa288bbe-0398-5a2b-83ed-70423255dc06)
Chapter 37: Conky (#u775561e7-138d-50a8-88f8-753f0cb13857)
Chapter 38: Jonny (#u8cbc4850-e55e-5dca-b7b1-58ec66660441)
Chapter 39: Sheila (#u849ec5ff-dd5f-50c5-b17e-9108d4ae00e0)
Chapter 40: Lev (#u5c04f7d6-ad85-576a-b4ff-e0f7999fb77a)
Chapter 41: Lev (#ubca0d224-15db-53d1-aeaa-2e60e5bb73ac)
Chapter 42: Frank (#uef4803a2-38db-5aec-9de0-712fe09bd16a)
Chapter 43: Sheila (#u138fa31f-3fc7-5ede-a979-6f9a92d48f97)
Chapter 44: Conky (#u39bbafad-3f23-58f0-9c68-3adc46e0b754)
Chapter 45: Conky (#u6014d339-a78b-541c-9a9a-dfbca8bf11ba)
Chapter 46: Sheila (#u0cb1ec37-1b72-543a-9656-dcfb458c5d75)
Chapter 47: Frank, Then Katrina (#u98a22865-42ab-5c8f-b58e-3d26e269172a)
Chapter 48: Conky (#u3f051672-52a1-5332-bb3a-55e9bd981e2d)
Chapter 49: Conky (#u5de515a4-7cca-52b4-a99f-7154c77db9d5)
Chapter 50: Sheila (#u95613582-4241-5a52-930a-bb6373cf1dbb)
Chapter 51: Conky (#u0919a1bb-b77b-5bbd-95a8-5a8e524382eb)
Chapter 52: Conky (#uab2302cd-0aa2-527d-80c8-8a14963ed190)
Chapter 53: Lev (#u20cb5a0b-e47f-5652-99d2-2c539dd58491)
Chapter 54: Tariq (#uc45c597b-d112-5537-8f20-8aba82bfd4f2)
Chapter 55: Sheila (#u98d7db00-6529-5ecf-8e57-ac79316eb46b)
Chapter 56: Katrina, Then Paddy (#u021d636f-6af0-524c-a196-c95d1fce9075)
Acknowledgements (#ua68d7228-8726-56bc-8c04-2cbd3b556f9c)
Keep Reading … (#u3ce2535b-655f-5a65-8329-6d36eac8bf41)
About the Author (#u16e6762c-dd06-5523-9bc7-6a646e172ec5)
By the Same Author: (#ue411f5b0-c359-5415-99c4-f4e21777aaf6)
About the Publisher (#ue54616a5-4a6a-59a0-be5c-cb3f3e22cffe)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_469dcc7a-de67-55c0-b36c-9cb57064e15d)
Sheila (#ulink_469dcc7a-de67-55c0-b36c-9cb57064e15d)
The leather case containing the guns was cumbersome and heavy, making her shoulder muscles scream with the effort of pulling it towards her. Looking around to check that she wasn’t being watched, she tried to drag it out of the boot of her Porsche Panamera. Dead weight. Looked around again towards the garaging. The doors were closed. No sign of his car, thankfully.
‘Come on, Sheila,’ she counselled herself. ‘Grit your teeth, girl.’
With a grunt, she heaved the case out. Dropped it heavily onto the gravel, narrowly missing the peep toes of her purple suede Louboutins. Slammed the boot shut, chipping a nail in the process.
‘Bastard thing,’ she said, lugging the guns awkwardly across the courtyard and up the steps to the front door. She would definitely have a couple of bruises on her shins by tomorrow. Shit. But at least the determined Mancunian rain wasn’t falling on her freshly blow-dried hair.
Inside, her house was silent and pristine. The wooden floors shone. The smell of furniture wax was pungent in the air. The cleaners had gone for the day and the gardener wasn’t due until Friday.
‘Anybody home?’ she called out. Her voice bounced off the hard surfaces of the glazed banister and naked oak of the staircase. No response, though she hadn’t expected one.
Flinging her keys onto the sideboard, Sheila kicked off her heels, carrying the guns to the lower level of the house. She bypassed the spa area and pool to enter the cinema room. It smelled of stale cigar smoke and the dregs at the bottom of Paddy’s empty single malt bottle and dirty tumbler. She made a mental note to chastise the cleaners for having missed it. Wrinkled her nose at the manly stink that reminded her too much of the Green Room in her brother-in-law’s club.
‘Hide it with the other guns and surprise him with it after tea, or leave it out for him to find?’ Sheila contemplated aloud, setting the leather case on the coffee table and clicking open the antique silver locks. She appraised the delicate metalwork of the shotguns, studded with semi-precious stones. Both guns were safely ensconced in their own blue velvet bed. Not her cup of tea, but she knew Paddy would appreciate these Ottoman flintlock rifles. Seventeenth century, the dealer had said. They’d go with his collection of swords, pistols and other shit, he had assured her. It was a perfect apology. She’d forked over a pile of her own cash for them, hoping they would be the ultimate oil to pour on troubled waters after Paddy had ‘discovered’ the email she had sent to Mam and Dad.
All those years she’d fantasised about reforging the bond with her parents that Paddy had insisted she jettison. Decades of being desperate to tell her folks about the girls; about her life; about how much she missed them every single day. Bloody typical that Paddy had gone snooping through her email account when she’d finally had the balls to contact them on the quiet. She made a mental note to change her email password. Couldn’t hide anything from that nosey old bastard. Still, he had her best interests at heart, didn’t he?
‘Paddy, Paddy O’Brien,’ she intoned, looking over at the oil painting of her imperious husband that made him look a good deal less hatchet-faced and more sanguine than he really was. ‘You difficult, moody sod.’ She snapped the gun case shut. ‘I hope to God these cheer you up.’
The sound of a door slamming against a wall and a trill of what she was sure was a woman’s laughter made her freeze. Sheila stood tall. Breathing in shallow gasps, she strained to work out where the sound had come from. The spa, perhaps? There was certainly somebody in the house with her. Snatching one of the antique long-barrelled flintlocks, she held the gun out ahead of her and stalked towards the spa. Heart thudding. Forcing herself to be brave. No way of creeping back upstairs to see from the alarm keypad if there had been an intrusion via another zone in the sprawling Bramshott mansion.
To speak, or not to speak. That was the question.
‘Who’s there?’ she said quietly. Unconvincingly.
