Born Bad

by Marnie Riches

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jonny said, launching himself from his low mourner’s stool. He turned to Sandra. ‘I feel funny. I’ve got to get some air.’

  But he might as well have said nothing. Sandra was just sitting with her knees pressed primly together, looking like an elaborate carving of a grieving mother. All the agony still locked inside her emaciated body. How much of that pain had she already been carrying before Mia’s murder? It hardly mattered. He had caused all of it.

  Craving fresh air that wasn’t heavy with feverish sorrow and the nervous sweat of do-gooding well-wishers, he pushed his way into the orangery, pulling Tariq with him en-route. Ignoring the disapproving glances from the Rabbi and the old men from the synagogue. Fierce faces from Sandra’s visibly broken parents.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate?’ Tariq asked, clasping Jonny’s forearm. ‘Is it all getting too much?’

  Unable to speak, Jonny kept walking, pulling his partner along past the lush palms to the door, as though he were on the brink of drowning in a sea of stifling expectations unless he could break the surface and breathe.

  Outside, dappled in the shadows of a half-dusk, the large garden was strung about with fairy lights but blissfully empty of people. An early evening fragrance of mock orange provided a welcome exchange for the gut-wrenching smell of pity and loss inside. Jonny peeled off his clammy suit jacket, savouring the cool air on his skin.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ he told Tariq, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket and lighting up. Coughing as the stinging cocktail of noxious chemicals hit the back of his throat. Feeling the nicotine rush wrap greedy tobacco tendrils around his sluggish brain and pull tight.

  ‘Since when did you smoke?’ Tariq batted the blue cloud away, wrinkling his nose.

  Jonny tossed his spent match into a stone urn full of cascading white petunias. ‘We’re to blame, Tariq,’ he said, searching his partner’s eyes for sympathy or at least, honest corroboration. ‘How did we end up like this?’

  Tariq took a seat on the garden bench, leaned forwards and rubbed his face. ‘I don’t know what to say, Jon. You’ve paid the ultimate price. I’m sorry. It’s a travesty.’

  Jonny lowered himself down onto the bench beside him, dragging awkwardly on the alien-feeling cigarette that didn’t sit right between his lips. He stubbed it out on the ground when Tariq started to bat the smoke away dramatically. ‘If only we’d never been tempted by that first dodgy deal,’ he said, throwing the dog-end into the urn. ‘Just fencing some stolen goods. A few moody PCs and a job lot of power tools from a ram-raid on Currys and B&Q. Do you remember? That’s all it was. We should have left it at a one-off.’

  ‘It’s never that simple, though, is it?’ Tariq said, leaning back and staring blankly into the lilac-grey memory of a fiery sunset. ‘You make good money, but you’ve sold your soul to whatever shaitan pays you. And without realising, you enter into a binding confidentiality agreement that ties you in in perpetuity.’ Exhaling heavily, he tutted and shook his head. ‘There was no getting out for us, once we were in.’ He clapped a hand on Jonny’s shoulder. ‘Maybe it was destiny. Or maybe we were just two unlikely childhood mates, thrown together as adults by fortune. Both stuck in Manchester because of family. You needed a business partner with a head for contracts and figures. I needed to be around someone with a wild-west spirit and a bit of entrepreneurial flair.’

  ‘A marriage made in heaven,’ Jonny said, half-smiling. Feeling a bittersweet pang of regret in his heart. Remembering his younger self. Slim, with a full head of hair and a mind crammed with dreams of success.

  Tariq sighed. ‘Do you remember how we used to stay late in that old warehouse, eating kebabs and talking about cars and agonising how to manage the cash flow before the bailiffs turned up on the doorstep?’

  Jonny chuckled and nodded. Wistful for those innocent times, which had seemed so frightening back then. Didn’t dare speak lest his emotions overwhelm him.

  ‘I suppose we were tested and we failed,’ Tariq said, examining his immaculate fingernails. ‘We were wet behind the ears and greedy. It’s a terrible combination. I realise that now.’

  They sat in silence as the sky turned a little darker still, the shadows lengthening.

