Lessons In Blood

by Quentin Black

  Men like him and other entrepreneurs helped shape the world. They provided the infrastructure, advanced and helped make breakthroughs in technology, including medical technology. The proletariat complained about how they never had a fair chance but eighty-percent of America’s millionaires were first-generation, and the best rose to the top and rightly deserved the rewards, as did their loved ones who supported them. He refused to feel guilty about helping to extend the lives of those who mattered in exchange for those who had wasted theirs.

  One day—he thought—my sacrifices will be recognised and revered.

  “There’s Rocky,” exclaimed Michael Ryder, as he threw his arms around his nephew, before turning to the solicitor. “Can you wait outside Mr Malone?”

  “Of course,” replied the middle-aged solicitor, closing the door behind him.

  “Now then cock, how’s things? Heard about your exploits and that,” said Michael, clapping his nephew’s upper arms. Michael was naturally the largest of all his brothers at six feet. He had a full head of grey flecked black hair and a just noticeable paunch on an otherwise muscular physique.

  “I am guessing it’s been blown out of proportion. It was only four two’s with fourteen-ounce gloves—Aunt Jenny could have done it,” answered Connor.

  Michael laughed; Connor was his dad all over, he’d have batted the attention off too. “But Aunt Jenny wouldn’t have stopped a good kid training for months in fourteen ouncers would she?—wait—maybe she could”

  They both laughed, and Connor said, “It’s good to see you, Michael.”

  “Good to see you too. Heard you been making waves daawwnn sarrrfff and on the continent,” Michael said as they both sat down.

  “I am doing alright,” Connor said.

  “Heard you have a new lass, word is she has a face like fire damaged Lego,” he said. Connor smiled.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “‘Course mate, what’s up?”

  “How are things here? I don’t mean in here but in Leeds, with everything?”

  “What you heard?”

  “Ryan told me things were different now.”

  “Aye lad, it is different, I wouldn’t be here when ya dad was running things.”

  “You’re being looked after here though?“

  “Yeah, we’re still Ryders at the end of the day, there’s still that respect—well, it’s more fear now. The thing is with fear, is that it’s all well and good while you’re on top, while you’re still powerful. But as soon as you’re down, people can’t wait to stick the boot in. Respect is a different thing—the people will protect you if they can. Your dad had that to be honest.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s not all our Derek’s fault. Things are different nowadays. Back before the internet got big, you needed structured organisations like ours if you wanted whatever. Now, you can order stuff in an make a passable product at home so now you have gangs of heathens who don’t give a fuck and need constant watching. It’s more Manchester and Liverpool mind, but it’s creeping up here too.”

  “Things different in here now, I mean in the nick?”

  “In here, whoever has access to the most ‘jailies’ is King.”

  “What are ‘jailies’?”

  Michael laughed. “Little wraps of heroin. You need a little army of fiends in here to get things done. A fiend will slap Mike Tyson if he knows he’s getting a hit afterwards.”

  “If you survived Tyson’s return hit eh.”

  Michael smiled. “Take it Ryan has been on at ya to come back up?”

  Connor nodded. “He’s mentioned it. But it’s like I told him, I have interests down south.”

  “Well, funny you should mention that, don’t ya have a connection with the SUG down there? Friends with the leader Louis Allen?”

  “Yeah, we were in the Marines together.”

  Michael felt a sting of disappointment that his nephew didn’t trust him enough to verbally confirm his business dealings with the gang leader. He mentally countered it—he hasn’t been up here in a while, he’s just being careful.

  “Well, the word is, is that he’s pissed off a person in Frankland, an Adz Lloyd, the eldest of the Lloyd family. He’s put out a big-time contract on the black fella down there. To get a bit of a hammering like, not to take ‘im out.”

  Michael could see a shift in his nephew’s posture. “Why?”

  “Adz had business interests down there that your friend swallowed up.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Don’t be silly. That is what family is for.”

  “Well Mr McQuillan, I’d thought you’d mark your territory with a toothbrush left over, not getting your post sent,” said Janet as she greeted him at the door of her home.

  Bruce was well-versed in long haul flights, and countering the effects of jet lag; still, he was a little out of sorts having just got back from Australia the previous day. He cross-referenced what Crowder had told him with Jamie’s information and there was no doubt in his mind that this criminal enterprise had become multinational. Maybe fifteen years or so ago, the prospect of taking on such evil would have over-awed him. He smiled—Let them be nervous.

  Janet looked great even in her casual clothes, some baking powder down the apron she was wearing and her blonde hair tied in a ponytail.

  Bruce’s heart rate raised a little, but he hid his concern. “Let’s see it then?”

  “I think we need to discuss this, don’t you?” she said, attempting a seriousness that he could see was false.

  “Where is it?” he smiled. “It might be of grave national importance.”

  “Thought you were a lowly civil servant?” she asked rhetorically, handing him an envelope. She kissed him before he could answer and ushered him inside. He pocketed it and struck it from his mind—whatever it was, he wouldn’t open it in front of Janet.

  “Where are the dogs?” he asked.

  “A lovely lady came around a few days ago. She owns a dog walking business. Helps ease the pressure so to speak.”

