by Owen Mullen
Part I
1
Seven years later
This is what I know: they let you leave by the front door when they release you from Wandsworth. A nice touch. No goodbye or good luck, none of that. They expect to see you again, and a lot of the time, they’ll be right. But they wouldn’t be right with me. I wasn’t going back. Not ever.
No chance.
My trial and the verdict the jury returned that afternoon seemed like a dream. But it wasn’t. The Crown hadn’t been able to make a murder charge stick. Although witnesses testified to seeing me forty-three stories up standing close to Albert Anderson, none of them could swear I pushed him. I guessed my brother had something to do with that. But the history of Anderson’s family and mine was well known. In the end, the prosecution settled for manslaughter and asked the judge to sentence to the full extent of the law. Lord Justice Peyton Richardson obliged and nobody shed any tears.
I stepped through the gate into rain falling from an overcast sky and a world that hadn’t missed me. The air was as sweet as the clichés promised it would be and an overwhelming sense of relief washed through me: I’d survived. From here on in, what I did with my life was my decision.
Maybe it was because I wasn’t used to the space but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my fingers tingled and I had the feeling somebody was watching me. Weird. Between the warders and my fellow cons, I’d had eyes on me night and day for the last seven years. It hadn’t bothered me. After a while you got used to it. I put it down to first-day nerves and shook it off.
Across the road, a slim female in sunglasses leaned against the bonnet of a Lexus with blacked-out windows, waving like we hadn’t seen each other in decades instead of just a week: my sister, Nina. I wasn’t surprised to see her. I knew she would be. Nina was loyal – she’d visited me every week in Wandsworth, keeping me up to date with events beyond the walls. She’d been a difficult teenager – not having a mother or father hadn’t helped – who’d grown into a troubled young woman. As time passed, during our conversations across a table in a crowded room, surrounded by whispering inmates and their visitors, I’d watched her shuck off whatever weight she’d been carrying, step out from the shadow of her brothers, and morph into an assured lady in no doubt about who she was.
Seven years was a long time; a lot could change. Nobody understood that better than me.
I hugged her, she hugged me back, tugged the arm of my suit and made a noise in her throat. ‘Might want to rethink this.’
‘Give me a chance. Only worn it once – for the trial.’
She laughed. ‘No wonder they found you guilty.’
My first question wasn’t intended to set her off, but it did. ‘How’s Danny?’
She pushed the shades up into her dark hair, checked the rear mirror and looked at me across the car, the whites of her eyes milky and clear against her smooth skin. Being her brother didn’t stop me noticing she was a beautiful woman.
‘If you’re asking if he’s still an arsehole, then the answer’s yes.’
Her reaction made me smile. Nina and Danny had never got on. When she was in her teens, she’d driven him mad, defying him at every turn, sometimes just because she could. Not untypical behaviour at that age except, even then, there was an edge that didn’t have to be there. Danny’s reputation in South London as a hardman hadn’t impressed her. Anybody else who’d spoken to him the way she did, including me, would’ve landed in the nearest A & E.
‘You two still at it?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Didn’t think he could get any worse.’
‘And has he?’
Nina made a face and pulled out into the traffic. ‘The guy’s off his fucking rocker, honest he is. One of the reasons I’m glad you’re back. He’s losing it, Luke. Maybe you can calm him down.’
Except I wasn’t going to be back. Nina couldn’t count on me to referee the feud she and Danny had had going for as long as I could remember.
‘He’s your brother. He loves you and you love him.’
‘Wrong. Can’t stand him. Never could. Only now I know why.’
‘Why?’
‘When you’ve got another seven years of your life to waste, I’ll tell you.’
Reasoning with her wouldn’t get me anywhere but I gave it a shot.
‘You should try more than you do to like him. Don’t forget, he was there for us.’
Nina scoffed at the idea. ‘And he reminds me of it every time he wants me to do something I don’t want to do. Bringing up the past is how he keeps us just where he wants us. Whenever I disagree with him, he goes into his martyr routine and brings up how close we were to ending up in care. If it hadn’t been for him…’ She shook her head and overtook a red Vauxhall dawdling in the centre of the road. ‘He’s a control freak and you can’t see it.’
