by Anna Smith
Cal bit his lip.
‘Oh, Mum. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Kerry said. ‘We’re sorting some accommodation out for you.’ She glanced at the table. ‘Take a seat and we’ll get something fixed up for you to eat. I’ll leave the pair of you for a while to get talking.’
Chapter Eighteen
Knuckles Boyle was seriously losing patience. How in the name of Christ could she have escaped, leaving these two dickheads who were supposed to shoot her lying stiff on a country road in a pool of their own blood? Fucking bitch. He should have done it himself weeks ago, once he’d made his mind up she had to be got rid of. Instead of that, he’d left it to two of his trusted boys, and now they were dead, but worse than that, it meant that for the past few weeks Sharon might have been scamming and scheming before she left. He didn’t even want to think about what she might have taken with her. She had more information on him and his dealings from here to Morocco to Amsterdam and the Costa than even he did. The only way to make sure all that stayed put was to get rid of her permanently. But now she was out there somewhere. That was his biggest problem. But everywhere he looked, more aggro was coming out of the fucking woodwork. The boys he’d sent up to make some mischief at Mickey Casey’s funeral were now history as well. They were supposed to be lying fucking low until it all died down. But their bodies were found all over the place up in Jockland last week. And to top it all, a tidy little sideline he was working with another crew in Glasgow had just fucking gone down the stank. He’d been dealing with some cunt called Rab Pollock from up there, unknown to the Casey crew who would not have allowed it, would have seen it as a conflict of interests. But now that had ended in fucking tears, with the cops busting the whole shooting match at the pick-up point down here, and he’d dropped nearly a hundred fucking grand’s worth of heroin in the fucking disaster. Some bastard had grassed, because now the cops were all over the place, sniffing and ripping apart his warehouses, trying to prove it was his heroin. So far, they hadn’t got anywhere, and his lawyers were keeping it all at bay. But word was beginning to leak out that Knuckles Boyle’s organisation was in trouble, and that was never good. Cunts scenting blood would trample all over you at the first sign of weakness. So he had to start doing something rapid to save face. Frankie Martin had been onto him from Glasgow to say that things were getting rougher up there every day with this Kerry bird throwing her weight around. But first and most important, he had to find that fucker Sharon, before she did any damage. He stood up, paced the length of the table, conscious of his boys watching his every move and wincing at his rant, waiting for the next onslaught.
‘Right, Jimbo . . . Talk to me. I mean, there must be some fucking sign of her. She didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth. Tell me again, what have you checked?’
Jimbo shifted in his seat.
‘Well. You know we found the car and the bodies. And you know we had to torch them before any cops could get a look at anything. But we’ve had people checking Sharon’s credit cards, and taxi firms have been spoken to, as well as car hire firms. We’ve found every taxi driver that was close by the area where that happened. I mean, she must have got a taxi somewhere – when she got to the end of that road she dumped the car. But nobody is saying a fucking thing. With the cops all over the place on the murders, nobody wants to open their mouths, even if they did see Sharon. Maybe she got picked up by another car or something, just random. Maybe someone gave her a lift and dropped her in town, in which case she’d just be one of hundreds of people who took a taxi that day. It’s been impossible.’ He paused. ‘And yes, we’ve checked all the hotels in a ten mile radius – but nothing. She’s got out of Manchester quickly. Either she hired or borrowed a car. We don’t have a clue. Nothing from the car hire places. They don’t give any information out on customers.’
Knuckles had been gazing out of the big window into the city, and the traffic below his office, while Jimbo was reeling off all this non-information that was getting him nowhere. He was still smarting heavily about the loss of his drugs at the train station. He needed to know more on that. Frankie Martin had called him yesterday and told him he thought he’d got some intelligence on who the teenager was that was picked up by cops. The boy had to be shut down smartish in case any of these dicks in Glasgow, who were stupid enough to send him on the job, had told the kid more than he needed to know. Frankie talked to that numpty Rab Pollock whose boy had gone missing, and he was the biggest suspect for grassing them up. But he too had fucked off for the moment, and that was not a good sign.