The thick grey carpet swallowed the sound of her shoeless footfalls. Just ahead loomed the glazed door that separated the cinema room from the spa area and pool. A glimpse of the turquoise glittering pool, its spot-lit ripples dancing white and silver on the vaulted brick ceiling. There was the laughter again.
‘Oh, Paddy!’ shouted a woman’s voice.
Paddy’s low voice, rumbling. Saying something indistinct. More laughter.
Sheila edged open the spa door, shaking with adrenalin, poised for fight or flight. Her sharp eyes darted to the left. To the right. Scanning the tranquil scene. Clean, pale grey tiles. Perfect azure water, still but for the gush of the filtration jets set into the sides of the pool. Teak loungers, arranged at an artful angle. There was nothing to see. And yet, she had not imagined the voices.
Her heartbeat bounced her forwards, almost audible in a lofty space where only the air-conditioning unit buzzed quietly in the background.
‘Come here, you dirty girl. Come to Paddy.’
And there it was. No doubt in her mind. Paddy’s voice, thick with the lustful intent that she recognised immediately. Blatant, inconsiderate bastard. Shitting on his own doorstep. This was a new low.
Though she knew the flintlock was not loaded, she kept the heavy gun hoisted high on her shoulder. Deciding how to tackle this situation. Her options were: walk away and pretend she had not happened upon what was almost certainly a clandestine coupling; shout, ‘Hello!’ announcing her presence, giving them time to make themselves respectable and fashion some bullshit excuse; or creep up on the bastards and give them the fright of their lives.
Padding towards the sound of heavy breathing and the rustle of fabric, Sheila realised the sauna held her husband and his extra-marital mate. The door was standing open. The sound of giggling and Paddy’s lascivious groaning slid out on the steamy, seamy air.
Following the gun’s line of sight, Sheila held her breath. Anger grabbing her natural reticence by the throat and squeezing the apologetic life out of it. She took a noiseless step into the cedar-clad cabana and hefted the gun up to Paddy’s head. His eyes were shut. A beatified smile was plastered across his lying, scheming face. At his feet, a naked young blonde was crouched, gobbling his cock with some enthusiasm. The soles of her feet were dirty, the heels crusty with dried skin.
‘Surprise!’ Sheila said, savouring the sight of her sexually incontinent husband grabbing at his heart and almost leaping clear of the cabana bench.
With a yelp, the young woman – no more than a girl – jumped to her feet, covering her silicone breasts with splayed fingers. Bitten fingernails. Not a mark on her belly, though. This one had certainly not borne children. But then, Paddy always liked them young.
‘Who are you?’ the girl shouted.
‘I’m his damned wife,’ Sheila said, intoxicated by the heady bloodlust. She swung the barrel of the flintlock towards the girl and dug it into her right breast. ‘That’s who I am. Mrs Bleeding O’Brien. And you’re trespassing in my house and on my husband.’
The girl’s face wrinkled up into an expression that threatened tears or a bout of hysteria. But there was something familiar about her.
‘Sheila. You’re out of fucking line!’ Paddy said. ‘It’s not what you think. You’re frightening her, you bullying bitch. She’s only a kid.’
Only a kid. Only a kid. That’s where she knew the girl from. She scrutinised the line of the girl’s eyebrows beneath the heavy, dark eyebrow pencil. Noticed the shape of her lips beneath the now-smudged Ronald McDonald red lipstick.
‘Didn’t you go to school with my Dahlia?’ she asked, pushing the barrel hard into the girl’s breast bone. ‘Stacey Wheelan.’
‘Tracy Wheelan,’ the girl said. A meek, almost infantile voice, as her false lashes flickered shamefully down towards her vajazzle and back up towards Paddy. Pleading eyes, clearly wishing her sugar daddy would sweeten this bitter confrontation and make Sheila somehow dissolve clean away.
‘Get out,’ Sheila simply said. ‘Go on. Sling your hook, you little slag.’
‘Go on, love,’ Paddy told the girl. His voice was soft, but Sheila could see from the hard set of his mouth that he was seething. And his livid gaze was trained directly on Sheila, scorching its way through her skin.
The storm was coming. Sheila felt suddenly far less brave. Knew instinctively that the unloaded flintlock would be her undoing.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tracy Wheelan said to neither of them in particular. She grabbed her cheap clothes and scuffed stilettos and shuffled over to the subterranean spa exit. Clattered up the stone steps to ground level. Was gone.
Paddy grabbed the barrel of the gun and wrenched it out of Sheila’s hands.
‘You bitch,’ he said. On his feet now, his nakedness in that enclosed space felt suddenly oppressive. The roundness of his belly pinned her up against the sweaty wall. His erect penis stuck into her navel like an angry thorn. She could smell beer and cigarettes on his breath. He had spent lunchtime in the pub, clearly. Probably some shithole in Parson’s Croft, where he and Conky had swung by to collect protection subs.
‘I was only doing her a favour. Giving her a bit of a shoulder to cry on. Her mam’s just died, for Christ’s sake. She was cut up. I was tense. I’ve been working all the hours God sends and getting no comfort off you. I was giving you space, She.’ Paddy’s eyebrows knitted together. His nostrils flared as he breathed rapidly. In, out, in, out, like a panther waiting to pounce. ‘There was no harm in it. But you’ve just scarred a young girl for life, you jealous, snooping cow.’
Realising she could not easily make a bolt for freedom now that she was pinned against the wall, Sheila whispered, ‘Sorry, Pad.’ Defensively, she raised her hands to her face.
Paddy rammed the butt of the flintlock into her ribs. The air escaped her lungs in a hiss. The pain was intense.
‘Nasty, bullying bitch.’ Spittle flew from Paddy’s mouth as he brought the flat of the stock down onto her cheekbone.
‘Stop, Paddy!’ Sheila cried, clasping at the side of her face. ‘That’s going to bruise, for Christ’s sake! I bought you the guns to say sorry. I’m sorry, Pad!’ Tears streamed from her eyes, though she struggled hard to hold them inside. Didn’t want to show him how much she was hurting or how frightened and vulnerable she suddenly felt.
He stopped abruptly. Stared down at the gun, as if only noticing it then for the first time. Turned the weapon over in his hands, running stubby fingers over the filigree metalwork.
‘Ottoman?’ he said, raising an eyebrow. He raised the flintlock to his shoulder and stared down the barrel at Sheila. Pulled the trigger. ‘Bang.’
