‘An old man, though, Jimmy…’
‘Young, old, does it bloody matter?’ Jimmy snarled. ‘We got the money, didn’t we? You’re a rich man, so stop your moaning. It’s not my fault that he decides to check out the place when no one else has bothered checking it out properly for donkey’s years, is it? He wasn’t supposed to be there. We were given a guarantee.’
Callum eyed his younger brother, but didn’t say anything.
‘Now we got a man dead, too,’ said Brody, dropping the paper to the table. ‘And all because you can’t keep your bloody temper in check. You know we could all hang for this?’ There was a distinct tremor in his voice.
‘I was asked to dig a bloody tunnel and provide transport, nothing more,’ said Spud.
‘No one’s going to hang,’ said Callum.
‘Murder and kidnapping,’ said Spud. ‘There’s a bloody woman locked downstairs, in case anyone has forgotten.’
‘It’s only kidnapping if she’s found,’ said Jimmy.
They all looked to Callum.
‘You were a bloody fool, Jimmy,’ hissed Callum, knowing he’d been put in a difficult position by his brother’s actions.
‘What are we going to do about her, Callum?’ said Brody. ‘She knows who we are, and I reckon she even heard our names being called. It’s a bloody mess!’
‘What? You’re going to kill her, too?’ said Spud. He shook his head. ‘No way. Like I said, I dig and I drive and no more.’
‘Tough,’ said Callum. ‘Things have changed.’ He glowered at Jimmy. ‘You want out? Is that what you’re saying, Spud? You want to kiss goodbye to your twenty thousand?’
All eyes were on Spud now. He lowered his gaze. ‘I ain’t saying that, am I?’
‘So have you got any better ideas?’ said Callum.
‘But murdering that young thing, Callum…’ Spud returned. ‘There’s got to be another way round this.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Jimmy. He casually tore a strip off a newspaper and folded it. ‘If you are all too scared, I’ll do it. It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Shut your mouth, Jimmy,’ said Callum.
‘I’ve done it once already.’ Jimmy’s eyes were glassy and round as he studied the thin strip of paper. He tore it to pieces.
Callum grabbed his brother by the hair and yanked him to his feet. Jimmy yelped in pain and struggled to break free. ‘Christ, Callum, let me go! It bloody hurts, you bastard!’
Callum stared fiercely into his brother’s eyes. ‘You think it’s fun, killing a man like that? Something you can do easily, without giving it a second thought?’
‘I never said that, Callum…’ he said, pain wrinkling his face.
‘You’re sick, Jimmy, that’s what you are!’ Callum said, releasing him. ‘You think your mam would like to know she brought up a monster?’
‘I ain’t no monster,’ Jimmy scowled, rubbing his tingling scalp and glancing at the others in embarrassment. ‘I’m just being sensible, that’s all. Sensible and practical.’
‘Practical…’ sniffed Callum. ‘You little moron.
‘We could pay her off,’ said Spud hopefully. ‘Hell, we’ve got enough money.’
‘That ain’t gonna work and you know it,’ said Brody. ‘We killed her husband. You think money’s gonna be enough to make her forget that?’ He looked up at Callum. ‘We’re in this mess whether we like it or not. Callum’s right; things have changed. We can’t alter what happened.’
Jimmy stared daggers at his brother. His embarrassment at being shown up in front of the others was burning a hole in his cheeks, his neck flaming red with it. ‘Yeah, accidents happen. So what are we gonna do, Callum?’ Jimmy asked, knowing the question was causing his brother considerable unease and relishing it.
‘She’s got to go,’ Callum replied stonily, turning away from them and looking out of the window again.
‘When?’ said Brody.
‘Hang on…’ said Spud hurriedly. ‘Can’t we wait?’
‘Wait?’ said Jimmy. ‘Till what, another solution comes from nowhere?’
‘I’m saying we don’t rush in, that’s what I’m saying,’ said Spud.
‘Did you do like I told you with her husband?’ said Callum.
‘Yeah. The boggy patch the other side of the farmhouse. He’s buried in there,’ said Tom. ‘No one will find him in a hurry.’