‘Tommy, I want you to get Frankie on the phone again and grill him about this kid that got picked up by the cops and what he knows about him. Get him to talk to Pollock and find what we can. The last thing I need right now is this coming back to me worse than it already is, with cops breathing down my neck. We need to know who grassed us. Maybe it was even Pollock himself. Have you thought about that? Maybe we should just shoot the fucker in case he talks if the cops put him under pressure.’
He came back and sat down at the table, tired, weary and on edge. He looked at Al, a few seats away from him.
‘And, Al. I can’t believe we have four bastards murdered in Glasgow and we haven’t got a single fucking clue as to who did it. Not a fucking clue. I need to know who it was who did the actual hit. Find out who did the shootings and we’ll waste him. I don’t give a fuck about the boys. They were stupid anyway to do what they did at the funeral. And they paid the price. So fuck them. But somebody from Casey’s mob took a bit of revenge out there and sent us back a message, so we need to return that smartish before every cunt starts laughing at us. You got that?’
‘Sure, boss. I’m working on it.’
‘Good. And don’t fucking do anything until you run it past me. Are we clear?’
*
Frankie Martin was feeling more and more out of the loop. He’d already poured his heart out to Kerry about how loyal he was, and he thought he’d made some inroads there when they met a few days ago. In fact, he thought he’d even caught her stealing little glances at him, and he’d left the room that day with a little inkling in his pants that he could get into hers if he chose the right moment. But in the last few days he couldn’t get near her. It was becoming clear that she was distancing herself from him. Frankie was used to having most of it his own way. Especially with women. If he wanted a woman, he snapped his fingers and they were on their knees in no time. He thought about Kerry. She was different. He’d known her all his life. When Mickey died he’d felt that he’d be protective of her, that he’d look after her when she came back. Maybe it would have turned out that way. Things could have been so different if that prick Boyle hadn’t fucked it up at the funeral. He was supposed to send a message that would make him look like he was in charge, but the pricks who turned up fucked it up and Kerry’s poor ma got caught in the crossfire. He’d never forgive himself for that, because she’d treated him like a second son all her life, and he felt he’d betrayed her. But it shouldn’t have happened like that. He should be in charge right now. But Kerry was throwing herself about all over the place, stepping on a lot of people. And he was frozen out. He had to find a way to get back in here, or he had to make sure he destroyed her.
*
Rab Pollock chopped up two lines of coke on the glass coaster on his office table, then leaned down and snorted one, holding his breath till he felt that familiar little bite between his eyes that made everything much clearer, much easier to handle.
‘Fucking good gear that. Too good to punt. Get it cut more before you push it out there, mate.’
He pushed the coaster across the table to Tommy McCann, who bent across and snorted the other line, then sat back twisting his face as though he was trying to work the sensation into every nerve end. McCann was enjoying his new role as Pollock’s right-hand man, after he’d been bounced out of the Paradise Club by that bitch Kerry Casey, but it had got a little rough in recent days when the Manches
ter drugs pick-up went tits up.
‘Don’t worry. It’s getting well cut, mate. You’ll get a great return on this shit, Rab. Good batch, though. Keep the best for ourselves, eh?’
Rab glared at him, knowing the fat little prick was trying to arse-lick because of the fortune he’d lost him in Manchester. He shouldn’t have trusted McCann, when he told him he’d put Denny Thomson on the drop along with some wee guy they’d been using for local drops, who was reliable. It wasn’t the wee guy’s fault that Denny fucked off and left him. It was McCann who put Thomson on the job, and said he was one of his best men who he could trust. So much for that. Thomson disappeared as soon as the stuff was dropped, and seconds before the cops were all over it. That told you one thing – he had grassed to someone who had grassed up to the cops for their own reasons. Why Thomson did it was a mystery, McCann had said in his defence, but none of that mattered a fuck. As soon as they could find the cunt, he’d be history. But the more pressing problem right now was that Knuckles Boyle had been on the phone to him, shoving a rocket up his arse because he was down nearly a hundred grand of smack that was now in a locked room in a fucking police station in Manchester, while the bizzies were all over his warehouses trying to prove it belonged to him. Knuckles had made it clear to Rab that he now owned every area of his business until the hundred grand was paid back. Much as it choked him, Rab knew better than to question it. He’d told Knuckles that he had the junkie sister of the boy who’d gone on the drop with Thomson, and as long as he had her, the boy would keep his mouth shut. His boys had paid the mother a visit to make sure she and her son kept it zipped. Knuckles told him he should chop one of her fingers off and get it delivered to the boy’s mother to make sure her son kept his mouth shut. But McCann assured him that the boy knew nothing – well, unless Thomson had been running his mouth off during the train journey. So Rab was feeling well fucked.