Sheila winced.
Paddy winked.
‘Nice gun,’ he said. Then, he hit her over the head hard with the barrel.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_82defd09-a321-5976-ab52-090131e44bdb)
Conky (#ulink_82defd09-a321-5976-ab52-090131e44bdb)
‘I’ll be down in a tick,’ Paddy shouted to Conky McFadden, poking his head out from one of the doors on the galleried landing. Fastening the cuffs of his shirt. On his bottom half, he wore only his pants. Hairy, freckled red legs on show. ‘I’m just going for a shit.’
‘You take your time, boss …’ Conky said, peering down at the shine on his new shoes. ‘… While I hang around like a fart in a trance,’ he added, lowering his voice to a half-whisper. ‘Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do at eleven pm on a Friday night.’
Conky stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands folded behind him, sighing. Remembering how Paddy had stunk their cell out when they’d done time together, all those years ago. He had always laughed that it was the evil coming out. Bloody hell. Nothing changed, did it?
Glancing into the oversized mirror by the cloakroom, he double-checked that his trusty hair-piece was still reliably fixed into place, with his own dwindling hair successfully combed over the artful construction. He poked at it gently. It was robust, with no visible bald bits. Excellent. He must pay that bean-counting eejit, David Goodman, a little intelligence-sourcing visit soon, while his hair was looking quite so regal as to be almost intimidating. Maureen Kaplan’s son-in-law always blabbed a little louder with proper use of The Eyes, the power of The Hair and, of course, a pistol in his flapping mouth.
Conky tried to lessen his frustration by focusing on his thoughts about A Brief History of Seven Killings – the Man Booker Prize winner he was meant to finish in time for his book club. Which he had missed tonight because of Paddy. He checked his watch. There was a Dutchman waiting at the club to discuss the supply of mephedrone in the northwest. A big meeting, called at short notice at Paddy’s behest. But Paddy loved to keep people waiting. Conky, however, liked to be on time. Trapped in the punctuality paradox of being Paddy O’Brien’s muscle, Conky scratched at the nervous rash that started to itch up his neck beneath his best shirt.
‘Alright, Conks?’ Sheila said, emerging from the kitchen.
He turned around to greet the boss’ wife with a warm smile. Pushed his Ray-Bans up his nose to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled of exotic home cooking and perfume. He drank her aroma in and tried to commit it to memory. Her small, soft hand felt like a child’s inside his. He prayed his palms were dry. And that she wouldn’t see his irritable rash morphing into a blush.
‘Sheila,’ he said. Not knowing what to say next.
‘Want something to eat? I made a lovely paella. I’m just putting aside the leftovers. There’s plenty.’ She started to untie the apron from her tiny waist.
‘Aye. I could eat the arse of a baby through the cot bars, so I could,’ he said. Normally, she trilled with laughter when he used those old Norn Iron turns of phrase from his Belfast boyhood. Tonight, there was not even the glimmer of a smile. ‘I was only going to grab a burger at the club. Paddy’s due there in ten. So, I might have to eat it on the hoof, if you don’t mind, Sheila. The boss—’
‘Paddy can wait,’ Sheila said in a low voice. The lines either side of her mouth seemed etched deeper than usual.
She turned away from him. He followed her diminutive gym-honed form over to the range cooker, never taking his eyes from her. Savouring the opportunity to look without being seen or judged. But there was something unusual about her gait. She was walking gingerly.
‘Are you okay, She?’ he asked.
Turning to face him, Sheila’s gaze only reached as far as his chin. ‘Fine. I overdid it at the gym.’
He took several strides towards her and raised his glasses to his forehead, putting aside any self-conscious discomfort in knowing she would be able to see his protruding eyes. Stooping, he scrutinised the delicate bone structure of her face in the bright sparkling light of the chandeliers. Could see the ghost of a livid green bruise on her forehead, lurking just beneath a layer of heavy makeup.
‘What happened?’ He stroked her cheek gently.
She didn’t retreat from his touch but nevertheless refused to meet his gaze. She was blinking rapidly. ‘I tripped over my step in aerobics. Landed on one of my five-k barbell weights, face first, didn’t I?’
She looked furtively over at the kitchen door, as though she expected Paddy to be standing there, eavesdropping. Started to dish paella clumsily onto a plate, treating Conky to more uncomfortable silence, as though she resented him for drawing attention to the obvious.
‘If there’s anything you need to talk about, Sheila,’ he said, feeling the pressure of so many unspoken words, accumulated over years, pushing behind his thyroid eyes.
Her body stiffened suddenly. She turned back to the cooker. Busy with her frying pan.
Conky realised Paddy had appeared, and was now standing behind them.
‘Leave the grub, mate,’ the boss said, eyeing him carefully. ‘She’ll probably poison you with all that foreign shit anyway, won’t you, She? I nearly dropped my guts down that carsey.’ Paddy strode over and slapped his wife’s behind. Treated her to an aggressive kiss on the neck that she pulled away from.
Glad to leave the awkward atmosphere behind, Conky bid Sheila farewell and drove the boss beneath the fool’s gold of the streetlights down the A56, away from the leafy Cheshire suburbs, through Stretford and towards Manchester’s trading-estate wastelands. They ringed the centre like a shit city wall – identikit, corrugated iron super-sheds, punctuated only by the terraces of Old Trafford, the space-station-like construction of the Emirates cricket stadium and the gaudy blue dome of the Trafford Centre in the distance. All of that invisible as night fell in earnest, leaving only anonymous, hulking grey boxes behind high iron fencing that rusted in the Mancunian drizzle.
M1 House looked like any other premises, but for lasers that seeped skywards from the Perspex lights in the roof and the thump-thump of dance music that emanated from within.
‘Alright, our Pad,’ Frank said, greeting his older brother at the door deferentially. He thrust a full whisky tumbler towards him. ‘Come on. Come on, man. That Dutch bloke’s been waiting hours and he’s boring as fuck.’
Conky eyed the gaunt, twitchy figure of Frank O’Brien, wincing as Paddy grabbed the drink from him with one hand and administered a brotherly blow to his kidney with the other. Frank was already waxy-faced from whatever cocktail of drugs the daft wee fecker had managed to lay his hands on that evening, dressed like a 1990s throwback in a baggy long-sleeved top and cargo jeans. Shuffling through his giant temple to dance music in grotty old sneakers. A reluctant Pontius Pilate, Conky mused, serving beneath Paddy who was always channelling Tiberius on a good day; Caligula on a bad.
