I considered my options quickly. I knew I could use Rose’s anger to my advantage if I played it right. Then I saw my opportunity.
“You know Bob can’t kill me, right?”
Rose frowned. She began shaking again, her finger tightening around the trigger.
“I’ve still got that footage of Bob’s stooge Hollis cutting up G-Max’s corpse. I can fuckin’ bury him with that shit. If that video gets out, and somebody starts looking hard enough into Hollis’ affairs they’ll find Bob’s name. They’ll know he paid the police to make this go away. Even if he doesn’t go to prison, it’ll fuckin’ ruin him. The pigs on his payroll will fall over themselves to sell him out and save their bacon.”
Rose closed her eyes, breathed deeply and exhaled.
“If I have to show that footage to Bob he might not kill me, but you and Jimmy’d be fair game. Right now, he thinks Hollis is dead because of what he did a few years ago; revenge over a couple of guys Hollis rubbed out and buried on the moors. When he finds out his stooge is dead and he’s had to pay off the police because of a robbery you and Jimmy concocted, how long d’you think you’ll last?”
Rose shuffled to the edge of the seat. It ran through my mind that she was going to kill me immediately, but at the last minute, she lowered the gun and placed it on the arm of the chair.
“Looks like we’re at an impasse.”
Shaking my head, I said: “Not quite.”
“Why?”
“Tell Bob you were told to lie about us.”
“And why would I do that? For you, especially?”
“Because if you do, I’ll do two things for you.”
“Fix my daughter’s face?”
“No, I...”
“Fix my face?”
“No, I...”
“Then why the fuck should I help you?”
“Because if you do, I’ll get you your money back, less my contribution. More importantly, I’ll put you in a quiet room with Eddie Miles and a knife. And you’ll be the one holding it.”
Rose fidgeted with the hem of her dressing gown, fingers clawing at it with rapid, nervous movements. Then her hands drifted to her knees and kneaded them like dough. “What kind of knife?”
“Whatever you like.”
Her eyes went glassy and thoughtful. I wondered if Rose was running scenarios through her head. An occasional full-body jerk or twitch of hand suggested that she was imagining the moment the knife went in. After all, this was a woman who had stabbed a woman in a prison shower and felt not a moment of remorse. She had murder in mind.
“And I can do anything?”
“Whatever you like. Nobody’s ever gonna find him once this is done, anyway.”
Rose closed her eyes for a few seconds. She opened them again, saying: “And the money?”
“This time we take a hundred off the top. You keep the rest.”
“My ex-husband might have something to say about that.”
“We’ll put such a scare in him he’ll wish he was fuckin’ dead.”
“He didn’t have anything to do with this, you know.”
“I know.”
“He was horrified when he saw Emily’s face.”
“I said I know.”
“So why?”
“Because I don’t like the cunt, that’s why.”
Rose nodded. “If I agree to this, how’d we do it?”
“You ask Owden to take off the hit,” I said.
“And when he inevitably asks why?”
“Tell him somebody forced you to say it was us.”
“He’ll ask who.”
“Stall him.”
“He won’t stall forever.”
“I don’t need forever,” I said. “I need a week, tops.”
“And when he insists?”
“Make something up; like you’re too scared. You’re afraid of getting hurt again.”
Her fingers slowly curled until they became clenched and white-knuckled. She pressed them against her thighs. “And when Eddie hears about this?”
“I want him to hear about it.”
“He’ll come for me.”
I shook my head. “No, he’ll come looking for us.”
Two deep lines furrowed the bridge of her nose. She lowered her face and moved her lips in near silence. Only an occasional sibilant slipped out, but I couldn’t discern their meaning. When she raised her head, she was still scowling, but it was loose, as if she didn’t realise that she was still doing it.
“If you put me in a room with that prick then you’ve got yourself a deal.”
13. – Stanton
I WALKED off Rose’s driveway and out into the street. The rain had stopped, but it still glistened and shimmered on the road and pavements. The air had that cool, freshly washed feel. Enormous uplighted houses glowed behind tall walls and fences. Each building seemed to be larger and more ostentatious than the last, boasting ever more flamboyant architecture.
Wynyard was the kind of estate that footballers, local celebrities, and other wealthy people retreated to when they fancied insulating themselves from wall-to-wall industrial landscapes and the plebs that populate them. It wasn’t the done thing to have the common masses wandering the streets at that time of the morning, so I wasn’t surprised when a small yellow rent-a-cop car did a slow drive-by. I was even less surprised when it pulled up beside me a few minutes later.
A tall, fat man huffed loudly as he squeezed out of the vehicle. His police-style uniform was three sizes too tight and resembled a shiny grey sausage skin. He adjusted the visor of his hat so he could get a better look at me, squinting his eyes like a Poundland Clint Eastwood. He rubbed at his heavily jowled chin.