He and McCann were running a few whores from a house in the East End, but it wasn’t big business. McCann had managed to procure a few Eastern European birds, and as long as he had their passports and kept them junked up, they belonged to him. He’d been to the house himself yesterday to see the set-up, and it was busy enough. He’d also seen the room where the Jenny bird McCann had was being held. In fact, she wasn’t a bad-looking wee thing, apart from being skinny as a rake. She was spaced out, so she didn’t know why she’d been taken there – the stupid bitch must have thought her fairy godmother had come to make sure she’d enough smack to keep her happy. Rab told McCann to put her to work, so she at least earned her keep. He looked across at McCann, whose eyes were coked up bright.
‘Listen. We need to find a way to make more money. Everything we’re shifting right now is going back down to Knuckles for the smack he lost. I’m going to be in the grubber paying back this cunt.’ He sniffed. ‘And it’s all your fucking fault. I shouldn’t have listened to you.’
‘Aw, mate. We’ll work something out. I’ve got my ear to the ground. Frankie Martin is still talking to me. I know he doesn’t like that Kerry fucker – you know, Mickey’s sister, who’s running the show now?’
‘Oh, you mean the bird who slapped you around your own office, you prick.’
‘Aye. Well. That’s no’ finished yet. She’ll pay for that in time. Believe me. Nobody slaps me around like that. Far less a fucking bird. I’m going to fucking torch the Paradise Club. It was my place.’
‘It wasn’t your place. You ran it for them. You didn’t own it, you dick. Anyway, never mind about that. So what about Frankie?’
‘He doesn’t like Kerry. Says she’s off her head, with a lot of big ideas about moving the business around. He says she’s frozen him out and he doesn’t have as much clout as he did.’
Rab nodded slowly. ‘Interesting. But does he still hear things? I mean, does he know what’s going on? If we could get something on her – something we could sell to Knuckles. We all know there’s bad blood there. It might be a way to get him out of my hair.’
McCann said nothing, fidgeted in his seat.
‘Why don’t you have a drink with Frankie? See what’s the craic. We could use a guy like Frankie on our side. I reckon this Casey mob are there for the taking, I’m telling you. A fucking woman running the show? I mean, they’re a laughing stock.’
Rab went into his drawer and brought out another wrap of cocaine and emptied it onto the coaster.
‘Let’s think outside the box, man. Know what I mean?’
‘Aye. Outside the box,’ McCann said, with a slightly bewildered look.