  Jonny pictured Mia, lying in the hallway. Her life’s blood emptied out onto the floor –whatever memories, thoughts and sensations she had had that made her the girl she was, fragmented and destroyed by two bullets. That strange rubbery yellow of her skin. The still-warm neck. All he wanted to do was visualise her as a chubby little girl or even as a beautiful young woman, only months before her death. Always singing and dancing. Always wanting to entertain and delight. Anything but the ugly finality of a violent death.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, pinching the tears from his eyes with his finger and thumb. Shaking his head to dispel the image. ‘We both knew the personal risks to us. We accepted them like grown men. But I never thought for a minute my family might be in danger. How could I have been so naïve?’ He turned to face the aquiline profile of Tariq, a man who still had a complete set of living children and who was deep in thoughts that almost certainly didn’t feature a mental snapshot of a dead girl. Jonny swallowed the envy down, knowing it was poison that was best left buried deep. ‘It’s like something’s clicked, and all of sudden, my perspective has changed. I can see my life in all its shitty true colours instead of through rose-tinted glasses. All the money, all the power, all the whores …’

  ‘We’ve been kidding ourselves,’ Tariq said, swallowing hard. Still looking straight ahead. ‘I thought I could hide it from Anjum forever behind a bullshit façade. All the bad things we’ve done. But now, she knows.’ He turned to Jonny. ‘She hates me, Jon. And my dad’s ashamed of me. He won’t walk near me when we go to the mosque. He looks at his feet and shakes his head when I bung some of the fellers a few quid – you know. The ones who are really struggling to make ends meet. I know Dad loves me, but he doesn’t bloody like me.’ He clenched his hand into a fist. ‘Everything we did, we did for our loved ones, didn’t we? And yet, we’ve screwed it all up. Screwed them all up.’

  ‘This is all down to Paddy and Frank O’Brien,’ Jonny said. ‘As much as I blame myself for Mia, that family of evil scumbags … They’re not like us.’

  ‘No, they’re not,’ Tariq said. ‘Paddy’s the old guard. He thinks he rules by divine right. It’s all about the bloodline to him. The O’Brien family name. We’re a republic. We’re loads better, man.’ He offered a fist-bump to Jonny, which he returned without any real enthusiasm.

  Jonny took the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and ran a finger over the logo. Sighed heavily. ‘Why couldn’t Smolensky have taken the bastard out last night? The idiot kills a pile of innocent kids but misses both O’Briens entirely. Now, I’ve got other people’s children on my conscience as well as my own!’ Rising from the bench, Jonny kicked out at the petunia-filled urn. Grinding his molars until they ached with utter frustration at his own impotence.

  ‘I think Lev Bell’s mixed up in this,’ Tariq said.

  ‘Lev?’ Jonny turned back to the bench. Wafted away a fluttering moth.

  Tariq rose and started to walk the length of the garden, giving Jonny no option but to follow. ‘Smolensky had got all Mossad on him. You know what the Fish Man’s like. Obsessive and weird at the best of times. Anyway, turns out he’d stalked Lev all the way to Gloria Bell’s front door.’

  ‘His mother? She’s one of them!’ Jonny said, trying to second-guess how this puzzle slotted together. ‘Works with Sheila O’Brien, doesn’t she? But the lad swore blind he never had contact with his mother. They’ve not spoken for donkey’s years.’

  Tariq clasped his hands behind him. Came to a standstill. ‘I saw Lev in a car with his mother outside your house on the morning of Mia’s murder.’

  Jonny grabbed him by the collar. Pulled him close. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  Tariq levered himself deftly from Jonny’s grip. Smoothed his colla
r down. ‘Chill your boots, for God’s sake! I needed to know more, right? You can’t jump to conclusions, Jonny. It could have been a coincidence. You know Lev was having an affair with your daughter, don’t you?’

  Visualising the young gangster who reeked of poverty and had a softness in his eyes at odds with his tough posturing and the Sweeney Hall drug-dealer’s haircut, Jonny held his breath. Counted to five slowly. Exhaled. ‘We bring him in, then. Smolensky can torture the worm until he gives us answers.’

  ‘Well, I told the Fish Man to pick Lev up and bring him to the office after the M1 House job. But Fish Man ballsed that up so royally that I’ve had to put him on a retainer. The guy’s lost it, Jon. He’s unreliable. I don’t know where we’ll get a good replacement. Nasim’s nowhere near ready yet.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand. Lev’s one of our best men,’ Jonny said, screwing his eyes up as he concentrated hard. ‘Do you think he’s defected? Maybe Frank or Paddy have bunged him some cash to do my Mia over.’