‘What’s he done now?’
‘It isn’t what he’s done, it’s who he is. He wanted me to manage the property portfolio. Insisted I work out of his office.’
‘Above the pub.’
Her mouth twisted in a smile that failed. ‘I couldn’t take it. He talks to himself, did you know that? Mumbles away under his breath. And the music on that fucking jukebox… it’s the twenty-first century, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Some of it’s all right.’
Nina agreed. ‘Some of it, yeah. In small doses. Not all day every day. Drive anybody round the bend, that would. Which reminds me. Be warned, he’s booked a band. I saw them bringing in their gear as I was leaving. The youngest had to be seventy-five. Can’t blame me for giving it a miss.’
‘You’re not going?’
‘I’ll be in later. If I’m lucky, after the band stops playing.’
Nina wasn’t joking and I didn’t blame her. Guessing the rest of the script wasn’t difficult: outside the pub a sign would say Private Function. Inside, they’d all be there, new guys most of them, press-ganged into raising a glass to their boss’s younger brother, somebody they’d heard a lot about but hadn’t met. Danny would bang on the bar, call for silence and propose a toast.
‘To Luke!’
Cheers for the returning hero. By now, the story of Albert Anderson’s swan dive was urban mythology and me with it. A couple of hookers – part of the tradition – would be laid on. No pun intended.
At some point he’d put an arm round my shoulder and guide me upstairs away from the noise into his vision of the future. He’d light a cigar and sit behind his desk under the framed photograph of the Queen. He was a staunch supporter of the royal family – God knows where that came from, or how it squared with a life of selling girls and drugs. The booze would make him sentimental; he’d tell me he loved me and trot out the spiel I’d been hearing since I was a kid, the Team Glass speech. Then I’d be a bad sport and spoil it with what I intended to say.
‘Will you tell him today?’
‘Maybe. I’ll see how it goes.’
She squeezed my fingers with her free hand and I said, ‘Drop me in Tooting Broadway. Say I’m sorry, I’ll catch up with him. And that the car worked, I’m impressed.’
‘Do your own dirty work. I’m meeting somebody.’
‘Somebody as in…?’
‘As in none of your business.’
‘He won’t be happy at the two of us ducking out.’
Nina turned her face away, the disdain in her voice undisguised, the same cheeky kid she’d always been. ‘He’ll live. It’s good for him not to get his own way all the time. Reminds him he isn’t the big shot he thinks he is. Besides I told you, I’ll probably drop in later.’
Five minutes back and already it was as if I’d never been gone.
‘You’re supposed to take me to the King Pot… if neither of us shows up…’
‘I would’ve taken you if you’d wanted to go. I’ll return the car but I’m not staying. No offence, brother, got better things to do.’
‘He won’t be pleased, Nina.’
She went into her pocket and
handed me her business card.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I think you’re right. Shame.’
In Wandsworth the guard had stabbed a finger where he’d wanted me to sign. I’d given a signature in exchange for stuff I’d barely recognised. Apart from the watch it might have belonged to somebody else. The Rolex had been an early birthday present from Danny for my twenty-first, eight years before I was sent down. On the back was an inscription: To L from D. Team Glass. Seeing it again was like unearthing a relic from an ancient civilisation, an ironic reminder of lost time taking me back to when he’d given it to me on a warm summer’s evening. We had been in Ye Grapes in Shepherd Market off Curzon Street in Mayfair, standing near the door drinking Spitfire, surrounded by great-looking women and men old enough to be their fathers. Danny had caught me checking out the ladies. ‘Prostitutes. The most expensive in London. Perks of having a wife who doesn’t understand you and more money than you know what to do with.’
