A Numbers Game (Mal & Jackie Book 1)

by RJ Dark

  ‘Where is he?’ he hissed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t play games. Your friend, the Paki fucker.’

  ‘He’s a Sikh,’ I wasn’t even being cheeky, just words I was so used to saying.

  ‘I don’t fucking care,’ roared Mick and the twin holding me forced my arm further up my back. Making me scream in pain. I had a sudden flashback to the sickening sound of Jackie dislocating that Geordie’s arm.

  ‘If this is about those guys, Mick,’ the words came in gasps, waves of pain coming from my arm. It wasn’t dislocated, not yet, but it wasn’t in a place it should, or wanted, to be, ‘then your guys attacked me first.’

  ‘I don’t care about the Geordies,’ he said, his face coming nearer, foul breath wrapping itself around my head. ‘Your Paki friend can fuck Geordies dry up the arse for all I care.’ I didn’t correct him this time. ‘Just tell me where the fucker is.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ My arm moved another increment, ligaments and muscles screamed and I hissed. Channelling the pain out through my nose and mouth. ‘I don’t know!’ I said it again, louder, just in case they hadn’t heard. Mick’s eyes searched my face, flicking left and right, up and down. He smoothed down the greasy hair on his dappled scalp.

  ‘You know I love my family, right?’ I tried to nod. ‘Well, I’ve let Jackie run around doing what he wants, haven’t bothered him cos he hasn’t bothered me. But he has now, he’s gone too far.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You told him, didn’t you?’ His piggy little eyes were boring into me.

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘About the money.’

  ‘He knew,’ I said, ‘he brought Janine to me.’

  Mick clearly didn’t know that, and he moved back a little. The smell of his breath remained.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe it just took a while for him to realise he wanted it, I don’t know. But he knows the rules: you fuck with a Stanbeck, you end up in landfill. So unless you fancy a trip to the dump, I ask once more, where is he?’

  ‘Jackie doesn’t care about money.’ I forced the words out. Mick moved in close again. Close enough to kiss me. I could count the open pores on his pointed nose, see the oil glistening on his skin.

  ‘Everyone cares about money, Jones,’ he said. ‘It just depends on the amount. That ticket, I need it. You understand? And when Jackie stabbed Alan, he crossed a line.’

  ‘He stabbed someone?’

  That piercing gaze again.

  ‘My nephew, not a bright boysm, see, but mine. Said a well-dressed bloke in a balaclava and with a fancy car did it. How many people like that you know on the Edge, hmm?

  ‘When?’

  ‘Early this morning, very early.’

  ‘Not Jackie,’ I said. ‘Jackie was with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘St Jude’s.’

  ‘Got religion, have you?’ Said as a sneer.

  ‘No, we were looking for your bloody ticket. Larry had a locker there – we had to break in. So Jackie can’t have stabbed anyone, he was with me.’

  Mick stared at me. Then he closed his eyes and pushed himself off my desk, righting his scooter, and I heard it complain as he reversed it away from the desk.

  ‘Boysm,’ he said, ‘let him go.’ The pressure released from my arm and I let out a sigh. There’s nothing quite like the relief of pain stopping. I turned round, rubbing my shoulder joint, and sat on the edge of my desk. The twins stood uncomfortably close to me on either side.

  ‘You believe me then?’ I said, hoping he couldn’t see I wasn’t quite telling the truth.

  Mick stared at me. His eyes were far too small for his face but it didn’t make them any less intense. Instead, it seemed to increase their intensity, like his head was a satellite dish and the eyes were its focus, scanning you.

  ‘You sound convincing,’ he said. Then he tapped a finger on the steering stalk of the scooter and pursed his thin lips. ‘But you, Malachite Jones, what about you, eh?’ He coughed, and spat something out the door then turned back to me. ‘You lie for a living, don’t you?’ He sat up straight on his scooter. ‘So, best just to make sure of the truth, eh? Tell me where to find Jackie and I’ll talk with him.’

