Born Bad

by Marnie Riches

  Muscles have memories too. Almost as a reflex action he found himself waving maniacally from the sparsely populated dancefloor.

  ‘Paddy!’ he shouted enthusiastically at his brother, who marched in, flanked by Conky and a bandaged, black-eyed Degsy.

  Then, he remembered that he hated Paddy. With the amphetamine buzz coursing through his bloodstream, the toxic mix of love and hate enmeshed his heart. Suddenly, he was sweating and breathing too hard. He staggered off the dancefloor, counselling himself to keep a lid on the combustible vitriol.

  ‘We did it, Frank,’ Paddy said, putting a territorial hand on his shoulder. ‘We got the club back open for Jack.’

  ‘We?’ Frank said, inhaling sharply through his nostrils and smelling the £200 a bottle aftershave on his brother. ‘Did we?’

  Paddy laughed and clasped Frank to him with an affectionate hand on the back of his head. Any tacit rejection had been lost on him.

  As they grabbed their drinks in the VIP area, Frank’s initial high had been replaced by a racing heartbeat. Panting like a thirsty dog. Every thud of a bass drum seemed suddenly too loud and aggressive, ramming against his cranium as if to force entry to the delicate matter inside.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Paddy asked, sipping Cristal from a cheap flute. A long-legged girl who could have been no more than twenty was already sitting astride his knee, kissing his sunburnt wrinkled neck.

  ‘I’ve got a funny feeling,’ Frank said, tugging at the hem of his T-shirt.

  Suddenly, the hedonistic air of freedom felt oppressive. The sight of Paddy groping the bottom of the young girl looked wrong. Frank wanted out.

  He pushed through the burgeoning, thronging mass of dancers towards the emergency exit. Flung open the doors. The throbbing music was so loud, he knew nobody would notice the weedy alarm going off. Cool summer evening air blasted inside the stiflingly hot club. Night had fallen now, transforming the glorious red and teal sunset sky into deepest navy. Brighter inside than out with all the flashing lights, he could just about make out the giant wheelie bins and bottle banks. His senses were sharpened out here in the fresh air. Wanting to become invisible just for a moment, he pushed the exit doors almost closed behind him and slid into the deep shadows of a bin to light a cigarette.

  ‘I’ll never see him again,’ he whispered to the unforgiving white disc of the full moon.

  As loss began to envelop him once more, he stared out into the black of the service area. His eyes became accustomed to the barely there shapes. And presently, amid the now-dulled thunk, thunk, thunk of the music coming from inside, he was aware of a car pulling up on the other side of the high brick wall that separated the club’s land from the street. Doors slamming shut in unison. The sound of men, whispering, just audible above the beat and the bass. A scrabbling noise against the wall. Frank held his breath. Stubbed the glow of his cigarette out and watched as six men clambered over the wall, dropping down into the service area below. Each one of them carried a weapon – be it a handgun or a rifle. In that darkness, it was hard to pick out details. But there was one figure, silhouetted against the moonlight and the backdrop of an imperfect midsummer night’s evening, whom Frank recognised immediately. Tall, slender, wearing a large-brimmed hat. He brought with him his own distinctive scent of death.

  Chapter 36

  Asaf

  Dropping over the wall of M1 club, Asaf felt only the blissful anticipation of what was to come. Giddy with adrenalin, he carried the Bren gun across his body like a sleeping hound, just waiting to be roused. He had gone beyond the point where he was concerned that he might be arrested and sent to jail for a long stretch. He was all about the mission, now.

  The music came out to meet him. The repetitive thud-thudding reminiscent of the beat of helicopter wings in the Negev. He was at one with his weapon and the men he had assembled for the mission. Get in. Wreak havoc. Get out. Message sent. Those had been his instructions.

  In an arrow formation, he led the six inside. Like the waves of the Red Sea, the crowd parted almost instinctively to allow their safe passage to the centre of the club. If some girls started to scream, Asaf could barely hear them. He was two thousand miles away on an exercise in the Golan Heights, looking out over the Sea of Galilee and the verdant irrigated pastures. The drone of his psychiatrist during those psychotherapy sessions for post-traumatic stress disorder only a dim memory operating as a soundtrack.