Danny had pointed to a stunning blonde laughing at something a beefy, florid-faced guy who must have been in his late-fifties was whispering in her ear. His elbow had dug into my ribs. ‘Just two professional people enjoying each other’s company. The end of a hard day for one, the beginning of a hard night for the other. That where you’d like to be? Because that’s where we’re headed.’
He’d then pushed a square box into my hand, deep green with a logo in gold on the top.
‘Happy birthday, little brother.’
I’d shaken my head. ‘This is too much.’
‘You’re welcome and no, it bloody isn’t. There’s more where that came from.’
We had moved aside to let the blonde and the man with her pass; close up she’d been gorgeous.
Danny had said, ‘You can’t afford her. Not unless you sell the watch.’ He’d placed a comforting hand on my arm. ‘One day that won’t be true, trust me.’
And I had trusted him. Danny had always been ambitious. Not just for him, for all of us.
Roland Anderson rested his elbows on the desk, steepled his fingers and focussed on the voice coming from the speaker phone – he’d waited a long time to hear what he was about to be told.
‘I see him. I see our boy.’
‘How does he look?’
‘Fit. Really fit.’
Anderson tried to imagine it and failed. Rollie had been nineteen years old when Luke Glass had sent Albert to his death. He hadn’t seen him since the final day of the trial but the look on Glass’s face when the judge passed sentence had stayed with him; unblinking, standing straight, shoulders back. No sign of remorse. No flicker of regret. Only an expression that said seven years or seventeen years, it had been worth it. When they’d taken him down, he’d glanced at the gallery where his brother was seated, turned his back on the court and disappeared to the cells to start his time. Anderson had hated him then, and every day since he’d thought about what he was going to do to him. Except he hadn’t reckoned with how far Danny Glass was able to reach.
In theory, cons should have been lining up to nail Luke. Instead, thanks to his brother, he was untouchable. Nobody was prepared to take the job on if it meant crossing Danny. Now, finally, the man who’d murdered his father was free and the vengeance Rollie demanded was closer than it had ever been.
The voice echoed in the room. ‘He’s getting into a Lexus with his sister.’
‘Any sign of the other one?’
‘Can’t be sure, the windows are smoked. Could be in the back. You want me to follow him?’
‘No, go ahead to the pub. Tell me when they get there.’
Twenty-five minutes later the information arrived. ‘They’re here. Car’s pulling off the road. Going in the back. What should we do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Everybody’s in position. Everybody’s ready.’
Anderson wasn’t in a hurry. He said, ‘No rush. It’s a surprise party. Let them get a few down their necks. Then we’ll give them a surprise they won’t forget.’
2
Ahead of the lunchtime crowd, the pub on The Broadway was empty apart from the staff who were busy setting up. A good-looking guy dressed in a blazer and a white shirt open at the neck followed me in and took a stool at the end of the bar. He had style: his long hair was swept behind his ears like an artiste or an Italian chef with a name like Carlo or Luca, who’d made it big on daytime television, the kind older women with nothing better to do drooled over. He drew a Daily Express somebody had left towards him and leafed casually through the pages until he got to the racing section. Then he picked up one of those stubby pens you get in bookies and scribbled in the margin. While I studied him, his dark eyes never left the page.
I ordered a pint and a large whisky and took a seat at a table in the corner. Some nights I’d dreamed of Courage Directors, but now, with the frosted measure cold against my skin and the smell of hops and barley malt thick in the air, it didn’t seem real.
The first sip is always the best, my father used to say. Who would know better than a man who’d dedicated his life to trying to find the same pleasure in the rest of the glass? And the ten after that. He died when Nina was fourteen and I was fifteen. Danny was twenty-two. Though my memories of him weren’t good, at least I had some. I didn’t recall anything about my mother. She ran out on us before I was old enough to understand – one day there, the next day gone. Any time I’d asked, Danny had told me to shut it and gone into a mood.
After a while I stopped asking.
Nothing about my father said he missed her, yet I never saw him with another woman. Maybe that told the story.
I suppose he did his best. Unfortunately, his best wasn’t very good.
His best was shit, actually.