The bass-heavy music enveloped him, pulsating through the hot, damp air – it was almost tangible. Deafening shite. It was certainly no Dvorˇák or Mozart – it made Conky’s teeth sensitive and aggravated the pains in his legs whenever his thyroid was out of whack. Strobe lights flick-flickering all around, dimmed only slightly by the tinted prescription prisms in his Ray-Ban lenses that mitigated some of the thyroid eye disease that plagued him. Lasers flashing green and red in precise fans, pointing upwards, moving downwards to slice through the fog of the dry ice. Everybody caught in nanosecond freeze-frames. Hands in the air. Shaking that thang. Fecking eejits. Staccato dancing like possessed puppetry where the DJ was the puppet master.
‘Make some noise, M1 House!’ the DJ shouted as he blended the groove of one track into another, perfectly maintaining 128 beats per minute.
Jack O’Brien. Son of Frank O’Brien and number one nephew to Paddy. An accidental Adonis thanks to his dead mother’s Balearic colouring. The crowd worshipped this man, turning towards him in unison. Screaming and cheering up to the distant warehouse ceiling – above the lighting rigs, through the corrugated Perspex to the night sky beyond; out into the universe where their love would mingle with the stars.
Frank cheered. Pointed towards him.
‘Spin those records, son!’
The heaving sea of firm, slender young bodies parted to let them through. As they did so, Conky spotted the enemy: a mixed-race lad with a lightning flash shaved into the dark stubble of his scalp. Bell something, if memory served. A biblical name. Deuteronomy or something of that ilk. Paddy elbowed Conky in the ribs and nodded, giving the order. Dutifully, he grabbed Frank by his baggy top and yanked him at speed through the cavorting crowd to the backstage area.
At his side, Paddy had thunder behind his eyes.
‘Twat!’ He cuffed Frank on the side of his head.
Frank was ashen-faced. ‘What’s up, Pad? How comes Roy Orbison here has got a grip of me? I babysat your supplier, didn’t I? I wanna go and vibe with me adoring public, now. Know what I mean?’ Frank toyed with the sleeves of his top.
‘Who’ve you got dealing tonight?’ his older brother asked, gesticulating towards the dancefloor, visible beyond Jack in his booth.
Frank shrugged, still twitching as though he had withdrawals from the dancefloor. ‘Business as usual, man. You know? The Parson’s Croft kids. Degsy and his girls. Nicky, Maggie. They’re flogging Hong Kong Colin’s latest batch of E and meth, like you told them. Dealing some super-fine super skunk. Few baggies of coke. Making the happiness and contentment go round, man.’ He drew a heart in the air, ending with both hands making the peace sign.
But Paddy looked anything but peaceful and content. He smashed his whisky tumbler on the floor. Grabbed his younger brother by the back of the neck like a mother cat taking its wayward kitten in its maw. Pushed his face towards the crowd. ‘It’s crawling with Boddlingtons, you dozy wanker.’ Slapped him on the back of his sweaty head with a freckled, hairy hand.
Narrowing his eyes, Conky refocused on the sea of faces. The boy with the lightning flash was palming tabs in a baggie onto some girl and pocketing cash. That much, he could see. Very shoddy procedure.
Frank opened and closed his mouth. Rolling his head, as though panning for an explanation in his empty druggy head like a prospector hoping to find an elusive gold nugget in the mud.
‘I don’t know how he got past the fellers on the door, Pad. Honest. Maybe someone let him in the back. Maybe he just slipped through with a group of people. There’s two thousand kids in here. I can’t keep tabs on them. Know what I mean?’
Turning to Conky, Paddy’s thin lips arced downwards into a scowl.
‘Find Degsy. And get that little Boddlington shit back here. I’m not having stray dogs pissing on my territory.’ Hunched shoulders beneath the suit said he was bristling with anger.
‘Well, strictly speaking, Pad, it’s my territory,’ Frank said, wide-eyed. ‘As long as people are having a good time, I’m not bothered, me.’
‘Fucking dickhead.’
The slap that Paddy gave him across his face clearly had some weight behind it. Frank rubbed his cheek, suddenly looking like a small boy. Conky knew better than to intervene.
‘Get that Boddlington arsehole and Degsy back here,’ Paddy said.
Amidst a flurry of disingenuous apologies, Conky returned with Degsy and the Boddlington interloper, kicking them at the heels to make them move forwards with his gun trained on their backs. Taking pride in the fear he instilled in Degsy, at least. He was the O’Brien firm’s Loss Adjuster. He had a reputation to uphold. All who came before him in the Conky McFadden court of justice quaked in their boots.
‘This is Leviticus Bell,’ he announced, pushing the Boddlington low-level dealer to his knees. Not Deuteronomy, but still a biblical-standard cheeky arsehole. ‘And our very own lovely Derek.’ He poked Degsy in the back with the barrel of his gun.
Paddy cracked his knuckles. Took something shining from his breast pocket and slid it onto his hand. A knuckle duster. Degsy, a tall bundle of oversized G-Star Raw and Diesel with spots around his mouth that said he smoked just as much meth as he sold, paled instantly.
‘On your knees, you lanky twat!’ Paddy said, breathing heavily through his nostrils.
Degsy’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down in his scrawny neck.
‘Sorry, Mr O’Brien. I don’t know why I’m here, like, but whatever it is, I’m sorry. I told Mr McFadden.’
The left hook that Paddy delivered to Degsy’s temple sent the dealer’s head spinning to the right with a crack. Blood spatters clinging in a jaunty red to the black nightclub walls.
‘Christ, Pad. There’s no need for that,’ Frank said, wincing.
‘Shut your trap, Frank. I don’t give a stuff if Queen Elizabeth’s name’s on the liquor licence above the door. I’m the boss here. Me.’ He dug into his chest with a stubby thumb.
Paddy dragged Degsy to his feet. Though he towered above even Conky, Degsy seemed small next to the King. ‘You want to work for me and stay alive, Derek, you keep Boddlington scum out of my venues, right?’
Degsy nodded contritely. Seemed a little dazed. Touched the blood on the side of his head that now seeped onto his clothing.
‘Yes, Mr O’Brien. Sorry. It won’t happen again.’
Struggling against Conky’s grip, the young mixed-race Boddlington interloper spat at Degsy.
