The clothes went under the duvet. She was dressed in four.
Mary threw back the bedclothes and stood up quickly, flicking her brunette ponytail. She was prettier than I’d anticipated. Her pale skin had a hint of rouge in the cheeks that brought out the blue in her eyes. She looked like a bargain-bin Zooey Deschanel, with the emphasis on bargain. The small point of her chin jutted in my direction, her expression defiant.
She wore the dress even better than she wore looks of defiance. It clung to her curves like it had been super-glued on, rather than thrown on in a hurry. She folded her arms tightly over her breasts, forming a deep cleavage.
It was easy to see why Gupta would risk it all for her.
My brother turned around, puckered his lips, and let out a massive breath like he’d been gut punched. If we’d been in a nightclub, my brother would have been chatting her up by now – using his special seduction technique of lewd comments disguised as chat-up lines and plying her with the cheapest alcohol that his money could buy.
Instead, he took a light grip of her arm and led her from the room. Mary glimpsed over her shoulder at Gupta as she left. Her well-groomed eyebrows knitted together in a frown and she gnawed her bottom lip. The door closed behind them.
4. – Owden
LARRY ELDRIDGE’S wide grin looked like it was painful to hold in place. Rivulets of sweat ran down his forehead and formed small reservoirs in his bushy grey eyebrows. Whenever it looked like the dam was about to burst, letting moisture roll into his eyes, his raggedy scarecrow of a wife, Mary, also wearing her best idiot grin, leaned over and wiped him down. Larry was far too terrified to do anything but grin and sweat and occasionally chuckle nervously at Bob Owden for no apparent reason.
Both the husband and wife were dressed in threadbare blue pyjamas and matching dressing gown ensembles. The nightclothes were baggy on their thin frames, although judging by the age of the items they might have fit once. Everything in the living room was equally as shabby and worn out. The beige fabric sofa they were sitting on had holes in the cushions, in places the shagpile carpet was as bald as Larry’s head, and the floral print paper was coming away from the walls in large bubbles.
Bob could see that life had kicked Larry Eldridge around since the day he’d learned to walk. The way he never made eye contact when he talked, his habit of mumbling words into his chest, these were the actions of a man who expected nothing good to happen to him for the rest of his life. Judging by the speed that his chest was rising and falling, he looked like he was about to have a heart attack or stroke at any second. Bob tried to put him at ease:
“Nobody’s here to cause any trouble.”
Larry grinned and let out a slow Geiger counter laugh. Eventually he just about managed to nod his head.
Bob and Jimmy Raffin sat in tattered armchairs on either side of the sofa and supped weak tea. Occasionally they exchanged glances over the rims of their mugs. Bob leaned forward and picked a chocolate digestive off a dusty glass coffee table that formed the centrepiece of the room. Like everything else in the house, the biscuit had seen better days. The chocolate coating had melted at some point and the digestive felt soft. He nibbled the stale biscuit, chewed until it was palatable and finally swallowed. It needed a big swig of tea to weigh it down and ensure it wouldn’t come back up. He coughed a couple of times. “Owt you can remember about that night, lad. It all helps.”
“Just what I told the police,” Larry said through his grin.
Bob looked at Jimmy, who rolled his eyes and shook his head. The look said, I told you so, but Larry saw it as distrust and fresh leaks trickled down his face. “I’m not lying, Mr Owden.”
“Call me Bob.”
“I’m not lying, Mr… er, Bob.”
“Nobody said you were, lad.”
Larry’s grin broadened, but Bob noticed it would take only the slightest of pushes to make it crumple and turn into tears. The cruel part of him wanted to toy with the man, to bring about that mental collapse, but the pragmatic part wanted to get to the bottom of the Hollis Haulage conundrum. “Them lads you saw, were they black lads?”