Callum stroked his chin. He needed a shave, he thought. This place had no hot water, and a well outside for the cold. Everyone had orders not to light a fire in case anyone saw the smoke from the chimney, and the only source of heat they had was a small primus stove for cooking on. He hated the cold and he hated being dirty, but he guessed the price was small set against the prize. ‘Leave the girl to me,’ he said. ‘Where’s Angelo?’
‘Angelo is still asleep in bed,’ said Spud. ‘That damn Italian could sleep through a bloody barrage.’
‘Wake him up and bring his arse down here,’ said Callum.
Brody shoved away his chair and rose from the table. ‘I don’t trust the damn Eyetie,’ he grumbled. ‘He’s a strange one. Keeps himself to himself too much for my liking. Sleeps too long as well. It ain’t natural.’
‘He’s the best safe-cracker I know,’ said Callum. ‘Which is why I don’t care if he sleeps his bloody life away and doesn’t talk to a single one of us. Without him, it would have been impossible to break the combinations on those safes.’
‘They switch sides too easily as well,’ noted Spud. ‘You can’t trust Italians.’
‘You haven’t got a choice,’ said Callum. ‘Just get him down here for me.’
Brody grumbled and left the room. They heard his boots clattering hollowly on the bare wooden stairs as he went upstairs to rouse the Italian.
‘I think I can hear screaming from the cellar,’ said Jimmy, a faint smile on his lips. ‘You want me to see to her?’
‘I’ll go down soon,’ said Callum. ‘No one can hear her so she can yell as much as she likes. She’ll soon shut up when she gets tired.’
Brody came back into the room, a tall, thin young man with a mass of tousled black hair staggering behind him, squinting as if the dim light were unduly bright.
‘What?’ said the Italian.
‘You didn’t hear the gunshot, Angelo?’ said Brody.
‘Gunshot? I hear no gunshot. What gunshot you mean?’
Angelo Abramco spoke English with a very strong Italian accent. He now stood before them wearing only his baggy long-Johns and a confused expression.
‘We’ve got a problem, Angelo,’ Callum said. ‘A man’s been shot and killed outside. By Jimmy here.’
Abramco rubbed his eyes, his hands travelling from them down his face and off the end of his unshaven chin. ‘Killed?’
‘An accident,’ Callum said.
‘Who was he?’
‘Just a hiker as far as we can tell. But we’ve got another problem. His wife is downstairs in the cellar.’
The Italian nodded slowly. ‘That’s a problem.’
‘She needs to go. You understand what I’m saying?’
‘I understand,’ he replied, chewing as if digesting the words.
‘Can you do it for me?’
Abramco looked at the rank of faces staring at him. ‘Sure, boss. I can do it. When you want it? Now?’
‘No, not yet. I want to question her first, see who knows she’s here.’
‘Okay, boss,’ he said. ‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all, Angelo,’ said Callum.
‘Can I go back to bed now?’
‘Sure,’ said Callum.
Abramco shuffled out of the room, scratching his backside as he went.
‘So you trust an Eyetie over me?’ said Jimmy, sounding miffed.
‘I trust anyone over you. Let’s say, he’s already a man of some experience.’
‘Jesus, Callum,’ said Spud, looking down at the table, his face pale.
‘You got something to say, Spud?’ said Callum.
<
br /> Spud shook his head slowly, almost solemnly.
‘I’m going to check on her,’ said Callum. ‘And if I find you’ve done anything to her, Jimmy, you’re in for it.’
Jimmy Baxter scowled and dragged a cigarette from his pocket. ‘What does it matter? She’s dead anyway.’
Spud got up from the table and moved to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Callum asked.
‘To see to the repairs on the truck,’ Spud returned.
‘You’ve got to get over it, Spud, you hear me?’
‘I hear you, Callum.’
‘That’s a good man. I’m going to put this bloody gun away, Jimmy, and I don’t want you picking the bloody lock to get it out again. You got that?’
Jimmy grunted in the affirmative.