Our old man had been a boozer. With no wife to nark him he took to it in earnest and drank himself to death, leaving two sons, a daughter, a wad of unpaid bills and a pile of empty whisky bottles stinking under his bed.
Nobody would have blamed Danny for finally letting Social Services take the weight of the load he’d been carrying for years. My brother had other ideas. His cooking was crap and he couldn’t iron a shirt worth a damn, but he needed no lessons in loyalty.
No surprise then that growing up I’d idolised him and wanted to be like him. Somewhere along the line that stopped being true. Wandsworth did the rest. Sending the Lexus was typical. Flash. In your face. Out to prove how well he was doing. Over-compensating for how hard it had been for him bringing us up on his own.
I went to the bar, ordered another round and saw my reflection in the mirror behind the optics. Most of what was looking back was all right. Nothing a bit of sunshine wouldn’t sort. Letting my hair grow and wearing clothes that didn’t make me look as if I’d stepped through a portal to the last century would help. Nina’s blunt assessment when she picked me up came back to me. A smile would help, too, if I could find one. Cheryl used to wind me up because I didn’t walk around grinning like an idiot.
Cheryl had been a nice lady. Her and Nina had been close – more like sisters really. During her visits to Wandsworth we sometimes talked about Cheryl and Nina would tear up and change the subject before it got too emotional.
By now, my sister would’ve reported my disappearing act and got a bollocking for her trouble. I expected the same. Danny wouldn’t appreciate being stood up. Nor would he like the promise I’d made myself – Team Glass had been playing a man short and was going to stay that way: I was done.
In the middle of the day the pub was packed with office types in suits and ties, managing to make half-pints last forever. I was on my second by then, and feeling the effects, when a brunette I hadn’t noticed started doing the rounds, wiping tables with a damp cloth. She kept her head down and didn’t speak to anybody. The alcohol inspired me to lighten her load, my good deed for the day. I picked up my glasses so she could clean the surface.
‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’
She made a sound in her throat that meant she didn’t believe m
e. ‘You sure?’
Her accent was thick, the kind that went with fur hats and vodka.
‘Want to tell me about it?’
She shrugged and moved on, not interested. And no wonder. ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ Jesus Christ. Was that really the best I could do? Rusty was one thing, corny was something else. I needed to sharpen up.
The sense of freedom was almost overwhelming – I spent the next hour enjoying it until the spell was broken by a familiar voice, loud and aggressive, joking with me as he’d done since I was a kid. ‘Who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here? Hope it isn’t you.’
Danny studied me through tired eyes. My first impression was how much older he seemed: his face was lined, tinged an unhealthy grey. Success in his business came at a price. Dark hair – a lot darker than mine – brushed the collar of a white shirt straining the buttons at his belly; he’d put on weight. The workouts in the gym in Wandsworth had toned my body and I was fitter than I’d ever been. The thing we had in common was our height – we were both five feet ten. But, for as long as I could remember, despite the physical differences, anyone meeting us had immediately known we were brothers.
He dropped into the chair across the table. ‘Didn’t fancy it, then? Don’t blame you. Star fuckers the lot of them. Eat the food, drink the booze and piss off out of it. Only reason they turn up, that and being able to say they’ve rubbed shoulders with a famous face.’
‘Needed a bit of space. Sorry, Danny.’
‘Yeah, Nina said when she returned the car and pissed off. No problem. Who’d want a bunch of strangers gawping at them?’
Strangers invited by him, that bit was forgotten. My brother had a selective memory and a talent for rewriting the past. I hadn’t seen him in long enough, although Wandsworth wasn’t exactly on the other side of the moon. No surprise. The visits had never been a success. We couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about the bomb or Cheryl and Rebecca. That hadn’t left much and for most of the hour we’d stared across the table at each other, wishing it would end. In the beginning, he had endured the hassle of the security checks every couple of weeks. Then it was six weeks. Then a year. After a while I’d lost track. I didn’t blame him for giving it a miss – he gave up pretending before me, that was the difference.