Gerald Maxwell’s friends were black and the men Hollis had killed a couple of years before were also black. Jimmy had suggested that it was probably a revenge thing, that they should start shaking up Teesside’s black criminals for the culprits, but Bob refused to take anything at face value. Until he knew for certain that it was about revenge he wasn't going to start breaking heads. He already had enough on his plate without a turf war with 'Uncle' Jack Samson.
“Think carefully,” Bob added.
“They could’ve been bla… er… coloured lads,” Larry said through his stupid yellow grin, “but it was too far away to tell, sir. And it was very dark.”
“Is there owt you can tell me, lad? However minor it might seem. Any detail that you might not have been able to tell the police?”
Larry stopped grinning and assumed his best thinking pose, rubbing his chin and narrowing his eyes. Bob wasn’t sure if it was real or an affectation, like the grin, but Larry stayed this way for a while, in complete silence. He closed his eyes and seemed to be running the night’s events through the video recorder in his head. After an interminable delay his eyes snapped open and he smiled, this time more naturally. “Either two of the men were very tall or the bloke in the middle was a complete short-arse.”
Bob stood at his full six-one. “My height?”
Larry shook his head. “Taller.”
“You sure?”
Larry nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Owt else?”
“Yeah, the one in the middle was carrying a bloody great holdall.”
5. – Stanton
I PRODDED my mobile phone screen and looked at the two pictures I’d taken. Thanks to the flash, they’d come out well; it was obvious who was in the picture and what they were doing.
Gupta watched me quietly and ran a hand over his shaved head. Despite the fact that he was only in his forties he looked a lot older. His heavy jowls were disguised with a salt-and-pepper beard, but there was nothing he could do about the dark bags that drooped beneath his eyes, or the huge pores that pitted his wrinkled skin. Gupta’s appearance wasn’t helped by fact that weighed close to twenty stone and his naked body bulged and folded in all the wrong places.
Gupta struggled to sit upright, then asked me for his clothes. I removed a mobile phone and some car keys from his pockets and threw him the suit and shirt. He grimaced, hissed, and perspired as he struggled with his shirt and trousers.
Mary must have really done some damage.
As soon as he was on his feet, Gupta cradled his crotch and took several tottering steps around to the right of the bed, then lowered himself slowly onto the mattress. Bottom lip trembling, fresh tears leaked from his eyes. I figured it had more to do with the pain than his predicament. As soon as he was comfortable, Gupta angled his gaze in my direction. “What’re you gonna do with those pictures?”
“You’ve got a brain, you figure it out.”
“Look, I can’t cancel the contract. Eddie’ll fuckin’ kill me.”
“Then your wife and the local Hindu community are gonna see some very interesting images of you. Tell me again, what’s the Dharmic view on rimming, especially when not performed by your wife?”
Gupta sighed. “Unfavourable.”
“Then you know what to do.”
“Look, I can’t. Eddie’s a fuckin’ psycho.”
“Were you involved in slicing up Emily McGarvey the other week?”
Gupta’s face darkened and he shook his head rapidly. He tried to jerk upright but pain made him rethink that strategy. He lay back and whimpered. “That’s what I’m talking about, for fucksakes. The guy’s fucked in the head. Kiddies are well outta order. Look, I might be a bit of a bastard, and I might bang the odd fit girl every once in a while behind me wife’s back, but that’s as bad as it gets. I draw the line at hurting women and kids.”
“Was Mc
Garvey involved?”
Lines formed around Gupta’s narrowed eyes and his mouth tightened. “Fuck, no. That was his daughter. The guy’s a dodgy car dealer not a head case. Where the fuck d’you get off even asking that?”
“Because no doubt Eddie gave him his money back.”
“Did he shite. Eddie’s still got the cash.”
“Why?”
My heart began to race. If Eddie still had the money it meant there was a way to get it back, to get him out into the open and make him pay for slicing up Emily McGarvey. A plan started forming in my head, but it was vague, without shape, like a room at night. I could see the silhouettes but the details were obscured.
“Because he wants McGarvey to jump through hoops for him,” Gupta said.
“How?”