  ‘Look out for Paddy O’Brien,’ he shouted to his companions. ‘If you see him, kill him.’

  When he reached the middle of the dancefloor, he was in hostile territory. Every party-goer was the face of the enemy. Open fire, a voice inside him said. Kill or be killed. Obeying, he roused the sleeping Bren gun, mowing down those who stood before him. The sight of blood made him feverish with excitement, batting away the instruction that Paddy O’Brien was to be his main target. Focus was becoming increasingly difficult of late. But the drive to end life and render himself invulnerable was stronger than ever. A continual re-enactment of what had happened on manoeuvres, in that hot dusty village on another continent, in a different time in his life; somehow hoping he’d get it right, this time. That he’d save his unit. That it would be the enemy who would be in the ground by sundown.

  ‘Please, no!’ A young man screamed, taking slow steps backwards with his hands held high. The only boy left where others had fled or fallen.

  Asaf let the Bren gun hang loose on its strap against his body. Pulled a machete out of the specially sewn knife-holder inside his coat. As he was about to bring the blade down on his fresh-faced foe, bullets struck the ground by his feet – inaudible beneath the towering wall of sound coming from the speakers all around. He looked up to locate the source of the enemy fire. Spotted Conky McFadden and Degsy advancing with murder in their eyes. Saw the flash of further shots being fired his way. Felt a bullet brush his sleeve. Was faced with a decision. Advance and engage in hand-to-hand combat – or retreat?

  Too slow. Asaf yelled as one of McFadden’s bullets plunged into his shoulder.

  ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ he shouted, grabbing at the agonising wound.

  But his soldiers had already fled. He was alone. Surrounded by the enemy with McFadden and the sunken-faced Degsy almost upon him.

  Chapter 37

  Conky

  ‘Get him out of here!’ Conky shouted to one of the M1 House bar staff, wielding a tray full of empties. He put a protective arm around his King, feeling his own shock being kicked brutally to the back of his mind by the adrenalin of battle.

  ‘Bollocks to that, Conks. I’ll stay,’ Paddy said, shrugging him off and pulling a gun from his waistband with a flourish. He snapped a full cartridge of bullets into place. Taking aim at the dancefloor, fixing his sights on the bar area, moving the barrel towards the DJ booth, then back again. ‘It’s a bloody scrum. I can just about hear them, but I can’t see the bastards. We need that music off, now!’ Squinting, he lowered the gun uncertainly.

  Glancing over at the empty DJ booth, it was immediately clear to Conky that it was unmanned. Unsurprisingly. Defending the O’Briens in a fire-fight was not in the contract or included in the DJ’s fifty-grand fee.

  ‘Shall I go and switch it off, Conky?’ Degsy asked, shifting from his left foot to his right like a coked-up, jaundiced Rocky Balboa preparing for the big fight. His right eye was still bandaged where Gloria’s arsehole of a son had beaten him to a pulp.

  ‘No way. I need you here. How’s your depth perception?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you fucking see to shoot, Derek?’

  Degsy shrugged. Held his gun across his chest like some bad ass hip-hop type, except Degsy was milky white trailer trash from Parson’s Croft. Prick.

  Conky gave him a withering glance. ‘Don’t shoot the dancing children, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll knack you in the bollocks myself. Okay?’

  The girls in the VIP area had already fled, screaming and clattering off in their high heels. With only the
three of them remaining plus the hyperventilating barman who was still holding a tray of glasses, Conky stood on a sofa. Scanned the club, processing images of the scattering crowds like a super-computer, determining who was reveller and who belonged with the Fish Man. ‘Six of them,’ he said under his breath. Three of us against six Boddlingtons. No sign of the bouncers. Shite odds.

  ‘Paddy, you have to go,’ he said. ‘I insist. If they don’t get you first, this place will be crawling with coppers any minute. Best you’re not here.’

  Paddy paused, looked towards the fray where Asaf Smolensky was spraying bullets at every kid in his path with a monster of a machine gun.

  Conky grabbed the tray from the ashen-faced barman. Thrust Paddy’s car key into his hand. ‘Get Mr O’Brien out through the back to the car, now! And find your boss. Frank is missing.’