‘Parson’s Croft piece of shit!’ he shouted at him. Turned to Paddy and Frank. ‘I’m not bleeding scared of yous, man.’
Conky cuffed his ear with his pistol. ‘You’d better be, you wee shite. I’m gonna enjoy putting a bullet in you.’ His practised words came out automatically as he dwelled all the while on his missed book club and the strangeness of Sheila’s behaviour. Decades of doing the same job could do that to a man.
The boy turned to Conky, frowning. ‘Oh yeah? You want the Fish Man to come and fillet you, old man? ’Cause that’s who you’re dealing with if you lay a frigging finger on me.’
‘What’s your name again, son?’ Paddy stepped closer and grabbed him by his chin. Pushed his face upwards, examining his delicate bone structure to see if nobility was hidden in his genes.
The boy spat a second time on the floor at Paddy’s side. ‘Leviticus Bell.’
‘Plucky little bastard, aren’t you?’
The boy somehow wriggled free of Conky’s grip. Lunged at Paddy. A flash of something metallic, under the dim backstage lights. Red, spreading quickly through the suit-fabric covering Paddy’s forearm. The boy, running away; sprinting like a hunted gazelle through the emergency exit.
‘Boss!’ Conky shouted. He pushed his glasses onto his forehead to get a better look at the wound. His breath coming ragged with an accelerated heartbeat as he stared down at the gash.
‘It’s just a scratch!’ Paddy said, pressing his fingers into the wound.
But then, something more sinister, as Paddy’s look of surprise and anger turned into a wide-eyed hundred-yard stare. Clutching at his chest, he began sinking to his knees.
‘Jesus. I feel—’ he said. Grimacing, then, his eyes clamped shut.
‘Call an ambulance!’ Conky barked at Frank.
As Frank punched 999 into his phone, he seemed to be watching with part-glee, part-dread as his brother slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_6cccba04-90cf-5d99-8066-3318576eaa79)
Paddy (#ulink_6cccba04-90cf-5d99-8066-3318576eaa79)
The heart monitor beeped in syncopation with the bing of the oxygen saturation gauge. Constant noise, in those bloody places. Bright lights that made Paddy squint. And that smell. He hated that smell.
‘What is that stink?’ he asked Katrina. ‘Do you reckon it’s …? I dunno. Floor cleaner like Mam used to use and … human shit, maybe?’ He sniffed the air. Wrinkled his nose. Felt tired. ‘I can’t stand it. I want to go home, Kat. Tell our Sheila she’s to come and get me.’ He shuffled uncomfortably on the hard, rubber mattress. ‘My arse has gone dead.’
At his side, Katrina sighed and patted his hand. Her freckled Celtic skin looking so pale next to his. Her nails had been bitten down into utilitarian submission. Requirements of the job.
‘Ah, Patrick. You always were a terrible patient,’ she said, smiling wistfully as she watched his jagged heart rate peak and trough and peak and trough in a thin blue-green line. ‘Remember that time when you were doubled up in pain in the middle of the night and Mam called the doctor on you? You couldn’t have been more than ten.’
Paddy smiled weakly. ‘Eleven. I told him I was just constipated.’
‘It was peritonitis.’ Katrina smoothed her navy habit. Her hand travelled down to the large, silver crucifix hanging over her heart. She tapped it thoughtfully. ‘You’ve always played the hard man, Paddy O’Brien. Trying to impress Dad.’
A mental image of their father foisted itself on Paddy’s memory. A stocky little hard-nut of a man, who robbed the local bookies and did two years in Strangeways. Smelled of Marlboro cigarettes and stale ale, with breath like a dog’s fart. His hands and the pores on his face had always been ingrained with motor oil, when he could get work as a mechanic. Chasing him and Frank down the street with a tyre-iron for a laugh. Taking a swing to test their reflexes. They had been thirteen and seven.
‘Dad was a pure bastard,’ Paddy said. ‘At least he laid off you, though. You were his favourite because you were clever.’
Katrina smiled wryly. ‘Well, you can pretend all you like. I know you tried to live up to his expectations. But now this ridiculous life you lead is catching up with you. Time you made some changes.’
He rolled his eyes. Remembered how much he hated his sister’s well-meaning sermons. Yanked at the wires connected to his chest in irritation, scratching at the itch from the gel adhesive pads. ‘Save it for your flock, Sister Benedicta. I just need to get out of this dump. I’m fine.’
Brandishing his notes, Katrina looked down her nose through her thick-framed, plain glasses, as though about to give a schoolboy a ticking-off. She tutted loudly. ‘A heart attack, Patrick. And a stab wound. You are absolutely not fine. Too much of the high life, too much of the low life and too much stress.’ She hooked the clipboard of notes indignantly back onto the end of the hospital bed. Sniffed pointedly as Paddy’s heart rate picked up, ragged and hasty, as though it were somehow trying to flee the scene of a crime. ‘You carry on like this and you’ll not make sixty.’
‘I am sixty.’
‘Smart Alec. You can’t die on me, Patrick. I’ve got the Lord’s work to do. I’m not babysitting our Francis. That’s your responsibility.’
Paddy tried to shuffle himself up the bed. Didn’t have the energy. Hated himself for being weak. ‘I’m a businessman. I do business.’
His older sister leaned in close until he could smell the convent’s nursing home on her. A permanent whiff of institutional dinners, industrial laundry and maybe talc.
‘Dirty business,’ she said, frowning. ‘The heavenly Father is watching, Patrick.’
Paddy started to cough violently. Beep, beep, beep, complained the heart monitor. Bing, bing, as his oxygen levels took a dive. Too many cigarettes and fry-ups, he knew. He could feel his sister’s well-meaning eroding his conviction.
‘It’s taken its toll, hasn’t it? Admit it. It’s time to get out.’ Her well-scrubbed face – perhaps handsome in her youth, but never beautiful – was etched only with fine lines, far fewer than could be expected for a woman of her age. The face of a woman who had never seen drunken debauchery at 3am in Ibiza or a sunbed or a surfeit of gin. The face of a woman who slept nights with a clear conscience.
What did she know about real life?
‘It’s alright for you,’ he said. ‘The church takes care of you. I’ve got a family and the firm, all looking to me for money, support, leadership. I’m the heavenly fucking Father in this town, Kat. I’ve got the O’Brien name to uphold.’