  Bruce shook his head. “That’s how it begins. Next, you’ll be trying to foist them off onto family members.”

  “Shush you, it’s only a few walks a week, I still take them the rest of the time. They didn’t seem themselves today though—maybe they didn’t want to go,” she said disappearing into the kitchen.

  He sat down and called out, “Smells lovely by the way.”

  “I hope you have an appetite, been cooking and baking for the best part of an hour.”

  “You know, it surprises me you’re so domesticated. I’d have thought you’d have grown up with a butler, maid and cook in tow.”

  “Well, that is your prejudices coming through Bruce. Just because I speak well, doesn’t mean I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

  “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself then?”

  “I am sure you’ve done a background check on moi already. I know I would have if I was you.”

  “Janet, I am not going to lie to you…” he said.

  “Go on,” she frowned.

  “Nothing, I am just not going to lie to you,” he smiled. “Tell me your story.”

  “Why? Are you going to tell me yours?”

  “I like to keep the mystery in a relationship.”

  “Nothing really to tell. One of three girls, eldest. Mother and father struggled before he made it big in the oil and gas industry. Shipped us off the boarding school, learnt to speak ‘proper like’. Studied hard, and here we are.”

  “Where you from originally?”

  “Pompey Mush,” she said in an accent regional to Portsmouth. He knew ‘Mush’—pronounced ‘Moosh’—was the way some of them said ‘Mate’ there.

  “Plenty of matelots and marines around there,” said Bruce.

  “Yes, quite, although when I was of—shall we say—drinking age, I was studying at the prodigious London Imperial College, darling. No rough sailors or marines for me,” she s
aid, exaggerating her upper-class lilt.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Of you may ask,” she replied.

  “How come you’ve never had children?”

  “Work, circumstances. I was in a relationship very much like a marriage, for eight years. It had been almost a year in when he told me he’d had a vasectomy. By then I’d already fallen in love with him. He died of liver disease around four years ago,” she said plating out the chilli con carne. “Why haven’t you?”

  Bruce was about to ask her, ‘Was you still with him at the time,’ but she had interjected with her question. He thought—How did that get missed on the background check?

  “Same reason—the circumstances and work, not the vasectomy.”

  “Good, well there’s still time. I haven’t gone through the ‘change’ yet,” she winked putting the plate in front of him.

  “So you want children?”

  “Why doth one believe I am cooking for you, peasant?” she said.

  They both smiled at one another.

  38

  “What ‘appening my gee?”

  “Mate, you’ve upset a big fish up in Frankland. He’s put up some big money for someone to fill you in,” said Connor down the pre-paid phone.

  “Who’s that then man’dem?” answered Louis.

  “Elder brother of a notorious family down your way. Think of a famous bank,” said Connor. He didn’t have time for elaborate codes but still didn’t want to be mentioning names over the phone. There was a pause on the other end of the line before, “Then let’s get the little brother to smooth it over then,” said Louis. “Besides, I’ve never met him before in my life.”

  “Is there anyone you’ve pissed off lately?”

  “Well, a few of the lads have been shottin’ OT. It’s caused some friction.”

  Connor knew that ‘shottin’ OT’ meant dealing drugs ‘out of town’. Louis was the first to identify coastal and rural towns as an alternative market to London. At first, the appeal was that they were untapped markets without rival gang presence and police forces unfamiliar with the methods of South-East London gangsters. Eventually, rival dealers got in on the act, and the SUG had resorted to high-level violence to deter them.

  “Well, it turns out one of those people must have been a somebody. The thing is, is that his little brother went up to see him the other day. And he hasn’t got in touch with me or you to warn us.”

  “How do ya know?”

  “What? That he went up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have my ways.”

  “Cool, I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Am seeing him soon, I’ll feel him out about it.”

  Bruce had made his excuses to leave Janet’s house early. Now back in his flat, he opened the envelope that had arrived at Janet Quigley’s addressed to him.

  A USB stick fell into his hand. He went over to a drawer and pulled out a laptop. This was a separate laptop he used for situations like these—a new ‘clean’ laptop that hadn’t yet been connected to WIFI, and so it would not be a disaster if a virus or spy programme were to infect it.

  He plugged in the stick and opened the file. It was a video clip, and he immediately recognised it to be Janet’s home. Recorded seemingly off a phone, the picture floated through the apartment showing the kitchen and living room. The dogs were laying on the living room floor, one prostrate and the other on its side with its tongue hanging out. The focus of the camera panned down to the dogs, and a trainer covered in a disposable coverall appeared. It tapped each dog in turn enough to prove they were unconscious. The picture wheeled over to Janet’s bedroom and made its way there. The door opened to reveal a sleeping Janet. A black gloved hand appeared in view and slapped an unresponsive Janet. It disappeared and then reappeared holding a hypodermic syringe. The bottom of the duvet was pulled up revealing her feet. The needle hovered between the big toe and index toe; Bruce guessed the inference being that an autopsy would be hard pressed to find the injection mark. The needle moved away without puncturing the skin. A deep, digitally distorted voice cracked the quietness of the video clip.

  “Be warned.”

  Bruce smiled—I am getting to them.