Gupta gave me a smile of yellow-toothed malice. “McGarvey’s telling people that it was youse two that broke into Rose’s place and slashed them up.”
“What?”
My heart stopped beating for a split-second.
Gupta’s grin widened. “And Rose is backing the story up.”
Sweat itched its way through my skin and ran down the gulley of my spine. I wiped at my forehead and my hand came back damp and cold. My legs felt rubbery, so I leaned back against the wall to stop myself from collapsing. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, looking up at Patel. I didn’t feel quite so cocky any more.
It seemed like Eddie was making plans of his own. He knew that people who hurt kids were deemed the lowest of the low and that it was difficult for them to hide. Nobody would want to be associated with us if word of this spread, even if they didn’t believe it. The few friends we had would quickly walk away or, worse, try and sell us out.
Gupta pushed himself into an upright seated position against the headboard. He assumed an expression of mock concern, but could barely suppress his grin. “Oh dear, you don’t look so good, mate. Maybe you should go somewhere and rest up?”
I got to my feet and tried to appear unfazed, but didn’t do a very good job.
“Did you know that Bob Owden went to see Rose in hospital?” Gupta said, smirking.
Then he laughed, each giggle interspersed with hisses of pain. “I think you can guess what she had to say. None of it woulda been good, right? McGarvey sez he thinks Bob’s gonna put a hit out on you, which means it’s fuckin’ open season. Every hitman from all four corners of Europe are gonna come flocking here looking for a piece of you. With more than a hundred grand on your fuckin’ heads, I doubt they’ll be choosy about the pieces they decide to take. You pair of doyles have just signed your own fuckin’ death warrants.”
Robert Owden ran Teesside. And if you got on his wrong side, you were fucked on all sides. He was an ex-bouncer turned gang boss turned ‘legitimate’ businessman. Despite the legal front, Bob still had fingers in every dodgy pie in the area. Drugs, prostitution, illicit fights involving humans or animals, gambling, stolen goods, smuggling, if you wanted to be a criminal you did it on Owden’s terms and paid him his dues. And woe be-fucking-tide you if you didn’t pay up.
We were in big trouble if what Gupta said was true. We’d crossed paths with Bob once, and once only, and that was more than enough. That time it cost us a beating and some broken bones. The next time he said it would cost us a lot more than that. If we were being set up then we’d have to work really hard to stay alive, and even harder if we wanted to come out of this with more than the clothes on our backs.
“I’d stop laughing if I was you,” I said.
Gupta’s amusement was annoying. I was supposed to be running things here, not the other way around.
He sneered. “Or what?”
I took Gupta’s phone out of my pocket and looked for his wife’s number. I held up the display so he could see that I’d found it.
“Or I send your missus a picture of you being tromboned.”
Gupta’s laugh died in his throat. He pulled at his shirt collar until one of the buttons popped, went flying, and bounced off the skirting board, but he was too worried to notice. “If she sees that she’ll fuckin’ divorce us, like.”
“Good.”
“Seriously, fuckin’ swear down, I’ll do anything but drop the contract. I can’t, man. Eddie’ll cut me fuckin’ babymakers off. You want money? I’ll fuckin’ give you it, but if you send that picture she’ll ruin me.”
There were rumours that the money for Patel’s chain of 24/7 corner shops and his property portfolio came from his wife’s side of the family, which would mean serious trouble for him in a divorce. Gupta may have built Patel’s into the moneymaking empire that it was, but a good divorce lawyer would tear his claims apart and put most of the business in the hands of his wife and two young children. A good divorce lawyer would also find a way to highlight his criminal tendencies. Gupta wasn’t stupid enough to want to go through that.
“Then you better start doing what I want.”
I took Patel’s wallet out of my pocket and looked inside. It contained two hundred quid in twenties, two debit cards and three credit cards. I took out the money and put it in my pocket. I held the cards up where Patel could see them. “Pin numbers.”