Abruptly, Katrina stood up, shaking her head and glowering at him, as though she was channelling the displeasure of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. She scraped the visitor’s chair noisily along the lino. Smoothing down her drab navy skirt, her feet perfectly together in those ugly flat shoes they all wore. Prim and righteous – no different from when she was a kid, Paddy mused.
‘I’ve not got time for any more of your nonsense, Patrick,’ she said, dabbing at her nose with a white cloth handkerchief. ‘You should be thinking about your future. Carry on like you have been doing and you face an early death, and worst of all, the eternal fires of damnation.’ Her voice was quiet. Considered. Deadly. ‘Sheila and the girls will be left to fend for themselves. Francis will end up in jail, overdosed or killed. But that’s fine, because you’ll be gone, you selfish, thoughtless man. Think about how you could be spending your ill-gotten millions in a more meaningful way. Do it, Paddy! Make the changes before Death comes for you early, like it did for Mam and Dad.’
Alone in that side room in the hospital, Paddy wept openly, perhaps for the first time since he was a small boy. Let the fear of losing everything flood through him. I don’t want to die, he thought. Wiping his eyes on his crisp bedsheet, he rifled among the scores of Get Well Soon cards from neighbours, friends, family, lackeys and sycophants on his bedside cabinet. Drew out the framed photograph of Sheila and the girls. Taken at Christmas time last year, when he had paid for them all to spend a fortnight at the Rayavadee Resort in Krabi. They had been snapped by their waitress, dining as a family around a table situated on the beach, their togetherness framed by the limestone cliffs that rose sheer out of the turquoise Andaman Sea and the lush jungle green that fringed the shoreline. Amy and Dahlia, fully grown now, with lives of their own. One at university and one working a proper job in the City of London. But they had still found time to be with their old dad, hadn’t they? It had been the most perfect time in his life. Turning sixty, surrounded by his girls. After six decades of struggling to get as far away from the grime and stink of his childhood home and those foetid, rotten roots, that trip had epitomised his success.
He clutched the photograph to his chest. Tried to conjure the smell of the sea and the sound of the palms, rustling in the warm Thai breeze. At his side, the beeps of the heart monitor spread further apart. Slowing, slowing until they settled into a gentle rhythm.
Paddy knew what to do.
‘What do you mean, you want to sell up?’ Sheila asked, her baby-doll beautiful face freezing mid-smile. Paddy was relieved to see she had covered up the bruising to her forehead. No need to remind him of that.
She dropped her oversized handbag onto the hospital lino. Flung her slender frame onto the seat that Katrina had occupied earlier. Michael Kors or Armani or whatever it was she wore, clinging to her curves. Fur. Leather. Silk. Louboutin stilettos that cost him a small fortune. The antithesis of his sister. When she dared to get angry, it made him want to conquer her.
Paddy forked baked potato into his mouth enthusiastically. Chewed the fluffy mush with relish, as though this was the first time he had ever really tasted food. Sheila would come round. She always did as she was told with a little persuasion.
‘I’ve thought it all through, She. I’m selling the business.’ He set his fork down authoritatively on the tray. Grinned.
But Sheila’s scepticism was etched across her face. Those fine eyebrows raised archly.
‘It’s not a sodding barber’s or a chain of corner shops, Paddy.’ She lowered her voice. Looked over her shoulder, though they were alone, with the hustle and bustle of the ward on the other side of a heavy fire door. ‘It’s a Criminal. Fucking. Empire.’ She leaned in further with each word. Tapped every syllable out on his dinner tray with almost perfectly manicured electric blue nails – one shorter than all the rest.
Undeterred, he ushered more potato into his mouth. Pictured the tropical paradise of Krabi, so very far from Manchester’s never-ending rain and Frank’s idiot schemes and the daily grind of having to look over his shoulder continually. Spoke with his mouth full.
‘Tariq and Jonny. They’ll have it. I bet you. I reckon ten mill, and me and you can just get on a plane and swan off to Thailand. Open a bar.’
Sheila shook her shining blonde mane.
‘You’re tapped,’ she said. ‘You think the Boddlington gang are gonna shove you ten million quid for something they’ve spent the last twenty years trying to nick for free?’
Paddy nodded, beaming at his own brilliance. He felt happiness register itself in his groin, overpowering the agitation that she had dared to call him tapped.
‘Suck us off, She.’ He pointed at Little Paddy, making his presence felt beneath the honeycomb blanket.
Eyes narrowed, Sheila was folding her arms. Paddy mused that the blow-job was looking unlikely. He didn’t have the energy to insist otherwise.
‘Tariq Khan and Jonny Margulies are a pair of thieving bastards, Pad. You’re a thieving bastard, too, or had you forgotten?’
‘They’ll snatch me bleeding hand off, She! Especially if they think there’s a chance I might sell to some hip-hop, drive-by snot-rag from London with his arse hanging out his trousers. Or some Scouser. It’s what they’ve always wanted, Tariq and Jonny. They’ve got north Manchester and now I’ll sell them the south. Fair and square. The gambling dens, the pharmaceutical side, the guns …’ He started to count his interests on his fingers, as though this would somehow curry her favour. ‘… The endangered species shit that the Chinese love, the nail bars, the moody art, the lot! Bollocks to it. If they pay up, they can have our kid’s club and your cleaning business too.’
Out of her chair like a jack-in-the-box.
‘My frigging company?’ She shook her head. Waggled her finger. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no you don’t, Patrick O’Brien.’
Her pixie chin stuck out defiantly. Reminded him of the time he had asked her out on that first date, after a Wednesday night at the Haçienda’s Zumbar. He’d spotted her during the intermission – before the cheesy cabaret act had come on. Parading down the catwalk, modelling clothes from some local fashion school wannabe. Legs that went on forever and tits that had a buoyancy all of their own. She had been seventeen. He, thirty-seven – old enough to have his minions selling drugs in clubs, but too old to enjoy them himself, as a rule. But it had been Frank’s birthday that particular Wednesday, with his band playing downstairs in the Gay Traitor bar, so Paddy had relented. His cash hadn’t impressed young Sheila, but he had worn her down with sheer romantic persistence and, later, rightful dominance. She’d relented in the end, just as she would relent now, he felt certain.
‘You can get a new hobby in Thailand, babe. I’ll buy a big fuck-off villa. You can get it done out like a five-star spa hotel. That’ll keep you busy.’