  ‘All I know is the little turd has ruined my marriage. After Tommo and Kai’s brothel got stung by the O’Briens, Lev shows up at Anjum’s asylum-seeker place with that pregnant Slovakian girl. You know? The one we couldn’t sell on as a bride. Well, she’s blown the bloody whistle on us, hasn’t she? All thanks to Leviticus sodding Bell and his big conscience.’

  Jonny put his arm around Tariq. Slapped him on the back. Glad of physical contact with someone who wasn’t wishing him a long life and looking at him with eyes full of told-you-so judgement. ‘You’ll get through this,’ he said. ‘You’re not a bad person. You’re just human. Anjum will understand that. As for me …’

  ‘Same goes for you, bro,’ Tariq said. ‘You’re flesh and blood. Not God. You’ve got to forgive yourself.’

  Shaking his head, Jonny looked up at the band of midnight blue that had appeared in the sky above them. Remembered Mia learning her Shakespeare at school. A brave o’er hanging firmament that was now nothing more than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

  ‘If Leviticus Bell killed my girl,’ he said, ‘he’s a dead man. And if Smolensky doesn’t end Paddy O’Brien after all this, I’ll take one of his boning knives and do it myself.’

  Chapter 39

  Sheila

  ‘The panic room has to be completely secure,’ Conky told the man from the security installations company. Towering above the tradesman, looking like the grim reaper in his Loss Adjuster’s uniform of black with those shades on, the Irishman cut an impressive figure for an older man, even with the stupid dyed hair. ‘And I mean, completely. There needs to be a console in there to operate the CCTV around the house. You’ll have to make sure it functions in a damp environment.’

  He pointed to the main family bathroom. Despite its slick slate floor-to-ceiling tiling, it had been deemed to be the most logical place to camp out in the event of an emergency situation, though Paddy had wanted the guest bedroom. Stupid bastard.

  ‘There has to be a phone line and broadband that’s entirely separate from the system in the rest of the house,’ Conky said. ‘This rig-up must be unimpeachable. Do you know what that means? Like Fort fucking Knox. Do I make myself clear?’ He poked the man in the shoulder. Took his glasses off for emphasis.

  Sheila watched with interest and a degree of satisfaction as the security guy blanched. Took a step backwards.

  ‘Yeah. Okay, mate. You gave us the brief already.’ He spat slightly when he spoke. Touched his lips self-consciously. ‘We’re here to install it, now. Take it easy. We’re professionals.’

  Conky grabbed the straps of the guy’s white workman’s dungarees and hoisted him off the ground by several inches. Read his name, embroidered onto his company polo shirt. ‘Do you know who you’re working for, Gary?’

  The man swallowed hard. Nodded. ‘Mr O’Brien. And my name’s Steve.’

  ‘Your name is whatever I say it is. Capiche, Gary?’ Setting him back down, Conky smiled and put his shades back on with a flourish. ‘Excellent. Here’s a cup of tea from the wondrous Mrs O’Brien.’

  Sheila suppressed the urge to grin. Proffered the tray to the workman, who was frowning as though he couldn’t work out if he was more frightened of or affronted by Conky. ‘Biccy?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t get comfy, Gary,’ Conky said, grabbing the workman’s cup of tea and slurping it himself. Snatching the Jaffa Cake from his hand. ‘You’re here to do a job, not engage in existential pondering with a cup of tea in another man’s luxury bathroom.’ He turned to Sheila and winked. Laughter in his bulging eyes. ‘Let’s walk and talk. I want you to take Mrs O’Brien here and explain to her everything that’s being done to keep her safe from the nasty, dangerous people out there.’

  Above the incessant, bone-shaking drilling and hammering, Gary or Steve or whatever he was called led Sheila from room to room, explaining what was being installed by the team of builders and electricians.

  ‘So, your ordinary doors are being replaced by ones that have been reinforced with steel,’ he said, pointing to the mess that had been made of Sheila’s beautiful contemporary plaster architraves. ‘We’re putting in remote-controlled deadlocks that close at the touch of a button. They’re fire, bullet and bomb proof too. So you can seal any part of the house off at any time.’

  Sheila could see the enthusiasm in his face. She guessed that though the company had had this kit in its brochure for years, they were almost certainly the first people ever to shell out for it.

