The Silence

by Linda Tweedie

  Paddy Coyle sat at the head of the table, a twin on either side. On the right, sat the infamous Mario Cortalessa, also known as ‘The Italian’. He and his mob ruled the west of the city and governed using the laws of the Cosa Nostra. He was one scary, scary fucker.

  First to speak was Davey Thompson from the north sector, the one man Paddy feared the most, not that he would ever let that be known.

  “What the fuck is this all about?” asked Thompson. “Who do you think you are, summoning me like some fucking lackey?”

  “You’ve got some fucking nerve, boy! Do you think lending a few quid to some housewives lets you play with the big boys?” said ‘boss man’ McIntosh. Nick McIntosh was the only out-of-towner invited. He was responsible for Paisley and all points west.

  “Hey, you’ve made your mark, no doubt about it, but I could hit you so hard, fucking Lizzie would feel it.”

  It was true the Italian was scary and Paddy knew he was way out of his league.

  “Where are McClelland and his boy?” asked Thompson. “Better things to do?”

  “They were never invited,” replied Paddy. “I’ve asked you here to make a deal. My men will back off, no more interruption to business, the turf remains the same and I operate Mitchell’s patch.”

  “If we let you,” sneered the Italian.

  “You haven’t stopped me doing exactly what I want so far and believe me, I have more manpower than you three put together. All young, all hungry, all ready to go to war.”

  “Are you threatening us, you stupid cunt? You do know you’ve just signed your own death warrant?”

  The interconnecting doors slid open and revealed upwards of twenty men, armed, standing to attention, all ready for action; the war lords were fucked, each of them figuring this may well be their last breath.

  “Do we have an agreement?” asked Paddy. “Shake on it and things go back to normal. The Coyles leave you alone.”

  Reluctantly, the men agreed to his proposals, shook hands and hightailed it out of the pub. This pup had turned out to be a snarling Doberman.

  And now, here they were, a year down the line, well in control of the East End of Glasgow, with relative peace between them and the other firms, and the last of Kelly’s henchmen had met his maker this morning. If the stupid old bastard had only taken his ‘pension’ and retired to sunny Benidorm like the rest of his mates, he’d still be alive. Not swaying at the bottom of Clyde in a pair of concrete boots.

  The Coyles demanded absolute obedience and loyalty, neither of which had been big on McGregor’s agenda, but his bête noir had been that he was related to the McClellands and blood will out.

  He’d fucking haunt the bastard, was Jimmy’s last thought before the water closed over him and silence reigned.

  Tickling his daughter under her chin he reluctantly handed Erin back to her mother for a feed. Paddy swore to himself that he would never let anything, or anyone harm this precious bundle.

  The Aftermath

  “Buenos dias, Jose.”

  “Buenos dias, signor. Your guest is waiting in the office for you. I have taken his luggage to the villa.”

  “Gracias. I won’t need you till later today, go help Sofia with the deliveries and make sure I am not disturbed for the next hour.”

  “Si, signor.”

  The small Spaniard loped off across the main floor of the club. Pete never failed to marvel at the opulence of the Marbella Princess, his latest acquisition. This place simply oozed glamour and decadence. This was not a club for the self-catering brigade. No, this was a club where a bottle of house champagne cost 400 euros and the bartender was likely to have appeared in some B-list movie. Every night was party night and every night the club was full to capacity. The latest DJs were flown in from all over Europe and for the first time in ten years Pete McClelland, or Pete Mack, as he was now known, and his family felt safe.

  “Buenos dias, Father, it’s good to see you. Drink?”

  Pete hated the priest intensely, but it was testament to his acting skills that Canon Francis O’Farrell had never twigged that his gracious host would shoot him without a second thought.

  It was entirely down to this man that the McClellands were where they were today. They were multi-millionaires, friends with some of the most influential people in Europe and on first name terms with most of the UK’s gangland chiefs who lived in the Costa Del Crime.

  On the downside, they were exiled from home, had new identities and were separated from family and friends. Laughingly, Pete would joke that he would rather be exiled in Marbella than have the freedom of the city of Glasgow. There was the weather for a start!