Callum Baxter opened the wooden chest and took the revolver he’d removed from Jimmy’s eager grip, and placed it with the others. There were three more in the bottom of the chest, with plentiful boxes of ammunition, and an ex-army Sten submachine gun. The smell of them, the gun oil, the cold metal, made him feel queasy, reminded him…
He slammed the lid on the weapons. Necessity, maybe, but he hated the blasted things all the same. Had his fill of them in Europe during the war. He looked about him, the bedroom empty except for an old mattress on which he slept, and a piss-pot in the corner of the room which still needed emptying from last night. The wallpaper was peeling off, large brooding clouds of black mould staining the damp walls; the window was small, the glass grey with grime, and the ancient floorboards looked equally grey. The world was starting to look bloody grey, he thought.
He hated having to live like rats, hidden away in this shithole. Being cooped up started to get him all worked up. Reminded him of the last fifteen years he’d spent in prison. Fifteen bloody years. The best part of his young life wiped away. And all because of that bastard Hawthorne.
He turned the key in the lock. Some good that will do, he thought, placing the key in his pocket, what with Jimmy being so adept at picking locks.
Fifteen years. He’d only been demobbed two years. Couldn’t find work, so he made money the only way he knew; the same way he made it before the war – he took stuff that didn’t legally belong to him and sold it on. Didn’t want to follow his old man into the family business; wanted instead to make a name for himself doing something big, something special, dragging himself out of the gutter by his bootlaces and making sure everyone knew the name of Callum Baxter. Doing what, he didn’t quite know, but he knew it wasn’t doing what his old man did. He used to think of his father as some kind of Robin Hood figure, and if you believed the old man, he’d tell you so himself; how he robbed from those that had it and distributed to those that didn’t. He even had a gang of Merry Men, just like in his story books – red-faced with drink after a good night’s takings.
It didn’t take Callum Baxter long to see through his father’s tissue-thin pack of lies. He was a petty crook, turning his hand to whatever made him a bob or two, and he didn’t balk at whether he had to use force to get it. He didn’t much like him beating his mother either, when things weren’t going according to plan, or how quickly he turned his fist on his young son. Then, when things blew over, or his mind sobered, his old man could be all sweetness and light again, buying him presents, toys, footballs, roller skates – anything that made the old bleeder feel happy about himself again. Callum Baxter didn’t want anything to do with the family business – because that’s what his father told him it was – but ended up being dragged into it all the same. As soon as his father could drag him away from school, he was helping out, keeping watch, driving cars, taking his cut of the proceeds and liking the feel of money in his pocket. He bought the loss of his virginity at the age of fourteen. A whore his father knew. His father slapped him on the back when he came out of the bedroom – he hadn’t known he’d been waiting outside the door listening. ‘You made her squeal like a stuck pig, our Callum!’ he said. ‘What the hell have you got between your legs, eh? A rozzer’s truncheon?’
The police – or pigs, rozzers, coppers, bluebottles, or worse – were Callum’s bogeymen for as long as he could remember. His father used to tell such tales about them that as a young boy Callum would be terrified, and yet proud of how his father and his cronies always managed to get the upper hand on their sworn enemies. He’d hated the police for ever. Everyone in their locality did. But as he grew older, Callum Baxter wised up and started to see through the tall tales, and eventually didn’t much care to listen to the bloated tales from his father about how they got the better of the police. He wasn’t about to get embroiled in all that. He wanted something different. Something better. And fortunately for him, war broke out with Germany in September ’39, and by December he’d joined up to go and fight, thinking it would drag him out of his Sheffield backwater and into someplace brighter, more adventurous, more exciting than his father’s petty larceny and GBH. He ended up in foreign backwaters instead. Mired in filth most of the time, hungry mostly, bored to hell for the majority of the time, and living in abject fear during quick, sickening episodes of combat throughout which he almost messed his pants. When he came out of the army, he was much changed. He went in a boy, for one thing, and came out a man. But he was a man scarred by what he’d witnessed, by what he’d had to do in the name of King and Country. And he came out jobless, without a trade to his name except that of a killing machine, and he found himself back in the same city he’d grown up in, the country quickly forgetting its heroes; joining long lines of heroes queuing for the same jobs, except this time not looking so heroic as the country struggled to rebuild itself after the war which had almost crippled it.
That’s when his father drew him back into the family business, which had been doing just fine while the war was on, his old man told him with that same, cheeky-chappie smile that won over the old hags that hung, brightly painted and gin-soaked, onto his arm. He’d done a cracking trade on the black market, he said. Boosted his position in the community no end – and by that, he meant the gangland community. Shame the bloody war had to go and finish, just as he was getting started. But there were always new opportunities for the Baxters, he promised. Baxters and son, he added, clasping the said son around the shoulder.
