‘The kids were so young. They never got over losing their mum. Her death affected them very badly. They couldn’t understand why it had happened.’
Jethro seemed at ease opening up to me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more in case it clouded my judgement. I was already in a depressive state, and the more I listened to the tale of woe, the more emotional I was beginning to feel. I’d always been a sucker for a sob story.
‘As you get older, you see things differently. I’m not proud of the way I treated Nora. At the very least, she deserved my respect, but while she was alive, she never got it. She let me walk all over her. If she’d have stood up to me, things might have been different.’ Jethro shook his head. ‘I’m not making excuses for my behaviour. I can’t justify why I treated the mother of my children so appallingly that she drank herself to death.’ Jethro cast his eyes to the floor.
The man was a skilled storyteller. He was definitely going to have me in tears in a minute if I wasn’t careful. I was desperate to change the subject onto something more light-hearted, but it wasn’t going to be easy making small talk with an ageing gangster I clearly had nothing in common with. Before I could think of anything to say, Jethro’s monologue began again, so I strapped myself in and prepared for the bumpy ride.
‘Having to live each day with regret is a terrible thing. The way I treated my wife weighs heavily on my conscience. If Nora hadn’t got pregnant with Alfie, I don’t think we would have ended up together, and although I didn’t appreciate her at the time, if we hadn’t got married, I wouldn’t have Alfie and my two beautiful girls, Danielle and Samantha.’
The sound of muffled voices and the front door slamming announced Alfie’s arrival and put an end to our conversation.
36
Gemma
Jethro’s words played over in my head. To say I was shocked that the Watsons had such a large skeleton in their closet was an understatement. The family came across as being the kind of people who had everything – and they did in terms of material possessions. But no amount of money could prevent bad things from happening to someone.
I would never have imagined that their lives had been blighted by such tragedy. Alfie had never mentioned that his mum was dead. But he kept his cards close to his chest, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t talk about it. It obviously still caused him a great deal of distress, and if he showed his emotions that would make him vulnerable. Alfie would never allow anybody to see him like that.
I felt a sudden sense of guilt that I had no contact with my parents, but that was out of choice, not circumstance. I was sure Alfie would have given everything he owned to have his mother back. The thought of that made a lump form in my throat. It made me realise there was a lot more to Alfie than met the eye.
Alfie hadn’t had an idyllic childhood after all. He might have grown up in the lap of luxury, but that hadn’t stopped him from experiencing tremendous heartache. Now I could understand the deep-seated resentment he held for Jethro. No wonder there was friction between them. Alfie blamed his dad for his mother’s death, and although Jethro didn’t pour the alcohol down Nora’s throat, it was his behaviour that was the cause of her excessive drinking, so he should take some responsibility for it. It wasn’t as though her drinking was a secret. Why the hell didn’t he try to stop her?
I couldn’t help wondering what kind of a man Jethro was. He saw what his behaviour was doing to his wife, and yet he didn’t bother to change it. Instead, he continued to torment her until the poor woman took her last breath. No wonder he felt guilty. The memory of how he treated his wife would never stop affecting him. He would always have it on his conscience, and so he should.
37
Alfie
Joshua Clarke or Curly, as I liked to call him, was the bald-headed manager of our nightclub, Sherlock’s. The huge venue was spread over three floors. People flocked to it every day of the week. The club was full of wannabes and spotty teenagers trying every trick in the book to get laid. Situated in West India Quay, Sherlock’s was just a stone’s throw from central London. It was a prime piece of real estate, and thanks to its waterfront location, it was worth a small fortune. It was the place to be seen, and you were almost guaranteed to spot a celebrity or reality TV star if you ventured into the VIP area.
The ground level contained a huge dance floor and a large well-stocked bar area, which stretched across the entire width of the room. Around the perimeter, were free-standing columns filled with thousands of tiny bubbles that changed through a whole spectrum of colours in time with the music on the dance floor. Every inch of the room was covered with seizure-inducing strobe lighting and LED ceiling and wall panels.