  Advancing towards Smolensky, Conky tried to keep his breathing steady.

  Now, he had a clear view of Smolensky. Drunk on death. That much was obvious, though he still couldn’t fathom why any of this was happening after the truce had been agreed. Writhing, wounded or dying bodies at his feet, the Fish Man had cornered some young lad. He drew a machete from inside his coat. It glinted lethally under the club lighting. The word ‘JACK’ strobed against the back wall in blue lasers. Conky felt loyalty and anger surge inside him. Pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and aimed carefully. He loosed a bullet.

  Smolensky grabbed at his shoulder, grimacing in pain.

  ‘Gotcha, you bastard!’

  The others had already started to run. Someone had switched the sound system off at last. Sirens were audible. Not far away, now. Conky kept marching forwards towards the Fish Man, but the lanky fiend about-turned and ran through the side exit. And boy, could he move. Struggling to follow, Conky chided himself for having been made sluggish by age with the aching legs of a man who had forgotten to take his thyroxine that morning.

  ‘Shite!’ he said, gasping and clutching his knees.

  The Fish Man swam away upstream against the flow of scurrying, petrified clubbers, darting hither and thither like confused minnows out of the path of a giant leaping salmon.

  As uniforms flooded the dancefloor, the only souvenir of the Fish Man’s visit was his hat and a pile of bodies.

  Gun concealed about his person from the cops’ prying eyes, Conky bent to retrieve the hat, fingering the brim thoughtfully. Contemplated the broken bodies of youngsters at the very dawn of their adult lives. ‘This place has had it,’ he said.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ said a voice just by his ear. He jumped.

  Turning around with his fists balled and ready to strike, Conky exhaled heavily when he realised who it was. ‘Jesus, man. You’re lucky I didn’t flatten you then.’ He stared at the dishevelled-looking Frank, who visibly seemed to have shrunk by several inches in the course of the past twenty minutes. His glazed eyes were darting everywhere. Even with his hands jammed deep in his jeans pockets, Conky could see he was quaking.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, placing a hand on Frank’s shoulder.

  With a shake of his head, Frank merely looked up at the giant blue ‘JACK’, still shining in laser stripes from the front of the club onto the back wall.

  It was hard to tell whether he was in shock or whether something else was afoot. A nagging sensation pulled at Conky’s innards, a voice in his head asking, ‘Where were you, Frank, while this shit was going down?’ Except, it wasn’t in his head at all. He had said it out loud without realising. Definitely low on the old thyroxine.

  Frank shrugged. Still wouldn’t meet Conky’s astute, if bulging-eyed gaze. ‘Behind the bins. I went out for a smoke. I-I was just frigging paralysed when I saw them hoofing it over the wall. I tried to come in, you know … to raise the alarm and whatnot.’ He looked at his fingernails but his hand shook so much that he pushed it back into his pocket. ‘But then I heard the guns going off and I just couldn’t, Conk. I just sat there behind the bin, wishing it was all a bad dream and praying they wouldn’t find us.’

  Conky felt the reassuring outline of his gun, concealed in the lining of his coat. He was mulling over Frank’s explanation and body language, feeling as though something didn’t quite add up. Just as he was about to quiz him further, the unwelcome and annoyingly familiar figure of Ellis James entered his peripheral vision.

  ‘Oh, shit. I’ve got to go, Frank. I’m sorry. My priority is to get Paddy away from here safely. I’ve got to drive him home.’

  Frank finally met his gaze with wide, desperate eyes. ‘No. Don’t leave me to sort this mess on my own, Conks.’

  ‘I’m packing, Francis.’

  James was only metres away now, being debriefed by one of his uniforms. Conky imagined he saw the glimmer of a grin on the detective’s face. A little schadenfreude perhaps. Now he was speaking to a bouncer, but he had one eye on Conky. If the little shabby-arsed bastard arrested him, he would have some explaining to do once he was strip searched. He felt the throb of his accelerated pulse in his neck.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Ellis James said, coming towards them, scratching his buzz cut with a chewed-up biro. Dog-eared notebook in hand. He was wearing the same soiled beige raincoat he always wore. The same worn-down, scuffed shoes that always made Conky feel slightly itchy. The collar of his shirt was frayed. And yet, he sensed a certain buoyancy in the detective at the sight of the blood and the mayhem. ‘It seems like my dance card has been filled by you entrepreneurial sons of Manchester of late. First I get a call that Jonny Margulies’ daughter has been topped. Then I get a—’

  ‘You what?’ Conky asked. ‘Mia Margulies is dead?’