The family had grown, too. There was a new little Baxter boy now, a brother: little Jimmy, born 1943 during an air raid. As his head popped out, Callum’s mother, it was reported, screamed that she’d tear Hitler’s head off if he didn’t lay off the bloody bombing while she had her baby. Callum’s father was as pleased as punch with the new arrival. He didn’t see him for the first three weeks – he’d been delivering a consignment of knocked-off petrol to someone in Manchester, then picking up fags and booze from someone in Leeds before making some kind of delivery of sugar and salted pork to a bloke in Stockport. He was nothing if not enterprising; Callum had to give him that. So Callum, lured by the smell of money and new clothes – he loved his clothes – agreed to join his father for a time, until he could find something better. But they hadn’t bargained on Hawthorne.
He was a new copper on the beat back then. You could tell early on, he was a force to be reckoned with. Everyone knew the copper was on the way up. He wasn’t bent, for one thing, something you could almost guarantee of all the others if the money was right. Hawthorne was different; he was zealous, on a self-confessed one-man mission to clean up Sheffield of its gangs, its hoodlums, its thugs – ‘The shit on my shoe!’ as Hawthorne put it. Some used to call him The Terrier, on account of the copper not wanting to let go of anything once he had his teeth into it. But he soon acquired another nickname, following a successful raid on a Hillsborough warehouse.
‘Who are you, you bastard?’ the injured criminal said through broken, bloody teeth.
‘Who am I?’ said Hawthorne, laughing coldly. ‘I’ll tell you who I am, sonny; I’m the Archangel Gabriel and you are the devil, and I am come down from heaven to destroy you, that’s who I am!’
Archangel Hawthorne. That’s what they called him.
Callum Baxter’s face crumpled into a mask of hatred at the thought of the copper. Seemed he saw every thug and criminal as a devil or a Nazi and was hell-bent on stamping them out. It was when Hawthorne soon worked out that Callum’s father was at the centre of much of the goings-on in the Sheffield underworld that things went horribly wrong for the Baxter family. Hawthorne set his sights on breaking up his father’s gang.
It was Hawthorne’s fault his father was dead.
It was 1947. Two years after the war. And another war was about to start.
There was no warning what was about to happen. No tip-off like there used to be. Hawthorne came bursting through the Baxters’ front door one night, when everyone was quietly sitting and listening to the radio. Callum Baxter remembered it like it was yesterday. A whole bunch of angry-looking coppers, rushing at them like a black tidal wave, one of them punching Callum in the gut, causing him to collapse breathlessly to the floor. Then another swiping at his head with a truncheon, almost knocking the brains from his head. He remembered hearing his mother screaming, briefly saw her trying to stand in the way of Hawthorne as his father tried to make a break for it out the back door. They barged her out of the way, trampled on her with their great shiny black boots to get at the escaping head of the family.
They got his father eventually, running in his pyjama bottoms and slippers, down the back alley. Beat him to a bloody pulp and arrested him on some trumped-up charge of robbing a bank and firing a gun at one of the cashiers. They took him into custody and that was to be the last Callum Baxter would ever see of his father, because that’s where he died.
Callum Baxter’s blood began to boil, even fifteen years after the fact. There was no full explanation given as to how it happened. His father died of a heart attack was the official line, but everyone could see how badly beaten up he’d been. His old man had refused to talk, thought Callum; refused to name names in return for his freedom, and he paid the price for it.
The young Callum was distraught. So he hated aspects of his father, but he was still his father after all. And the way the rozzers treated his mother added fuel to his already blazing desire for revenge. He put out calls among his father’s cronies and contacts for information as to where Hawthorne lived. They came up trumps. Seemed they wanted Hawthorne out of the way, too. Then Callum took out the German Lugar he’d brought with him as a souvenir of his time in Berlin and said goodbye to his mother. She knew something was wrong, the way mothers often do, maybe reading his intentions in the intense look in his eyes. She knew there would be trouble. She urged him not to go out that night. He said he had to go: he had business to attend to.
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