‘Nine years, Paddy,’ she shouted. ‘Me and Gloria have built that sodding cleaning company up over nine years! I’m just about to get a healthcare contract, cleaning a big private hospital. I’ve done quotes this week for two law firms in town and a bank! It’s not a hobby, you cheeky bastard.’
‘Hey! Wind your fucking neck in, woman, or I’ll wind it in for you!’
‘I’ve got women relying on me.’ Her generous, pink lips had thinned and were now arcing downwards.
‘They’re bloody trafficked skivvies from Um Bongo, aren’t they?’
‘The Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrick. Not bloody Um Bongo. And some of them are from Nigeria and Ghana and are legal, actually! Gloria knows them from church, the Ghanaians and Nigerians. They’re glad of a job. I am a responsible employer.’
Paddy snorted. ‘What? You don’t reckon you’d be leaving your nice African ladies in good hands? You think Tariq Khan and Jonny Margulies are incapable of screwing over slave labour and refugees as good as you? Do me a favour!’
Sheila glared at him. She clearly thought she could gain the upper hand, while he was laid up and at the mercy of a medical team. Cocky bitch.
‘I care about my staff.’
‘You’re full of shit, is what you are, Sheila O’Brien.’ Paddy picked up the framed photograph taken in Thailand. Thrust it towards her. Pointed at the girls. His heart rate picked up pace, as it occurred to him that – for perhaps the first time ever – without his being able to squeeze the defiance out of her physically, Sheila might put her foot down and refuse to bend to his will. ‘This isn’t about money, She. We’ve got enough to last us ten lifetimes. This isn’t about some scrubbers you don’t even know, or that nagging, sanctimonious bitch, Gloria. This is about me, staying alive for our daughters. For us. Family.’
Sheila’s face had a pinched look to it as she chewed her bottom lip. Her gaze flicked from the photo to Paddy and back. She was refusing to make eye contact with him and staring intently only at his chin or his forehead. Nostrils flaring gently, as though she were processing some internal argument.
‘You’ve made your mind up, haven’t you?’ she asked in a quiet voice.
‘Yes.’ He held the photo to his chest. ‘For better or for worse, She. How bad could twenty years of tropical sunshine be?’ He grinned triumphantly. ‘I’ll buy you an elephant.’
‘Piss off, you daft bastard.’
‘You’d save a bomb on the sunbed.’
She dropped her gaze to her eternity and engagement rings, running her index finger over the large, solitaire diamond. Closed her mournful eyes.
‘If I agree, does this mean you’re getting out for good? No controlling the business from the end of a phone or a laptop? A clean break?’
He nodded. Felt his neck muscles start to relax.
‘It’d better be a damned big elephant, Paddy O’Brien.’
Chapter 4 (#ulink_17b58c4c-ed50-57df-bc9a-fa1ea8222113)
Jonny (#ulink_17b58c4c-ed50-57df-bc9a-fa1ea8222113)
Biting into his bagel, Jonny Margulies mused that it was a fine morning. From the vantage point of his desk, positioned by the office window, he could see the sun hitting the dreaming spires of Strangeways prison. The red brick was on fire today, giving an impression of baking warmth in a city that never thawed or properly dried out. The steep slate roofs shone – slick from the overnight rain, now reflecting sunshine like the solar panels on some distant satellite. Negative energy inside those walls, though. He imagined the poor bastards in the central building, walking round and around Her Majesty’s Victorian hotel, wondering what on earth had gone wrong with their lives. At least he was safe. And the warmth that spread from his groin to the rest of his body was genuine.
‘Not so hard, sugar,’ he said to the girl on her knees beneath the desk. ‘Flick your tongue around it while you suck. Okay?’
The blonde paused and looked up at him quizzically. Smudged eyeliner ringing her eyes looked like it had been applied days ago and never washed off or replenished. Oh well. She had a nice mouth and a sweet face and he had a hard-on the size of Texas. All was well.
‘You not like?’ she asked. Said something in Polish or Estonian or whatever the hell language she spoke. She smiled uncertainly. Cupped her small breasts. ‘You want I play?’
Jonny shook his head, batting the uninvited mental images of Sandra that encroached on the fantasy. Get out of my head, for God’s sake. Sandra, with her orange face and prune mouth. The half-starved and gorgeous Mrs Margulies – mother of his legitimate children but not sexy like this tasty little Eastern European tart.
‘No love. You’re fine.’ He set down his bagel and cupped her face in buttery hands so that she looked up at him. He mimed the technique he wanted her to adopt.
‘You want more lick. Yes?’
He nodded. ‘That’s right, love.’
The girl smiled. Her teeth were clean. He liked that. The dentist looked after all the girls’ dental hygiene well. He reached down and stroked her breasts. Felt his erection grow harder still. Wanted to put it inside her tight little pussy. He pulled her up towards him, not caring if anyone from the upper floors of the prison could see him. He just wanted to screw this girl right now.
‘Sixteen?’
‘I?’ She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sixteen. Yes.’ She rubbed her breasts on his face. Soft pink nipples brushing his stubble. Not a single blemish on her young, pale flesh. She was far younger than his daughter – but she wasn’t his daughter.
Reaching in her thong, he could feel her, soft and wet. Hot, where his finger slid inside. Two ties at the side came loose easily. She climbed onto him and started to ride him – inexpertly, but what the hell?! This was a glorious start to the day. Until …
The knock at the door was insistent.
‘Jonny!’ came a man’s voice on the other side. ‘The tax inspector is back.’ Strongly accented, pronouncing inspector as inspecter, betraying his Jerusalem origins.
Pushing the girl off his lap, Jonny’s desire cooled immediately.
‘Come in, Asaf, for Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, zipping his deflating penis into his chinos. He waved a hand at the girl. ‘Get dressed! Anyone asks, you were asking directions to TK Maxx.’
The girl looked at him blankly until he threw her clothes at her in a bundle.
‘Ah, dress. Yes.’ Scrambling to cover herself, she had at least picked up on the urgency in his voice.
The office felt smaller with the tall figure of Asaf Smolensky standing in it. Clad in his usual black double-breasted suit with its old-fashioned overdone padding to the shoulders. The thin, white strands of his ritual tassels – tzitzits – hanging outside his trousers. Scuffed shoes and a stained waistcoat juxtaposed against the immaculate cropped hair and ringletted sidelocks of the Hassids. He smelled of chopped and fried fish. He looked like he meant business.