  Connor knocked on the door of the end terrace in Guiseley, Leeds. The door opened to reveal an ample—Connor liked to say ‘extra medium’—brunette in her forties. She wore jeans and a blue t-shirt with the logo ‘Motor Race’ across a large bust. Anne Scott was the mother of his deceased best friend and comrade Liam Scott, and Rayella Scott, who Connor considered his quasi-sister.

  “Oh my gawd Connor, why didn’t you call ahead?” she exclaimed flinging her arms around him.

  “Why, do you have Leroy in there?”

  “He’s handcuffed upstairs at the moment,” she answered before laughing ecstatically at her own joke, playfully punching him in the arm. “Come in then.”

  Connor did so, and upon stepping into the room asked, “Where’s the rest of the gang?”

  “Paul’s away at Elland Road to watch the Middlesbrough game, and Rayella is at training as we speak, pet. You want a cuppa?”

  “Black coffee please Anne.”

  “Just on its own. No milk or sugar?”

  “No Anne, or that would be a white coffee with sugar wouldn’t it,” he said with a wink. Anne smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Oh right, where does she train?” Connor called out as he sat on the sofa.

  “Erm, a place in Morley. Avon Tee or something like that,” she called back. Connor smiled as he knew she meant the superb ‘AVT’—Asylum Vale Tudo.

  A moment or two later Anne came back in with his coffee and a cup of tea for herself and sat on the sofa opposite facing the television.

  “How you doing then Love? You OK?”

  “I am well Anne. Still working down south.”

  “You ever planning on coming back?”

  “Eventually maybe.”

  “You know there’s always a place for you here. You’re the only person I’d let sleep in that room,” she said. She was talking about her son’s old room.

  “What? In the same house as a bickering middle-aged married couple and a hormonal teenage girl?” he smiled. “ I’ll be OK.”

  “She bloody is hormonal the mardy get,” she said sipping her tea. “No, actually she seems a lot better now she’s going down there.”

  “What happened about the incident at school? The lad she brayed?”

  “Well, Paul couldn’t get off work, so muggins here ‘ad to go by myself to the school. I think ‘cos it was just Rayella and me, and it was the lad and his dad, helped. She said sorry, and the dad, dead kind he was in the end, said he didn’t want anything to come of it. He insisted. She’s a jammy get is Rayella, because I think the school was angling for her suspension.”

  What Connor hadn’t told her, was that when he had heard the news, he had explained the situation to his cousin Tom. His cousin’s words had been, ‘this is now no longer your problem. It’s my problem, and I’ll handle it’. He knew his cousin to be reasonable, but Connor hadn’t made a request for restraint to be exercised—what kind of people threaten a school with the press just because their bullying son gets filled in by a girl a year younger had been his thought.

  The front door opened, followed by the living room door. Rayella came in, dropped her bag and said, “What’s happening geek?”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist as he stood up. He held her for a moment before twisting his hips and throwing her on the floor. They began to play fight as Ann Scott exclaimed, “Goodness sake, your coffee is still half full Connor.”

  “OK, OK, OK,” he said, standing up.

  “You have to take me by surprise you pussy,” said Rayella.

  “Rayella, I think you can refrain from using that word in that way, in front of me, can’t you?” said Ann, as she collected the cups and made her way to the kitchen.

  “Yes Mum,” Rayella called before whisper
ing to Connor, “Pussaayyy.”

  “How was training?”

  “Good, thanks. They do MMA there too.”

  “Good stuff. Heard you had a touch at school. Heard the dad stuck up for you?”

  “Yeah, it was dead weird. Good, it happened though.”

  “Well, just take it as a gypsies warning eh.”

  “I will.”

  Frank Schwimmer, by his standards, was ‘slumming it’ with this Serengeti lodge. He usually paid around ten times the amount to stay in some of the ‘developed’ countries’ hotels. Still, as he watched from his lounger, the elephants against the backdrop of the desert scrub and far away mountains, he knew that those places would never have this type of charm.

  With experiences like this, he reminded himself of why he deserved them. He’d had to take enormous risks and go to incredible lengths, to help the world with his organ harvesting scheme.

  In the beginning, slowly—quietly—he began to cultivate people who shared his vision. He knew some did not share his dream, but in the face of the money offered, they would rationalise their part in it.

  A theory he had studied was the ‘escalation of obedience’; it began by convincing a person to do something small and innocuous. Then ask them for just a little more, and then a little more after that. It was one of the techniques used by Jim Jones en-route to initiating the mass murder and suicide of his followers. Schwimmer had employed the practice of escalating obedience superbly, and by the time some were wanting to pull away, they were trapped by their culpability.

  If not, then he had other ways of persuasion as, Tris Dixon found out. Frank Schwimmer’s chain of private hospitals were worldwide now, and the super-rich trusted other wealthy people. Despite his now having nearly a hundred hospitals across several continents, it was his ‘Western’ hospitals he took the most interest in, especially those in the US, UK and Australia. The truth was, that if a Westerner needed an organ transfer, then he or she would prefer the donor to be white, the medical team operating on him or her to be white, and English to be their first language. That was just the way it was.