“Oh, come on…”
“Shut the fuck up. Either give up those pin numbers now or I’ll make sure your wife takes that little dick of yours in the divorce settlement.”
Gupta gave up the same pin number for all five cards and fell silent. I tapped the numbers into my phone and put it back in my pocket. “And you will take that contract off us, or these pictures go to your wife.”
A grimace creased Gupta’s face. He looked ready to burst into tears at any second. “Look, there’s another grand in Mary’s bedside table. Here, take it,” he said, opening the drawer. He pulled a wad of notes out and threw it in my direction, where it scattered at my feet.
I crouched down, gathered up the notes, put them in my pocket. “Very sneaky,” I said, tutting. “Trying to get that past me.”
“Consider it a good day’s work,” he said bitterly.
“Call off your hit,” I said. “And make a show of it.”
“Why?”
“Because I want Eddie angry – angry enough for him to act on instinct, and forget how fuckin’ dangerous we are. I want you to make him meet you somewhere out of the way, somewhere dark and private.”
“I don’t want any part of this,” he said.
“Too late, dickhead. You already are part of it.”
“And you’ll delete those pics?”
“Once it’s over.”
He hung his head and shrugged. “Fine, whatever.”
“Now get up.”
I walked over to the bed and dragged him to his feet. He yelped and cupped his crotch with both hands. Gupta took deep, hissing breaths as I pushed him ahead, bundling him through the bedroom door. He made his way towards the stairs with faltering footsteps.
“Where we going?”
“Downstairs. Gonna tie you and your girl together, so you’ve at least got some company. Come on.”
He took the stairs one careful step at a time, and every time his foot landed the impact made him shudder and squeak. “I think I need to see a doctor.”
“If you don’t shut the fuck up you’ll need a doctor for more than just a sprained cock.”
6. – Stanton
WE TIED Gupta and his girlfriend together so that they were sitting back-to-back on the floor of the living room, adjacent to the TV. We turned it on, so they had something to keep them entertained. It wouldn’t be long before Gupta’s bodyguards started wondering where he was. Once they realised he was out of contact, they’d break speed limits to rescue him.
As we left, I heard Mary mumbling angry noises through her gag, turning her head towards Patel. He tried to murmur a reply but she increased the volume and droned over him. Judging by the anger in her tone, I didn’t expect the relationship to last the night.
We stopped at the first cash machine we came across and use
d the cards. The pin number worked on all five. Gupta had jacked up the cash limit on the credit cards to five hundred a pop, so we managed to walk away from the machine with seventeen hundred and fifty quid. Gupta wasn’t wrong; at just shy of three grand it hadn’t been a bad day’s work.
But that didn’t mean it had been a good day.
“I want you to take me over to Wynyard,” I said.
My brother’s gloved hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Why?”
“I wanna see Rose.”
He gritted his teeth. “What good’ll that do?”
“I dunno.”
He brought the vehicle to a stop and turned off the engine. Thick streaks of rain slashed at the windscreen and played loud percussion on the car roof. Rivers of rubbish-strewn water ran along the gutters and formed lagoons in the road. With the exception of one lone man in a long raincoat, struggling to keep his umbrella upright, the street was deserted. Nobody wanted to be out in this shit, and who could blame them?
My brother’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel, but I couldn’t hear them over the thump of the rain. He turned in my direction.
“I think we need to run.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“I thought you said we should stick around and hit everybody. I thought you wanted to make Eddie pay for what he did to Rose’s kid?”
“That was then.”
“Not even two weeks ago…”
“But this is fuckin’ now,” he said, cutting me off.
My brother wasn’t the smartest man on the planet – hell, he’d give most village idiots a run for their money – but he knew enough to know when we were in trouble. If Rose and her Ex were trying to put ideas about our guilt in Bob Owden’s head, we were in serious strife. I needed to know if it was the truth or Gupta’s idea of a joke, the kind that’s about as funny as a stand-up at a Royal variety show.
My brother leaned back in his seat. “We’ve got enough to run.”
The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Page 4