A black-carpeted sweeping staircase in the far corner behind the DJ booth led to the first floor. An illuminated circular cocktail bar, surrounded by high-backed bar stools, stood in the centre of the room. Tables with colour-changing bases were positioned around the rest of the floor space in an open-plan arrangement to make the most of the glass-panelled viewing gallery.
The top floor, reserved for VIP guests, only had table service available. This level was sectioned off into intimate booths and private rooms. The bucket-style seating and walls were covered in silver crushed velvet fabric. Huge crystal-encrusted mirrors hung behind the black sparkly quartz bar, and above the matching tables.
I’d spent a small fortune doing this place up when I took over running the business from my dad. Needless to say, he wasn’t impressed with the cost or the final result. But my dad had old-fashioned taste, so I hadn’t expected him to like it. I tried to explain that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. You couldn’t charge punters top dollar to get into a club if it didn’t look the part. The money I’d spent had turned out to be a wise investment. The refurbishment had paid for itself ten times over, and the firm had been able to lose surplus cash along the way.
My first encounter with Curly, a crack cocaine dealer, was when he started his one-man distribution network close to the border of my patch. Realising the Jamaican crime lord wasn’t part of a rival gang and was operating alone, I made him a proposition he couldn’t refuse.
Curly was six feet four inches tall and had biceps of steel. I looked slight in comparison to him. Because of Curly’s sheer size, I had originally recruited him as hired muscle, but he was wasted in the role of a door supervisor, and he soon rose up the ranks. He was now in charge of the day-to-day running of the club. Curly’s background in narcotic distribution made him an obvious choice for the position. I supplied the stock and Curly controlled the drug market that operated within the club, selling the cocaine via a team of resident dealers who mingled with the masses as they carried out dance floor transactions.
My large team were intentionally young and roamed the interior of Sherlock’s with small amounts of coke so that if they were unfortunate enough to run into an undercover cop, they wouldn’t get nicked for a serious crime but would be let off with a caution. The golden rule was they mustn’t carry so much cocaine for them to be classed as a dealer. So far, this tactic was working. Sherlock’s nightclub drug trade was booming. I maintained a heavy security presence on the door, and my bouncers carried out physical searches to ensure drugs didn’t make their way through the doors. If people wanted gear, they had to buy it inside, not bring it with them like a kid sneaking sweets into the cinema.
I had zero tolerance for people smuggling illegal substances into my club. Only drugs bought on the premises could be consumed within its walls. But clubbers had to play by my rules and not be too blatant in the way they took the gear. As long as they were discreet, my staff would be happy to turn a blind eye. If not, they’d be out on their ear. I couldn’t afford to be raided and lose my licence over a punter’s drug use.
When Dad was running the club, it was swamped with independent dealers that the door staff sanctioned for a backhander. The bouncers were on to a nice little earner. If they found drugs on a person at the door, they would confi
scate them. Then they would sell the confiscated item to the dealers, who resold it on the dance floor. The chances were if your drugs were taken off you at the point of entry, an hour later, you were probably buying your own gear back from a dealer. The thought of that brought a smile to my face.
Back then, ecstasy was the drug of choice. It was cheap and readily available. But when a spate of ecstasy-related deaths hit the headlines, a media frenzy followed. The police traced the dangerous batch of tablets back to nightclubs, so Dad came down hard on anyone found dealing at Sherlock’s, and he banned the consumption of illegal substances altogether. The clampdown was necessary; he didn’t want the club to be shut down by the authorities because a drug user happened to be unlucky enough to take a fatal dose inside Sherlock’s walls.