  “I’ll show you round before you go up to the house,” Pete offered. “It’s been worth every penny and seriously, there’s nothing that can compare with it in the whole of Europe. I’ve already had a couple of offers to buy me out.”

  “You’ve certainly come a long way since you were nicking coins out of the communion plate,” laughed the old man. “No-one would ever recognise you as the petty thief I helped all those years ago.”

  Clenching his teeth, Pete let the remarks wash over him and joked away with Frank, as the priest liked to be known. The old bastard never let it go, always had to remind Pete of their history. But one day, Frank would get his comeuppance.

  Dianne, Mack’s wife of over twenty years was waiting up at the villa and she had a right cob on her, a face like a well-slapped arse. They had argued into the night about the impending visit, resulting in Dianne storming off to bed and Pete being faced with a locked bedroom door, not that that was any hardship.

  It was the same every time the canon was due to visit. Dianne couldn’t understand why Pete invited him to stay at the house in the first place. For fuck’s sake, he wasn’t family, he was nothing to them. If the truth be known, he gave her the bloody creeps, and once, years ago, when Bobby was just a toddler, she’d caught the dirty old bastard taking pictures of him. Oh, it was all explained away, but Dianne never forgot and made damned sure that the circumstances never happened again.

  “Hello, dear, so nice to be back and you’re looking wonderful as usual. I was just telling Pete here how well you’ve aged.”

  Dianne Mack had always been a looker and took extremely good care of herself. A little nip here, a bit of a tuck there and she was no stranger to the Botox needle. Yes, she was looking extremely good for her years, but she certainly didn’t appreciate backhanded compliments from a fuckin’ ancient, dried up priest, the bloody cheek of the man. Snorting something at both men, she called on Lucia the housekeeper to show Canon O’Farrell to his rooms. No way was she skivvying to him, let Mr Hospitality do the honours.

  “Frank, my dear. Call me Frank, I’m a civilian this week.”

  “How long have we got you for this time?” growled Dianne.

  “Just a week, I’m afraid. What a character, Pete, anyone would think I wasn’t welcome. My dears, if I’m an imposition, just say the word. I wouldn’t dream of putting you to any bother. I could just stay at the mission.”

  “Don’t be daft, Frank; we’re delighted to have you,” Pete turned to his wife. “Aren’t we, precious?”

  “Fuck off, ya big woose. Dinner’s at six tonight, take it or leave it.” Dianne marched out to the pool where her son and his two mates were sunning themselves.

  “What’s up, Mum?” Bobby asked shading his eyes from the strong Spanish sun.

  “Bloody Frank’s just arrived, and your father’s fawning around him like he’s the fucking Lord Mayor. Why? What is the old fucker to us? Honestly, I just can’t stand him and I’ve never understood why the hell your dad puts up with him.”

  “Don’t get yourself in a state, I’ll look after him and keep him out your way,” offered Bobby. “I don’t mind the old boy, he’s quite funny at times.”

  “No you bloody won’t, you keep well away from the old pervert.”

  She knew Bobby was safe enough now. Frank had lost interest in him years ago. It was d
efinitely small boys he preferred, and it turned her stomach. She’d decided this was definitely going to be his last visit. It had gone on for years and Pete, who’d hardly ever been in a bloody church since he was baptised, was all of a sudden a fucking born-again Catholic.

  Frank felt the warmth of the sun on his face as he stood on the terrace, watching Dianne and the boys with interest. She would be even unhappier if she knew what her husband got up to behind her back, chuckled Canon O’Farrell. That was a can of worms best left unopened. Where did she think all the money came from? You didn’t get to own the Marbella Princess without some serious wedge.

  Pete McClelland, with his wife and son, had arrived in Marbella with a couple of suitcases apiece and five thousand quid. Considering what they had left behind, this was petty cash. Pete needed to make money fast and he knew exactly how he was going to do it. It was a case of supply and demand. The demand was for human flesh, very young human flesh and he was more than prepared to supply. A few trips and he was in business. How did the good father fit into this enterprise? The confessional, coupled with a damned good memory.

