Family

by Owen Mullen

  Danny pulled a gun and ran with the big man at his heels. Between them they dragged the driver from behind the wheel – a guy in his forties, bald and heavy, wearing a zip-up jacket, and obviously terrified.

  Marcus screamed at him. ‘Hands on the bonnet! Do it! How many with you?’

  The driver stammered as he tried to understand the question.

  ‘Wha… what? What do you mean?’

  Marcus used the butt of his weapon on his skull: one blow. He collapsed and lay still. Danny walked to the rear of the van and banged his fist on a panel.

  ‘All right in there! Don’t be heroes! When the door opens throw out whatever you’ve got!’

  No answer.

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘They’ve had their chance, let them have it.’

  He threw open the door and dived for cover. The silence was the anticlimax of the century – there was no one. Danny got to his feet and stared at the wooden crates piled high, thrusting his hand into the nearest box, tightening his fist. Juice and pulp oozed through his fingers. I caught the familiar sweet smell on the early morning air and realised what had happened. I’d never seen my brother cry but I thought he was going to now. In the end he got a hold on himself, turned and faced his crew.

  ‘Strawberries. We’ve jacked a load of fucking strawberries. Stanford, you cunt!’

  A simple job had ended in farce. Here, at the crack of dawn, we’d been mob-handed and ready to take down… a vanload of fruit. Somewhere in the city, Anderson would be laughing into his cornflakes. I didn’t blame him. The King Pot had caught us sloppy and off guard. This was worse. We looked like incompetent amateurs.

  Rollie: 2; Team Glass: 0.

  Part II

  16

  In a side street cafe called Dino’s off Battersea Park Road, the clock on the wall said seven forty-five. Whenever the door opened, London rushed in, already hectic and insistent. The clientele hardly noticed; it mingled with the cooking sounds from the kitchen. The Dino whose name was stencilled in large red letters on the window wasn’t around to complain. He’d died on the 7th of September, 1940 when the house he lived in, not two hundred yards from his business, was flattened during a Luftwaffe air raid.

  Behind the counter, his grandson and the staff were busy serving full English breakfasts to workers coming off nightshifts in the New Covent Garden Market half a mile away.

  Fruit wasn’t on the menu. Plates of sausages, bacon, tomato, fried eggs, fried bread and beans were, fired out at conveyer-belt speed. Nobody paid attention to the guy in the corner with the laptop.

  Jonjo Hart rubbed the ‘Toon Army’ tattoo on the back of his hand, too excited to eat. Or sleep. He’d been up for twenty-one hours straight, yet wasn’t tired. After what he’d witnessed, going to bed was the furthest thing from his mind. He’d come to London determined to make a mark on his uncle’s world. This would take him where he wanted to go. He ran the video again – for the tenth time – it still made him laugh out loud. As soon as he’d got in the car heading back from Kent, he’d called his uncle. Ritchie had answered on the first ring: his nephew hadn’t disturbed him; he’d already been awake.

  On Tyneside, Ritchie was an almost mythical figure. His nephew had grown up surrounded by stories of his criminal exploits. George Ritchie had never been charged with a crime. He was too smart for that.

  The younger man was anxious to impress his famous relative and the video captured on his camera ninety minutes earlier would do just that: he’d been in position on the hill above the lane an hour before the cars showed up and his joints were so stiff they cracked when he moved. But it had been worth it. What he’d filmed would make the most feared gangster in the city a laughing stock.

  Danny Glass – Big Bad Danny – was about to become a national joke.

  At one point he’d zoomed in and almost felt sorry for him. In the early morning light, Glass’s eyes were black pinpoints set deep in a grey face. Jonjo whispered to himself in a cheesy American accent. ‘Gonna make you a star, kid.’

  Ritchie came through the cafe door at ten past eight, ordered tea from a harassed waitress and sat down. Jonjo almost offered to shake hands but thought better of it.

  His uncle wasn’t amused. ‘This better be good. Otherwise we’re going to fall out.’