  Jackie would say tell him, I knew that. Jackie would say, ‘Don’t be a twat, Mal, I can deal with Mick Stanbeck.’ And he could, I had no doubt about that. If Mick Stanbeck turned up at one of Jackie’s hidey holes with his boys, intending Jackie harm, then either Jackie would walk away and Mick and the twins would never be seen again, or vice versa. There could be no in-between if you turned up intending violence against Jackie Singh Khattar. His world was simple in that way, and he had an unerring sense for when people really meant it.

  ‘I genuinely don’t know where Jackie is,’ I said.

  Mick nodded slowly to himself.

  ‘I’m disappointed in you, Malachite.’ He wheezed the words. ‘You had me going with that church story, you really did.’ He grinned, as if acknowledging a worthy opponent.

  ‘I really don’t know where he is,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let’s find out. Boysm, break his fingers.’

  Before I could speak the twins moved, each grabbed my wrist on their side, pinning my hand to the desk.

  ‘Which one, Da?’ they said in unison.

  Mick wrinkled his nose. He leaned forward on the handlebars of his scooter.

  When he spoke he sounded almost apologetic.

  ‘I just need to know, Malachite, I’m sure you understand.’ He turned his face away from me. ‘He’s right-handed, boysm, so?’

  ‘We start with the left, Da,’ they said in unison.

  ‘Good boysm,’ he said.

  I was about to say ‘no,’ and indulge myself in a bit of useless begging when we were interrupted.

  ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’

  I’m not usually glad to see the police, but on this occasion I made an exception. DI Esther Smith stood, round in the doorway, and behind her the ever-present dolorous shadow of DC Sarah Harrington. The twins let go of my hands and took a step away from me as their father turned around.

  ‘DI Smith,’ he said. ‘I was just having a friendly chat with Mr Jones – he’s an old acquaintance of mine.’

  ‘Really?’ she raised an eyebrow. Then squeezed past Mick’s scooter so she could get into the shop. ‘Mick, if you’re looking for Mal’s friend in connection with what happened to your nephew, then I can save you some time. It wasn’t him.’

  ‘You sound very sure, DI Smith,’ he said. ‘Does that mean you have a name for me?’

  She leaned over, braving his breath without so much as a wrinkle on her forehead.

  ‘If I had a name, I wouldn’t give it to you, would I, eh?’

  Mick grinned at her, it wasn’t a nice grin.

  ‘But while your boy was being stabbed, Jackie Singh Khattar was with him’ – she nodded at me – ‘acting very suspiciously around St Jude’s – we have them on CCTV.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m here about Jackie?’ he wheezed. I noticed his wheezing became much worse when the DI was within earshot.

  ‘Have I ever struck you as stupid, Mick?’ she said.

  Any semblance of a smile fell from Mick’s face.

  ‘Sadly not, Detective Inspector,’ he said, and placed his hands on the handlebars of his scooter. ‘Come on, boysm,’ he glanced over his shoulder at the twins. ‘I’m sure we’ll get a chance to speak to Mr Jones another time.’

  DI Smith watched as Mick left, his scooter struggling under his weight. Then she watched as the twins passed her and once DC Harrington gave her the nod from the doorway. DI Smith stepped forward.

  ‘Where is he?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who?’ she shook her head. ‘Fucking hell, Malachite. Jackie, that’s who. Where is he?’

  ‘I thought you knew he didn’t stab Mick’s nephew.’

  ‘That’s what I told Mick so he didn’t finish doing whatever he was about to do t
o you. But we only have witnesses for you going into St Jude’s, no CCTV – that was a lie. Alan was stabbed at five this morning – there was plenty of time for your mate to do it. I can’t keep that secret forever.’

  ‘Is that a threat, DI Smith?’

  She sighed. ‘No, Malachite, it is just the way things are.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  She stared at me, letting silence settle in the office, an uncomfortable quilt covering us all. If she hoped I’d speak because I was uncomfortable, then she was wrong. I’d been ready to have my fingers broken to protect Jackie. Social awkwardness was a breeze.

  ‘He’s going to get you killed, you know, Malachite.’

  ‘No one calls me that.’ I snapped those words out at her. Fear of the truth masquerading as annoyance.