  At the beginning of his ministry in Craigloch there had been a number of attacks on toddlers, mainly little girls. The attacks were quite random and all the evidence pointed to a poor ‘soft’ lad called Thomsie Curran. He was a boy from the flats who was fifteen, but with the mental age of a four-year-old, whom the other kids teased mercilessly, all except for Pete McClelland. Pete was Thomsie’s only friend. A strange combination, but Thomsie followed McClelland everywhere.

  Father O’Farrell had never believed Thomsie was responsible and had protested his innocence to all and sundry. In fact, at the time of one particular incident, the boy had actually been with him. Unfortunately for Thomsie, Father O’Farrell couldn’t own up. He’d be in jail, de-frocked and excommunicated if this dalliance ever came to light.

  Worse still, poor Thomsie was set upon by a crowd of women from the neighbourhood, a virtual lynch mob, who made sure he would never carry out anything of the like again.

  The attacks stopped, but only for a short while, too late to help Thomsie. Father Francis O’Farrell was not a man who suffered remorse or guilt for any of his actions. He conveniently cited God as the reason things had to be done, bar the one incident. He regretted the treatment doled out to poor Thomsie Curran and the distaste in which the neighbourhood still held him.

  It came as no surprise years later, when Pete McClelland’s penchant for little girls came to the good father’s attention that Pete’s Spanish import/export business gained a silent partner.

  Sound of Silence

  “This is your Captain speaking, welcome aboard Flight BA345 to Malaga. We are now cruising at 50,000ft and the outside temperature is -40 degrees. Our estimated time of arrival is 12.08 . . .”

  Erin was ecstatic, two weeks of freedom; she still couldn’t believe she’d managed to pull it off. Here she was, actually airborne with the girls, drinking a vodka and coke and trying to open one of those piddly little bags of nuts. She was so excited she’d almost wet herself when the flight took off, convinced up until then that at some point Big Paddy would storm the plane and drag her back home. But no, she was flying high and boy was she going to make up for lost time. Two weeks with no mother fussing over her and no dad checking her every movement, unbelievable!

  She had begun her ‘Marbs’ campaign way back on New Year’s Day. The best day of the year in every Scottish home and Erin knew if she were to succeed with her plan this was the day to plant the seed. All the family was gathered for the traditional New Year dinner. Grannie Lizzie and her uncles looked a bit green around the gills, having been ‘First Footing’ till God knows when. Surprisingly, they were all in fine fettle, despite having spent a lazy afternoon drinking the finest malt whisky and reminiscing about the old days when a ‘face’ was a ‘Face’, not some fucking Russian oligarch, shipping drugs and sex workers into the UK by the boatload.

  How different from when Paddy and the twins had started out in the business. First of all, the big man had had to fight his way through the ranks, and there were some real hard fuckers in Glasgow then. Not like the ‘office boys’ now, with their spreadsheets and world wide web. Back then, fleets of ice-cream vans had carried almost all the contraband round Glasgow and the drivers fenced anything from a nuclear sub to a five pound baggy. It was an ingenious setup and had worked for years until the turf war broke out. Drivers crossing over into other territories, gang bosses getting greedy and the filth costing so much to quash investigations, the whole system had imploded in on itself and changed Glasgow forever.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” Her mum mouthed from the other side of the room.

  “No, not really,” the girl signed back to her. “I want to talk to you about something,” her fingers spelled out the words.

  “Help me clear the table and we can have a chat.” Bridget stroked her daughter’s hair affectionately.

  She was so proud of Erin. Despite her handicap the girl had overcome it, never letting it stop her doing anything. Whatever the problem, Erin found a way round it.

  Since the horror of her First Holy Communion, Erin Coyle had lost the power of speech. The shock and trauma of the shootings had literally rendered the little girl speechless. Paddy and Bridget had been distraught and taken the girl to every specialist in the country. They had travelled to Europe and even to the U.S., to no avail. Every single physician had come up with the same diagnosis: Chronic Dysphonia, and every one without exception had predicted that at some point in Erin’s life the condition could reverse itself. But there was no known cure and no guarantees.