  Jonjo confidently pushed the laptop across the table’s chipped Formica top and pressed the play button. ‘You be the judge.’

  On the screen, dawn broke behind a white van travelling a deserted road. From nowhere a car drew alongside, forcing it down a lane and for moments it was lost behind a hedgerow, then reappeared and stopped, blocked from going further by a second car. Four masked men ran towards it and hauled the terrified driver from behind the wheel. One of the gang – a big guy they both recognised – crashed the butt of his gun down on his head; he fell unconscious to the ground.

  The unmistakable voice of Danny Glass barked orders to the back of the hijacked vehicle. ‘All right in there! Don’t be heroes! When the door opens throw out whatever you’ve got!

  Seconds passed. Nothing happened.

  Glass said, ‘They’ve had their chance, let them have it.’

  The doors flew open and he threw himself to the ground. The camera went to a close-up of boxes stacked on top of each other and back to Glass, sheepishly getting up off the ground. He thrust his hand into the nearest one and faced where Jonjo had been hiding, so perfect it might have been staged.

  Hart checked the volume so his uncle didn’t miss the punchline. Glass said, ‘Strawberries. We’ve jacked a load of fucking strawberries. Stanford, you cunt!’

  The video froze on the image of strawberry juice dripping from his fingers. Jonjo waited for Ritchie’s reaction while the waitress topped up his tea. He would’ve bet his life on his uncle laughing but he’d have lost. Ritchie’s eyes bored into him across the table.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘It’s this morning. I got there early and shot it. Great, isn’t it?’ He was pleased and missed the signs. ‘Wasn’t easy trying not to laugh out loud and give the game away.’

  His uncle grabbed his arm so hard it hurt. Jonjo was shocked – this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. ‘I don’t understand. We’ve got it on film. The great Danny Glass making a tit of himself. Thought you’d be pleased. Rollie will love it.’

  Ritchie scanned the busy cafe for somebody with no business being there. ‘No, he won’t. He isn’t going to see it. Ever.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because he’s a clown. He’d use it. Wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Anderson isn’t somebody you should trust – he’s a child in a man’s body.’

  ‘If he can get me where I want to go, what does that matter?’

  ‘I told you when you came down here. Don’t try to run before you can walk. Who else knows about this?’

  Jonjo faltered. ‘Apart… apart… from me and you… nobody.’

  ‘How many copies are there?’

  ‘This is it. But surely, it’s dynamite? If I put it on YouTube the whole world will see it. Danny Glass’ll be finished.’

  George Ritchie remembered this was his sister’s boy and spoke with all the gentleness he could raise. ‘You’re ambitious. I get it. Except this isn’t the way. Sure, catching the great Danny Glass making a dick of himself is fantastic. But it crosses an invisible line, a line that will get you and a lot of other people dead. The video makes you a target. One day this war will end. The trick is to still be standing when it does.’

  Jonjo was too in love with his work to listen. ‘Don’t you want to watch it again? It’s even funnier when you know what’s coming. “Stanford, you cunt.”’

  Ritchie pitied him – the bloody fool was going to get himself killed.

  He held out an upturned palm. ‘Give it to me. Give me the video.’

  Reluctantly, Jonjo dropped a memory stick into his hand.

  ‘Now, delete it. I want to see you do it.’

  ‘I don’t fucking belie
ve this. I thought you’d approve.’

  ‘Sure, we’ve put one over on Glass, but we’ve had to give up our most important route to do it. Not worth it. But I had to do it to keep Anderson from doing something stupid. He’d lap this up. Handing it to him would be just about the stupidest thing I can think of.’

  Ritchie softened the blow and used the stick to make his point. ‘You think because this will noise-up Danny Glass it’s a good thing. It isn’t. This implicates a detective in serious corruption. If he goes down because of it, every copper in London will be out to get us. The whole fucking force. No surviving that.’ He put the stick in his pocket. ‘There won’t be a hardman in this city who won’t be tempted to try it on.’