  ‘Jackie is a hard man, and you are not. He will take you into places you are not prepared for if you don’t do something about it.’ She paused, then added, ‘Mal.’

  I stared at her. Knew she probably spoke the truth. I’d heard the same from Beryl enough times.

  ‘I just need to talk to him.’

  ‘Jackie’s firm put in the security system in St Jude’s. Last night we went to test it – we were there all night. Canon Armitage will confirm this.’ DI Smith stared at me and I wondered if she knew I was lying.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You are desperate for him to be guilty, aren’t you?’

  ‘Tell him why, boss,’ said DC Harrington. ‘He likes to think he’s a good guy. So tell him why.’

  DI Smith glanced over her shoulder at DC Harrington, licked her lips. Then turned back to me. ‘If it wasn’t Jackie, Mal, it was the Russians. They’ve always had some sort of agreement going with Mick, kept things sweet. But something changed recently. Relations aren’t as convivial now.’ I made a mental note to try ‘convivial’ on the twins next time they came to hurt me. ‘Now, if I can work out that the Russians are making a move on Mick Stanbeck, then he can too, cos he might stink, but he’s not stupid. And someone is going to make a move soon, a serious one, and there will be blood on the streets. It won’t all be scumbags, Mal, will it? There’ll be innocent people getting caught up in it all. So, if Jackie is involved, or if he isn’t, and you are the good guy you like to imagine you are, tell me where he is.’

  She waited. And I waited. And DC Harrington waited and looked miserable about it, but that was normal for her. Truthfully, I wasn’t too happy about any of this either.

  ‘I genuinely, do not know where he is,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mal.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She waited a while before she answered this time.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, and took a card from her bag and held it out. ‘Here’s my number. You can get me at any time.’

  I nodded and took the card from her, then watched her leave. When she had gone, I picked up the phone on my desk and punched in a different mobile number. Got Jackie’s answering machine.

  ‘Ring me,’ I said. ‘What the fuck have you got me into?’

  15

  I met Jackie at a little café that did a nice line in coffee and toast that was far too expensive for what you got, but Jackie liked the guy who served the coffee, so we went there a lot. I tended to sit quietly while Jackie flirted.

  He put down a black coffee in front of me.

  ‘Sugar?’ he said.

  ‘Just black, you know that.’

  ‘You can punish yourself too much, you know,’ he said.

  I shrugged, picked up the coffee and burned my mouth taking a sip. I didn’t let the pain show.

  ‘It’s less likely to burn you if you give it a while, or add some milk,’ said Jackie. He sat and stirred two sachets of sugar into his latte with chocolate sprinkles. Usually I’d have smiled at him, but the mood between us was a little tense. Or I thought it was tense, I’m not sure Jackie was aware. Sometimes he seemed to think everything was amusing, mostly when it was going to annoy me. After explaining that the city was on the edge of a gang war, seemingly because of this lottery ticket he’d got me involved in, and that both Mick Stanbeck and DI Smith were looking for him, he’d nodded and said, ‘I’d best keep away from your place for a while then.’ Which was possibly the least reassuring answer he could have given me.

  ‘I want out of this, Jackie,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a possibility now.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘And think about Janine Stanbeck’s kid. Do it for him – you might not like her, but this money could get them both off the Edge.’

  ‘I do want to help the kid,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want my fingers broken or cut off by Russians, or to be dead.’

  ‘It’s all bluff, Mal.’ He grinned, split another packet of sugar with his thumbnail and poured it into his drink. ‘They know if they hurt you, then I’d come after them.’ He picked up another sachet of sugar.

  ‘I’m not sure they’re as scared of you as you think they are, Jackie.’

  He put the sugar down.

  ‘They should be,’ he said, and he smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  ‘You didn’t stab Alan Stanbeck, did you, Jackie?’

  ‘You know the answer to that.’

  ‘I need you to tell me, Jackie.’ He stared at me and I leaned forward. ‘Look, you’ve pulled me into something far bigger than I am, and I think I might be drowning. This is dangerous, terrifying. A murder and now an attempted murder.’ Jackie just stared at me. ‘Just tell me you didn’t do it.’