After I took control of the club, I decided a change of tactics was in order. In some ways, I agreed with Dad. I didn’t want to risk bad press if any of our clubbers were hospitalised after taking dodgy pills or other substances, but I didn’t want to be left out of the action either. Supplying cocaine to clubbers was a lucrative business, and for some, its consumption was as essential as alcohol to ensure they had a good night out. I felt we needed to move with the times and was frustrated by my dad’s attitude. He didn’t think it was a good idea to reintroduce drugs to Sherlock’s after all this time.
I forged ahead with my plan, regardless of my dad’s feelings. Either he wanted me to run the business, or he didn’t. Dad had promised to give me control of the reins, but the problem was, he wouldn’t let go of them. My idea was as safe as houses. I’d figured out if I controlled the supply, I could guarantee the product. I knew for a fact that Vladimir Popov only trafficked quality merchandise. High-quality cocaine was a status symbol. I had no intention of peddling cheap rubbish. I wouldn’t stoop so low as to flog tablets at five pounds a pop in my club, no matter how much demand there was for them, so Dad had nothing to worry about.
Drugs were a dominant part of the nightclub scene and could be obtained quicker than ordering a round of drinks. In the VIP area, guests consumed the gear in a private booth. They would pass the plate holding the lines of white powder around the table like port at a fancy dinner party. Groups of friends and colleagues felt comfortable openly hoovering up the coke.
On the ground floor of Sherlock’s, where discretion was required, the disabled toilet was the favourite haunt of drug-takers. The club had a distinct lack of wheelchair users, so to utilise the large space, Curly had come up with an ingenious suggestion. Horizontal mirrors were installed in the cloakroom area, so customers had a surface to cut their cocaine on. They could take the coke in the privacy of a locked room rather than on public display in the ladies and gents toilets. Judging by the amount of white residue we found after closing time, his idea had been a resounding success.
38
Nathan
Charlie Miller could have easily passed as a member of a boy band with his platinum blond hair and porcelain-veneered smile. To the untrained eye, Curly looked like his minder, not his boss. Curly used to be Charlie’s dealer before he gave up freelancing and started working for Alfie. When Charlie’s habit became too expensive for him to maintain on his allowance from his father, Curly suggested he join the team. Alfie welcomed him into the fold with open arms.
Champagne Charlie, as he was affectionately known, wasn’t your average gangster. The glossy-haired playboy was well-dressed and mild-mannered. He was more familiar with hanging out with aristocrats and multi-millionaires than people in the criminal underworld. His previous profession as an events organiser worked as an ideal cover for his new activities. Nobody would ever suspect that this public-school-educated young man would be involved in anything illegal. Charlie Miller had led a charmed life. He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Charlie was the son of an eighties yuppie; his father had made millions on the stock exchange.
Charlie’s upbringing couldn’t have been more different from Jamaican Yardie, Curly, or the team of men working the door who hailed from the local council estates. But somehow he blended in with everybody. The main thing that distinguished Charlie from the rest of the workforce was his toff’s accent. It was nothing like the cockney twang of the door staff, and if you weren’t aware that the official language of Jamaica was English, you’d be forgiven for thinking Curly was speaking a local dialect. I found him incredibly difficult to understand. Maybe Alfie should consider sending him to elocution lessons, then he could learn to speak like Charlie.
Charlie’s private education had provided him with access to a multitude of well-heeled society chums. He had contacts in the right places. Since he’d started working at Sherlock’s, he had brought some seriously wealthy clubbers with a passion for cocktails and cocaine through the doors of the nightclub. By organising parties for VIP guests, Charlie expanded Alfie’s clientele with non-restrictive budgets overnight and reinforced the fact that the posher you were, the more drugs you took. Thanks to the boom in Sherlock’s business, Charlie could do no wrong in Alfie’s eyes.
I had been given the lofty position of general dogsbody since I’d been working for Alfie. I’d had to turn my hand to a variety of different roles in recent weeks, and tonight, I was making my debut appearance at Sherlock’s.