  ‘You’re saying I’ve screwed up.’

  ‘Finally, you’re catching on. Glass will come back. Harder and stronger than anything you can imagine. Do you want to be the man who made a right mug out of a psycho? Believe me, you don’t. Try not to think about it or you’ll never get a night’s sleep again.’

  He threw coins down on the table and stood. He’d saved this boy’s life.

  Jonjo watched his uncle thread between the wooden tables on his way to the door. The man he’d idolised had settled for being No 2. For the first time in his life he felt sorry for him. Most of George’s career had been spent working for Albert and now for Rollie, although he was smarter than both of them put together. Smart but flawed: he was too careful. Always had been. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken orders from idiots like the Andersons. On the surface, he was hard. Underneath he was afraid. Christ, he was even scared to let his own nephew know where he lived. Jonjo had no intention of letting that happen to him. He’d come south with one objective: to get to the top and stay there. Ritchie was being offered a cast-iron opportunity to give Glass a bloody nose and all he wanted to do was bury it.

  ‘How many copies are there?’

  ’This is it.’

  Not true. His uncle might be a legend in Newcastle, but he knew fuck-all about technology.

  17

  There was only one guy on the door of the Picasso Club when George Ritchie arrived. Immediately he ordered another two to join him and waited until it was done before going inside. At times, his caution bordered on pathological; this wasn’t one of those times. They’d humiliated the most ruthless gangster in South London and, like the fools they were, behaved as if that was the end of it. The very real possibility Glass’s troops might come through the door and blow all of them away hadn’t occurred to Rollie.

  Rollie was standing in the centre of the office, telling the audience of sycophants and losers a funny story. He never got to the punchline. He saw Ritchie and threw his arms around him. Ritchie smelled booze – the moron was pissed. Celebrating what he imagined was a great victory.

  ‘George! George! What d’you want to drink?’

  Ritchie gently removed the arm from his shoulder. ‘I like to keep a clear head, you know me.’

  ‘’Deed I do. ’Deed I do. We stitched Glass right up. Don’t you ever just want to let go?’

  Ritchie kept his disdain to himself. ‘Right now, I’m more interested in when and how they’ll come at us. Glass won’t let what happened go unanswered. We need to be ready.’

  ‘Not today. It’s too soon. The bastard will be scared to show his face.’

  George Ritchie doubted it. He’d been around when stories of two delinquents thieving cigarettes had got back to Albert. Anderson was supposed to be protecting shopkeepers. Letting the teenagers take a liberty sent a message that the fat man was weak. Better to break the young rascals’ legs and show the world that nobody – not even a couple of cheeky boys – would be allowed to question his authority south of the river. Ritchie had urged him to stand on them like the maggots they were. Albert had refused and allowed them to carry on.

  And the rest, as they say…

  Albert’s son was making the same mistake by being blind to the obvious danger. He’d made his move and assumed for the moment that was enough. Rollie patted his cheek. ‘Do whatever you think, George. After all, that’s what I pay you for. No point having a dog and barking yourself, is there?’

  Ritchie faked a half-smile, clapped his hands and shouted to the troops.

  ‘We haven’t beaten Danny Glass, we’ve wounded him! Now get the fuck out of here and do your jobs! We’re not running a social club! And double the numbers everywhere! Go to it!’

  One or two of the thugs grumbled, the rest did as they were told. He spoke to Rollie. ‘Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that. And, George, that was genius. Pure genius.’

  Ritchie accepted the slurred compliment ‘Told you we’d get them. But now isn’t the time to congratulate ourselves. Once it’s over, you can party.’

  Anderson grinned drunkenly, reliving the moment. ‘Wish I could’ve seen Glass’s face. Bet it was fucking priceless.’

  Ritchie steered Rollie towards the door and signalled to a couple of men to go with him. When they’d gone, his hand slipped inside his jacket pocket and fingered the memory stick.