Chapter Nineteen
Sharon knew the best way to really fuck up Knuckles Boyle was to hit him where it hurt – in his wallet. He’d been obsessed with money from the very first time she met him, when he was a mid-ranking hood, building up a reputation in Manchester as an armed robber, and a trusted enforcer for one of the bigger players. Everything was about money, because money was power. And Knuckles had made plenty of it. He was well established in the north, and very little moved without him knowing it, and because he had made so much money, he was able to deal with the boys in Amsterdam and Spain, organising his shipments. In his warehouse in Amsterdam, shipments of coke and heroin went through in everything from baby food to clothing, and even furniture. His men on the ground there had become expert at concealment, and one of Sharon’s jobs had been to set all this up, travelling over there at least a couple of times a year to make sure it was all running like clockwork. She’d been two months ago, to make sure everything was straight for the next shipment, and that all the paperwork was ready. If Knuckles had any sense, he would cancel it now that she’d buggered off and couldn’t be found. But she knew he was too greedy to do that, and also wouldn’t want to lose face. And you couldn’t be sitting with a warehouse in Amsterdam packed to the gunnels with drugs. You had to keep stuff moving or someone would get suspicious, and the National Crime Agency were everywhere these days. So Sharon had a plan to tell Kerry about it over dinner. She checked herself in the mirror and adjusted her hair a little and went down to the restaurant, once she got the phone call to say that Kerry was in the building. She had barely been out of the hotel room since she arrived three days ago, and Kerry had told her she needed to sit tight while they worked some things out. But she got the impression that she could do business with this woman. Whatever else she was, Kerry was smart and educated. You wouldn’t have taken her for a hard bitch by any stretch, but maybe she was learning fast that you don’t survive in this game by negotiation. Perhaps Kerry did have the ruthless streak you needed to get to stay on top in this business. Her swift justice on the boys Knuckles had sent up to her mother’s funeral was top drawer, both for how the operation was carried out, and also for the fact that she didn’t shy away from it. But Knuckles would be coming after her with all guns blazing now. So it was important to strike again while he was still reeling from the latest blow of losing his heroin to the cops. She knew he would be livid, and, between that and no sign of Sharon anywhere, he needed to be seen to be keeping the ball rolling.
Kerry was waiting for her in the restaurant when she walked in and was shown to the table in the alcove set slightly apart from the restaurant. The place was almost empty anyway, aside for two couples far enough away from them.
‘Howsit going?’ Kerry said, putting down the menu she’d been reading.
‘Good,’ Sharon said, easing herself into the leather chair as the waiter hovered, placing a napkin on her lap. ‘Well, as good as it can be at the moment.’
‘I’m having a gin and tonic.’ Kerry raised her glass.
‘That’ll do for me.’ Sharon looked up at the waiter.
Once he was gone, Kerry leaned forward. ‘I know it must be hard, Sharon, but we’ll get a flat sorted for you, as soon as we’ve got the right place – somewhere discreet and secure, so that you’re safe. By the way, I take it you haven’t been able to speak to your son yet?’
Sharon felt a little dig in her heart. She knew Tony would be texting
and calling her mobile as well as the house, and she wondered what kind of crap Knuckles was filling his head with. Knowing him, he would be saying she’d run off with another man.
‘I haven’t, Kerry. And it’s breaking my heart. I need to get a word with him. I know there’s a big security issue, but he needs to know that I haven’t abandoned him. I mean, he’s thirteen now, and I don’t speak to him every day or anything, but I’ve not talked to him for nearly a week now. I could email him, but I don’t want to commit anything to writing in case Knuckles has people who can monitor the boy’s account.’
Kerry nodded. ‘I’ll find a way to get word to him. We’ll get you another mobile purely for talking to him, and get one to him. How will he be with that kind of underhand stuff though? Is he going to freak and talk to his dad?’
Sharon shook her head. ‘No. No way. Tony doesn’t get on with his dad. Knuckles thinks he’s a wee poof because he wants to study and make something of his life. It was a constant source of argument. Knuckles didn’t even want him to go away to school. He wanted him by his side, but there isn’t a bad bone in the boy’s body. He’s a gentle lad, and the further he can get away from his dad the better. But I know he’ll be suffering. It’s five days now since I last talked to him.’
‘Okay. Once you get me details of his movements and stuff I’ll get the mobile to him. Don’t worry.’
‘Thanks.’
The waiter came and took their order. Sharon felt more relaxed now than she had in weeks, but there was always the worry that someone could walk in the door of this place any minute and blow them both all over the walls. Knuckles would have eyes everywhere, and while there was bad blood between him and the Caseys lately, he would still have contacts in Glasgow. Deep down though, he’d be more concerned in looking for her on the Costa del Sol or up in Torrevieja, or even in London. He hadn’t the wit to think she’d come to Glasgow.