I was watching the door, barely visible behind two huge doormen dressed all in black. They were checking the IDs of potential punters to ensure the clubbers were of legal age to enter and were dressed appropriately. Counterfeit designer trainer-clad feet would not be allowed to cross the threshold of Sherlock’s.
Alfie detested chavs. He didn’t want people like that in his club. They would lower the tone of his classy establishment, so he wanted them weeded out at this stage. They might be dressed head to toe in expensive brands, but they’d bought the items down the market and not in the genuine stores. He maintained people like that did indeed have a distinctly nasty smell about them, and would contaminate his club’s interior. Once a customer was deemed fit for entry, I’d been given the job of scanning randomly selected people with a hand-held security metal detector. The body search was designed to check for knives and weapons.
‘I’ve been supervising you for the last twenty minutes, and I’m confident you’ve got the hang of the wand now. I need to pop down to the office. Will you be OK on your own for a bit?’ Charlie asked.
‘Yeah, no problem, mate,’ I replied.
‘If you ever get bored of working at the club, you could always get a job at the airport.’ Charlie smiled, then slapped me on the back, before leaving me in charge.
*
I watched Charlie walk across the dance floor and disappear into the crowd. It was happy hour, so Sherlock’s was packed with eighteen-year-olds dressed in tiny miniskirts and skyscraper heels and young men who were barely old enough to shave.
‘Where’s Charlie?’Curly asked when he came into the foyer.
Charlie had been in the back office for about half an hour, but I didn’t want to get him into trouble, so I didn’t tell Curly that. ‘He’s gone for a slash,’ I replied.
‘When he comes back, ask him to go up to the VIP area.’
I peered through the glass panel of the office door and saw Charlie sitting behind the desk with a rectangular mirror and a tiny plastic bag in front of him. I watched as he tipped a small amount of the contents onto the hard surface. He crushed the rocky clump, then cut it into two lines with a credit card before snorting the fine powder through a tightly rolled twenty-pound note. Charlie’s drug of choice was also his namesake. He wasn’t just an occasional user; he was hopelessly addicted to the white powder. He snorted the coke firstly into his left nostril, then into the right. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes while he experienced the familiar rush. A few minutes later, Charlie opened his eyes and wiped his finger across the reflective surface, to clean up the last traces of white residue, then he rubbed it into his gums, so as not to waste any of the treasured substance.
I blew out a breath. After what
I’d just witnessed, I decided to leave Curly’s message undelivered and go back to the door and wait for Charlie to return of his own accord.
*
The young men seemed surprised when the door staff waved them through as Sherlock’s had a reputation for having an over-the-top door policy. Usually, a line of security guards checked a person’s ID before they were permitted entry to the club, but there were only two bouncers on duty tonight, and they had both been distracted by a scantily clad hen party from Toxteth. The women were moaning because they’d been queuing up in the cold for the last half an hour and due to the amount of alcohol they’d already consumed, they were starting to become rowdy.
I gave the teenagers, a cursory glance. Seeing as the bouncers were unbothered by the two young men, I decided not to scan them with the hand-held detector either.
*
Alfie and Knuckles arrived at the club just after eleven. They made their way up to the first floor, and Alfie stood on the balcony, master of his own kingdom, surveying the dance floor when he noticed two young men dressed in dark clothing working their way around the crowd.
‘Look at those cheeky fuckers,’ Alfie said, pointing out the two bearded men. ‘I mean, who the fuck wears the hood up on their jacket in a club? It’s two million degrees centigrade in here. Talk about drawing attention to yourself.’
‘What do you want me to do with them?’ Knuckles asked.
‘Tell Curly to get them away from my punters and take them to my office.’
By the time Curly got hold of the young men, they had already sold their gear, and were sitting on one of the leather sofas, beers in hand, stretched out as if they owned the place. They hadn’t even had the good sense to leave after they’d shifted their baggies. Instead, they’d stayed behind to soak up the atmosphere. Curly frog-marched them to Alfie’s office to interrogate and search them.
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