  The day that began in a dark country lane in Kent had blossomed into cloudless skies and warm sunshine. South London went about its business with a smile. Inside the King Pot the atmosphere was subdued, very different from the hilarity in the Picasso Club. The pub wasn’t open – it was too early – and the barman leaned on a crutch, polishing glasses with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy forced to do homework. The bullet had only grazed him but had hurt like hell. Felix Corrigan and a group of foot soldiers stood with half-finished beers in front of them, drinking in silence. Now and then they raised their eyes to the ceiling, imagining Danny Glass’s brooding presence in the room above. Danny was alone. None of them considered climbing the stairs to offer him support.

  They weren’t completely stupid.

  Their appreciation of what had gone down was, at best, superficial: the raid had bombed, they’d been made to look like fools, and Danny was furious. Nobody suspected the fiasco had been captured on film. If they had, they would’ve been even more worried, because the fallout from humiliating their boss further was beyond thinking about. Men who’d been bought and paid for sipped their beers and waited for somebody to tell them what to do, while the clock behind the bar ticked off the seconds.

  On the drive back from Kent, Danny had pulled his coat collar up and slumped in the front seat, closed down and shut off from the rest of us. In fairness, I didn’t blame him. The raid had been a disaster, no other word for it. Danny’s mind would be racing over the deeper implications. The tip-off had come from a totally reliable source, his bent policeman, which threw up two possibilities – the detective had been duped into giving wrong information, or he’d switched sides and was playing for the other team. A third alternative occurred, one I didn’t like any better: word of the attack had got out and the plan had been changed. Any way it cut we’d been mugged off.

  I’d sat in the back next to Felix, strangely detached from the pantomime the morning had become. Part of me, the part my brother refused to accept, hadn’t changed. I still wanted out.

  When we got to the city, Marcus dropped me in the next street to the flat so I could sneak in the back, the way I’d left. The copper parked in the Golf outside would swear I’d been at home. I’d surprised him with a cup of coffee to see him through the night. He’d rolled the car window down and taken it. I’d leaned in to say, ‘See you in the morning’ and he’d backed away. My reputation had gone before me. His night would’ve been uneventful. Unlike me, he’d probably slept through most of it.

  I called Mandy and caught her on her way to the gym. Her smile came down the line when she heard my voice. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Good to know. What’re you doing later?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Fancy a drive in my new car?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. When will you pick me up?’

&nbs
p; ‘Now’ was the answer I wanted to give, except Danny would be expecting me to put in an appearance, not something I was looking forward to.

  ‘Twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘It’s a magical mystery tour.’

  Mandy was wise to me. ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘I mean it’ll be a surprise.’

  ‘To both of us.’

  ‘Maybe. Twelve at your place. Be ready.’

  She gave me the address and rang off. I showered, staying under the hot water as long as I could, then made scrambled eggs and toast and read the paper Danny thoughtfully had arranged to be delivered. Unfortunately, it was the Daily Mail. I made a mental note to ask the shop on the corner to change it for something a grown-up might read. It was half past nine and too late to go to bed even if I wanted to. My brother would be morose, licking his wounds and trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The smartest thing to do would be to avoid him but not showing up wasn’t an option. I grabbed the car keys and headed for the pub.

  A group of men were standing in front of a row of half-finished pints. Harry the barman shrugged and made a ‘what-you-want-me-to-do?’ face. It wasn’t unusual for the troops to start early, except today their timing was off. If they’d been thinking at all they would’ve figured that out for themselves. Marcus wasn’t one of them. Either he was upstairs or he hadn’t appeared yet. Felix ducked behind his drinking buddies and tried to hide.

  They eyed me warily; they didn’t know my strength. I helped them out.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  Before any of them could answer, my arm swept the bar sending their drinks crashing to the floor in a shower of glass and beer. They stepped away, suddenly remembering I was the guy who’d shown Albert Anderson the quick way down. There was fear in their eyes, and there ought to be because I wasn’t pretending. These were the same clowns who’d almost got us killed. I let them have it.