‘Is it that tax bird again?’ Jonny asked him, feeling the blood drain from his face faster than it had from his dick. His pulse was racing. Suddenly, the half-eaten bagel in his stomach felt like lead. His brain whirred into overdrive, checking through the list of changes he and Tariq had instigated last time the stupid bitch had come calling, demanding to snoop around. They had fobbed her off, but only temporarily.
Smolensky nodded. Perched on the edge of the oversized desk, wearing a grim expression.
‘Yes. Ruth Darley. She’s come with two assistants today and some official-looking paperwork. HMRC wants your blood, Jonny.’ He toyed with his unruly beard, a thick eyebrow raised archly.
‘Tariq know?’
‘He’s at Sefton Street.’
‘I’ll call him.’ Pulling his mobile from his trouser pocket, Jonny inclined his head towards the young prostitute.
‘Do us a favour. Get Lev to get her away from here without anyone seeing. And make yourself scarce.’
Asaf stood tall and grabbed the girl by her upper arm. Said something to her in an Eastern European language that Jonny didn’t understand. The girl looked afraid, clutching her shoulder bag close as Asaf steered her through a second door in the office which led to the stone stairwell at the back of the building.
Locking both doors shut, Jonny dialled Tariq’s number. Sweat breaking out on his top lip. Tariq answered on the fourth ring.
‘What’s up, bro?’ Tariq asked. The chatter of workers was audible in the background, along with the whirring and clanking of a production line.
‘Darley’s back.’
Tense silence hung between them for too many moments.
‘I see,’ Tariq said. ‘Do you want me to come over?’
Jonny peered out of the window to the car park immediately below, avoiding looking at Strangeways, now, for fear that he might somehow jinx his precarious freedom. There were two cars he didn’t recognise parked out front, next to his own Maserati. A silver Toyota and a black Mondeo. Tax man’s cars. He willed his hand to stop shaking. Gripped the phone harder.
‘No, you’re alright. I’ve got it covered. If they’ve got eyes on the street and spot you coming out of there, we’re totally buggered. Stay put. I’ll call when they’re gone.’
His secretary’s instantly recognisable rat-a-tat-tat on the door said it was time to put on the grand performance.
Clad in a frumpy blue suit with her banana legs and fat ankles stuffed into cheap shoes, Darley was already strutting through the warehouse, examining the stock. Jonny willed himself to smile before she had even turned around to face him, lest he make it too obvious that he’d like Asaf to bone her like a haddock with his sharpest knife. In his peripheral vision, he clocked her minions – two men: one who looked about ready to retire and the other who didn’t look more than twenty. They were speaking to the workers, who were bundling the cheap jewellery into even cheaper packaging.
‘Ms Darley,’ Jonny said, adopting his magnanimous and friendly voice that he used for PTA meetings. ‘What a pleasure to see you again.’
Darley turned on her heel, a grim expression on her face that implied the pleasure was not mutual. ‘Mr Margulies.’ She held out her right hand and treated him to the iron handshake of a woman who broke balls for a living. In her left hand, she clutched an oversized accountant’s briefcase. ‘I’m here to search your premises. Please make all your accounts and employee records available.’
Jonny felt like his bowels were somehow ingesting themselves. The tell-tale sensation of needing the toilet, fast. But he wouldn’t show this bitch any fear. The authorities were like dogs; the moment they caught a whiff of guilt, they knew they had you. Tariq was relying on him. Both of their families depended on his giving a convincing performance. He put one foot in front of another and showed her to an office that looked onto the main factory floor through a large plate-glass internal window.
‘You can work in here,’ he said politely, switching on the flick-flickering strip lighting and pulling out an uncomfortable-looking brown plastic chair. It was cold in there. The thin carpet tiles were peeling upwards, revealing perished rubber underneath. Let the tax bastards suffer.
‘Where is Mr Khan?’ she asked, touching her no-nonsense brown bob. It appeared rigid and moved only slightly.
‘Family emergency. He’s been called away.’
Darley looked over her purple plastic-framed glasses, fixing him with hard hazel eyes. ‘Convenient.’
Shrugging, he held his palms aloft in a gesture of honesty.
‘Am I my business partner’s keeper?’
Jonny wished he could run away. Give it all up. Hide on a beach in Israel or South America or even crappy Marbella would do right now. Silently, he cursed Tariq for having chosen that morning, of all mornings, to visit their other place, leaving him to sort out this gargantuan shit-storm on his own.
As the day wore on, Jonny felt his spirit ebbing away, answering intrusive questions and observing his book-keeper, old Mohammed, delivering box after box of files to the temporary hub of HMRC investigation.
Knocking timorously on the door, he popped his head in to see Ruth Darley busily going through a sheaf of invoices with a determined look on her face. Her underlings flanked her, like Padawans studying beneath some great Jedi. Jonny looked at his watch pointedly.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘Would you like my secretary to bring you and your colleagues a coffee?’
Darley looked at him and slid her glasses further up her nose. Glanced at Jonny’s wrist. ‘I don’t need a Breitling watch to tell me what time it is, Mr Margulies.’ She offered him a grimace that was an approximation of a smile. ‘We’ll be leaving in ten minutes, but we’ll be back tomorrow.’
Jonny folded his arms. Imagined for a second that he could hear the inmates inside Strangeways jeering at him from behind their barred windows.
‘Back? Oh. You haven’t seen everything you need today? I thought Janice had given you access to the full monty. We’ve got nothing to hide here, you know.’
Ruth Darley stood and held a separate sheaf of invoices aloft. Invoices written in Chinese, by the looks of it. At that moment, a sweat broke out on Jonny’s top lip and he wished, however improbably, that he knew the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese. Had the invoices somehow got mixed up? Maureen would surely never allow that to happen.
‘I have found anomalies, Mr Margulies.’ Her smile was genuine that time.
Shit. Those were the last words he had wanted to hear.
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Marnie Riches
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Книги о приключениях
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A powerful, darkly comic novel set in the criminal underworld of Manchester from bestselling author Marnie Riches.The battle is on…When gang leader Paddy O’Brien is stabbed in his brother’s famous nightclub, Manchester’s criminal underworld is shaken to the core. Tensions are running high, and as the body count begins to grow, the O’Brien family must face a tough decision – sell their side of the city to the infamous Boddlington gang or stick it out and risk losing their king.But war comes easy to the bad boys, and they won’t go down without a fight. So begins a fierce battle for the South Side, with the leading Manchester gangsters taking the law into their own hands – but only the strongest will survive…