  ‘You know me, Mal.’ He laughed, sat back. Grinned. Then he said quietly. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you, Mal. You know that.’

  I spun my coffee cup round on its saucer. There was a small stain on it where it hadn’t been washed up properly.

  ‘Please tell me it wasn’t you, Jackie. Just say it.’

  Something happened to his face, what was usually there, the mask of control, vanished. For a second, I saw the face of a boy I’d known so many years ago, terrified as the police dragged him out of school and the whisper went round he’d been arrested for murder.

  Jackie stood.

  ‘Fuck you, Malachite Jones,’ he said, and walked out.

  The guy serving the coffees looked kind of relieved that Jackie had left, but I felt lost. I didn’t know what to do, and now I had no one to not do it with. I felt bad too, because, of course, he didn’t do it. Jackie was a weapon, you aimed him, or more often he aimed himself, but he did it for a reason. He wouldn’t knife some low-level thug unless they had come at him, and then he’d be proud of it. If he had a problem with Mick Stanbeck, he’d take it straight to Mick Stanbeck.

  I knew all this.

  Sometimes, when we’re scared, we do stupid things.

  I walked. When I feel like everything is too much, it is what I do. I drove back to my shop and then walked around the little row of buildings until I was in the woods at the back. They weren’t big, but they were old and full of huge trees. It made you feel like you’d escaped the real world, even if you could still hear the cars on the road. It was rare to meet anyone in the wood apart from the odd dog walker, with whom I would exchange nothing but a smile or a curt hello. I felt safe here. I’d told Jackie that once. I needed solitude, and it was the nearest place to get it. My shop had been visited too many times by people who scared me in the last few days. I needed space. I liked woods too; the smell of old leaves as they dissolved into earth, the way the trees filtered the sun into a cool gloom shot through with dappled clearings where grass grew as thick and soft as moss, kept short by the deer that managed, miraculously, to live so near a city, the only proof of their existence was the odd corpse left after an unfortunate coming together of nature and motor vehicle.

  I saw a deer once in these woods.

  When I was at my worst, I’d often bring cheap drink and drugs here. One morning, when the mist was rising and the sun and moon still shared the sky, I’d woken to find a stag stood ov
er me. A prince of the forest. He looked down at me and snorted, then spun around and vanished into the mist, leaving me wondering if he was a hallucination caused by withdrawal. I’d wanted to chase him, to follow him into the forest, and I was sick enough, then, to believe that if I did, I would somehow escape my life to somewhere better. But after a few steps the voices started, telling me I wasn’t worth something better, and the veins in my arms started to itch, and I forgot the stag and started my long walk back toward Blades Edge to feed my habit.

  I wondered if I’d see a stag today. Probably not; the wood was far busier than usual. Young mothers forcing buggies with squalling babies along root-rutted paths, joggers leaving the scent of sweat hanging in the still air as they passed. This wasn’t the place I needed to be. There were too many people. I needed a quiet place away from everyone. A thin track headed off the main path and deeper into the wood. I was about to take it when I heard a voice.

  ‘Mal Jones?’

  I turned. A moment of confusion as I tried to place the face of the man I was looking at and who was looking back at me. He was wearing grey jogging pants and a grey top, his hair was slicked with sweat and his face red with effort. He ran on the spot, holding a phone in one hand, the cord of his earphones swinging as he waited for me to recognise him. But he wasn’t of this place and my mind was struggling to sort him into where he fitted in my life.

  ‘Callum Callaghan,’ I said, as the memory of him arguing with his father in the scrapyard surfaced.

  ‘You didn’t recognise me?’

  ‘No, well yes, it just took a moment, faces out of places, you know?’

  He looked confused then grinned. ‘You mean you didn’t expect to see me here?’

  ‘Yes, have you run all the way from the Edge?’

  He shook his head, slowed his jogging on the spot and walked alongside me.

  ‘No, I’m not that dedicated. I drove here. I’d heard it was a good place to run.’