  ‘How do you arm it?’ she asked, watching an electrician, who was standing on a stool, insert some cabling into the newly created cavity. His hairy belly was on show as he stretched. Tongue lolling out of his mouth. An average man, grafting in an average job. If she’d married a man like him, would she still see her mum and dad?

  ‘There’s a keypad being installed in the hall, but it can be overridden by the kit we’re putting into the panic room. You can alarm any part of the house at any time of the day. There are laser sensors that will pick up the slightest movement anywhere.’

  ‘Like on the films?’

  ‘Exactly. Mission Impossible has got nothing on this, Mrs O. There are fibre-optic cameras installed in every room too, feeding into the panic room. So, if you ever had an intruder, you’d have hi-res footage from anywhere in the house without ruining your lovely decor.’

  ‘And disabling it?’

  ‘If you know the master code, you can kill the system at any time. From your mobile phone too. I assume Mr O’Brien will want to do all that.’

  Sheila smiled warmly. Rearranged her features into her best concerned wife face. ‘Oh, my poor Paddy is very rough with a migraine today. You can tell me everything, Steve. How about that? And I’ll teach him when he’s better.’ She nodded and beamed at him. Fluttered her eyelashes.

  ‘Of course. Whatever you think is best.’ Steve blushed and looked at the blue plastic overshoes on his dusty work boots.

  They moved through to the kitchen, where Frank was sitting on the leather sofa, regaling a man holding a drill with tales of his appearance at Glastonbury in 1989 – tales Sheila recognised as having been told so frequently and honed with each re-telling, that if the stories were stones, they would have been polished to gleaming opals.

  Smirking, she offered Steve a secondary cup of tea. But her offer of hospitality was cut short by Paddy yelling from the bedroom. ‘Sheila! Get up here!’ Audible even above all the industrial noise ringing throughout the house. A heavy sensation dragged at her shoulders. Tension, burning in the muscles.

  Tutting as an outwards show of rebellion, gulping and sighing as an inward revelation of her true desperation, she thrust the empty cup into the workman’s hands and made haste up to the master suite.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Paddy wailed, barely visible beneath the duvet. ‘Flirting with the bastard builders instead of looking after your own husband? I’m dying here. Get me some painkillers! And tell those arseholes to keep the noise down!’

&
nbsp; Sheila pondered his angry red face peeking out at her. He had those shadows beneath his eyes and that slightly green tinge to the skin around his mouth. Tell-tale signs of a humdinger. Once, she had thought him sweet when he had one of his migraines. Vulnerable. Once upon a long, long time ago.

  ‘I’ll get your tablets. But Pad, there’s nothing the builders can do about the noise. It’s that, or risk a break-in from whatever psycho case the Boddlingtons send after you next. You asked for an “impenetrable fortress”. That’s what you’re getting. And I’m glad, because I don’t fancy joining our Jack in the cemetery, thanks very much. You were just lucky in the club.’

  ‘You were just lucky!’ Paddy repeated her words in an unflattering, nagging pitch. His features screwed into a freckled, shrewish ball as he threw the duvet back defiantly to reveal his body, naked but for his pants. ‘I pay people to guard me with their lives. It wasn’t luck, She. Them kids that got killed …’ He poked himself in the chest, only millimetres from a love bite that Sheila certainly hadn’t given him. ‘… They died to save me. Our Katrina said that’s God’s fucking will, that is.’

  Sheila filled a glass of water from the tap in the en suite. Recognised the tautness in her face as she spoke, reflected in the mirror. ‘Those kids were murdered for sod all in cold blood by a nutcase, paid by your business rivals to go on a killing spree. Because you’re a gangster, Paddy! Not a postman, not a plasterer and certainly not a saint.’ She walked back into the bedroom. Thrust the glass of water and the packet of Migraleve into his hands. ‘You want to play Mr Bigshot, you’ve got to own that guilt. The blood of them kids is on your hands, whichever way you look at it.’ She felt she could risk a little antagonism while he was laid up. Hadn’t he been at his most sanguine and bearable while he was in hospital after his heart attack? ‘And you wouldn’t have to install all this expensive shit if we’d just got on that plane to Thailand.’ She pointed to the half-packed suitcases, now shoved against the wall with the lids closed to stop dust from gathering.