  Time after time the parents were told the same thing. Paddy blamed himself. Almost eighteen years ago he had promised his daughter, on the day she was born, that he would always be there for her and he would never let her down. Despite Bridget’s assurances, Paddy would not be placated. He had failed his family and if it took till his dying breath he would have revenge.

  After the initial trauma, Erin had adjusted, as most children do, unlike her parents. She learned to sign, as did her classmates and teachers. Surprisingly quickly, she fell into a fairly normal routine. If you could call having a father like Paddy Coyle normal, then that’s what she had. She knew, even after all these years, he was still on the lookout for those who’d been the cause of her silence.

  “What’s wrong, chicken?” asked Bridget.

  “I want you to ask Dad for something,” she signed.

  “Ask him yourself,” laughed her mother. “You’ve more chance of getting round him than I have.”

  “Not for this.”

  “Okay, what’s the mystery? What do I have to ask for that you won’t?” puzzled Bridget.

  “I want to go on holiday with the girls, Mum. A break before we all go our separate ways.”

  “Erin, he won’t let you go, not on your own. You know why.”

  “But Mum, I’ll be eighteen next month. I don’t want any stupid party. I want to go away on holiday like everyone else. I’m not a kid and I promise you, I’m going − with or without his permission.”

  “Without whose permission?” interrupted her dad, entering the room.

  Years of having to think on her feet in order to avoid trouble helped Bridget to blatantly lie to her husband without batting an eyelid.

  “It’s just a school trip. Erin was saying she doesn’t need to get signed permission.”

  “Oh, she still has to get mine, though,” smiled Paddy, “wherever she’s going.”

  A look passed between mother and daughter; now was not the time to ask. Better she should get everyone on her side before she broached the subject with her father.

  Later on in the day she cornered the twins, she loved her uncles and knew they would do almost anything for her, even tackle her dad.

  “What’s up kid, you seem very quiet today?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m always quiet,” Erin quipped back.

  “Smar
t-arse,” Sean laughed at her.

  “Okay, what do you want us to do, what will daddy not give in about?”

  “How do you know I want you to do anything? Can’t I just be nice to my two favourite uncles?”

  “For a start, we’re your only uncles, and you, madam, are only nice to us when you want something, right Sean?”

  ”Right, Michael.”

  “So what is it then?”

  With all the drama that an eighteen-year-old could muster, Erin made them promise they would talk her dad into letting her go off with her friends. Not that they held out much hope, but for her they’d give it a try.

  Next, the girl talked Granny Lizzie onto her side, but her biggest ally was Auntie Marie, the wild child no longer. Like Erin, the trauma of the communion party still affected Marie all these years later.

  Paddy’s sister had been in intensive care for weeks after the shooting. The family had never left her side − she had been at death’s door on more than one occasion. The medics had all but given up on her, but she was a Coyle and miraculously, she survived. Her injuries left her paralysed down her right side and the prognosis for the young woman was not good. Everyone was resigned to the fact she would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, all except Paddy. He was determined she would recover, and with sheer grit and fortitude she proved the doctors wrong. Marie Coyle was cut from the same cloth as her brothers.

  She and her son Errol still lived at 28 Lomond Gardens with Lizzie. Unfortunately, her brush with death had not cultivated her maternal instincts any and she was, as she told everyone, still a crap mother. However, fortunately for Errol, his nanny Lizzie and his uncles adored him and between them the boy flourished. Now aged ten and a quarter, a right little bugger, a handsome, coffee-coloured devil who could charm the birds from the trees.

  Although knowing full well she wouldn’t win Mother of the Year, Marie had no intentions of existing on handouts from her brothers. It was her job to provide for her son, and provide she would. Her options, however, were somewhat limited. Surely there was a place for her in the business? If she had to, she’d sweep floors, clean toilets, whatever, but she needed to earn a living.