  Frank blanched visibly and clasped his hand to his mouth. ‘Get out of town!’

  Ellis James smirked. ‘Oh come on, boys. There’s no need to be coy with me. Your rival’s daughter is found with two bullets in her and the top of her head all over the shag pile. I think I can put two and two together and make—’

  ‘No disrespect, detective,’ Conky said, careful to gauge Frank’s reaction from behind his sunglasses. ‘But I don’t think you should put two and two together to make anything. That sounds rather like hearsay and slander, never mind circumstantial evidence. Why don’t you check your facts before you point the finger in our direction? The O’Briens run a respectable builders’ merchants and a nightclub. Any judge who thought he could convict them of the organised crime and murder that you seem intent on sullying their reputation with would have to be wired to the moon with a faulty fucking plug.’

  ‘Spare me, McFadden.’ The smile was gone from Ellis James’ thin lips. ‘Mia Margulies is executed in the morning in her own home by a pro, and before I even get time to get into my jim-jams for bed, I get a call telling me that there’s been a slaughter at Frank O’Brien’s grand reopening. It’s already all over YouTube and Twitter thanks to a couple of little twats who tried to get a bit of shaky footage on their phones. That’s before they realised they were about to be filled with more holes than a colander. Imagine my surprise, gentlemen, when I saw a blurry clip of a big lanky Orthodox Jew who looks suspiciously like Asaf Smolensky, aka the Fish Man, toting a machine gun. Fancy that, eh?’ He stroked his chin archly. ‘The police aren’t dicks, Mr McFadden. We know what’s going on when the hashtag NorthVSouth starts trending on Twitter.’

  He smiled widely and rocked back and forth on his heels, waiting for a reaction from Conky McFadden that never came. Because Conky’s mind was preoccupied only with questions: Who had ordered a hit on Mia Margulies? Why had Frank not been inside the club when Asaf Smolensky and his Boddlington foot soldiers had been spraying the place with bullets? Where in God’s name had the bouncers been while all this was going on?

  From behind the tinted lenses of his glasses, Conky McFadden appraised the shivering, unassuming figure of Francis O’Brien with newfound suspicion and respect.

  Chapter 38

  Jonny

  ‘I wish you a long life,’ the girl said, kissing him on the ch
eek.

  Jonny felt the warmth and wet of her tears on his skin. Tried to place her and realised, in the bewildering semi-fugue state that bereavement ushered in, that Mia had been at school with her some years ago. Not so different from his daughter, with her long dark hair and almost childishly over-made-up face. Even the tunic and miniskirt that she wore were reminiscent of Mia. By the time he remembered her name was Jodie, she had moved on to wish Sandra a long life and Jonny was faced with shaking the hand of one of the guys he had played football with, many years earlier, when his life had been that of a nice, ordinary Boddlington Park boy.

  ‘I wish you a long life, Jonny,’ the man said, not making eye contact. Immediately supplanted by another acquaintance waiting in the queue to offer condolences.

  The living room was stiflingly hot. Jonny opened the top button of his shirt, lifted his yarmulke and wiped his bald pate with a handkerchief. Dabbed at his top lip, wishing everybody would just piss off out of his house, leaving them to their private suffering. Praying that Sandra would start to eat something and speak to the boys. Looking beyond his wife, down the line of low stools at his gangling teenaged sons, wearing their best suits with their hair spiked as though they were heading off to a party – utterly at odds with their red-rimmed eyes and hunched postures. Jonny was suddenly overwhelmed by shame.

  Where was Tariq? He scanned the packed room, glimpsing him chatting to another of the neighbours by the entrance to the orangery. Only Tariq would understand the crippling sense of having failed his family and his God.