“What are you doing?” he said in his best menacing whisper.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied.
He stomped towards me in a way that suggested he’d practiced this walk in the mirror for hours on end. A sad, lonely man’s idea of what a tough guy gait should be.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s called walking.”
“Is it now?” His hands went towards a utility belt. He hooked both thumbs under it, letting his fingers hang. “You trying to be clever, son?”
Son? We were probably the same age, and here he was calling me son. Condescending prick. Despite the sudden urge to punch him in the face, I shook my head and smiled. “No. I’m trying to get home.”
“And where might that be?”
“That might be none of your business.”
His fingers wrapped around the belt as he stepped in my direction.
I figured the path of least resistance, the one that would get me to my bed, was to be as pleasant as possible. “Was visiting Rose McGarvey,” I said. “Number twenty-three.”
The guard paused and looked up at the sky, scrunching his face into another narrow-eyed tough guy expression. “Don’t remember asking that,” he said.
What little patience I had was wearing thin, but being polite still seemed like the easiest way to get out of Wynyard, and a lot less risky than putting him on the ground.
“Please phone her,” I said. “She’s still awake. I only just left.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” the guard hissed.
His right hand eased towards a can of pepper spray that had been jerry-rigged to the belt with a plastic ring and he took another step forward. His forefinger brushed the plastic gently. He was almost within spraying distance. There was malice in his gaze.
I forced another smile, because I wanted him to think he had the upper hand, to believe that I was weak and afraid. Complacency was key to getting out of this unharmed. I held my hands aloft and imitated a nervous laugh.
“Why don’t I phone the police?” I said. “They might be able to help us. Far as I’m aware it’s still not an offence to walk along a street at night. Maybe they can jog your memory about that ‘un, like. And while they’re at it, they can also take a look at that fuckin’ child’s Batm
an utility belt you’ve stretched around your gut. Maybe they can point out that illegal can of pepper spray you’re moving for.”
That did it. The fat man’s hand jerked at the can, but his thumb caught in the belt and slowed its progress. I rushed forward and slammed my fist into his gut. The man went oof and folded forward until his face hit my shoulder. His hand was on the can now, but he’d jerry-rigged it too well and couldn’t get it off his belt.
I followed up with a left to the spot where my right fist had been. It landed sweetly, making the man groan. His knees buckled, but I kept him upright. I heard the plastic ring break. He swung his right arm around so he could take aim at my face. I pulled away slightly, grabbed his wrist with my left and angled his arm away from me. He might have been fat but there was some muscle there too, because he was forcing my hand back down.
I pulled my head as far away as I could, but that didn’t stop him from pressing the spray plunger down. The stream missed my face by a good six inches, but I knew the next one would end the fight if I didn’t act quickly.
I drove my knee into the man’s balls. He let out a moan that sounded like whale song. The strength went out of his body and he started to fall. I used my shoulder to keep him upright, grabbed his balls and twisted. His face went through a variety of colour shades on its journey back to ashen grey.
He dropped on his knees, lifted his head, and whimpered. The pepper spray clattered against the pavement and rolled out of reach. He no longer cared about it anyway, his hands were clasping his crotch. A stream of piss travelled down his legs and mingled with the rain on the pavement. He looked down at the stain, shame-faced, his bottom lip quivering.
I geared up to say something witty and incisive when the man began to cry. He snivelled and dribbled down his shirtfront, his body rocking with emotion. Guilt twisted my innards the way a washer women twists a wet towel. This guy was pathetic, snivelling like a smacked toddler, but there was something genuine, and affecting, about his tears. An unbroken line of slobber dangled and swung from his bottom lip. I was so used to beating dealers and other assorted scumbags that I’d forgotten what happens when you pull that kind of shit with regular members of the public, even the officious ones.
I held my palms up. “Look, mate, let’s forget this, alright? It didn’t happen.”
He looked at me through a glaze of tears, and wiped at them with the back of his hands. I extended an open palm towards him. For a second, I thought he was going to dive for the pepper spray and hit me with a dose, but he simply took my hand and got to his feet. His expression was shy. “So, we’ll forget this, then?”
“Like it never happened.”
His mouth hung open for a few seconds, as though he wanted to tell me something important, but didn’t know how. I hoped that it stayed that way, because his life story was the last thing I wanted to hear. All these unbridled emotions were bad for business. If I listened to every sob story doing the rounds the next thing I knew I’d be offering drug dealers therapy and hugging hoodies. I put my hand on his shoulder and said: “Hold that thought. If I see you round, let me know then.”
The relief on his face told its own story, which made me wonder if he had planned to tell me something he’d regret later. I didn’t need to know about his childhood or some other significant moment. This wasn’t a bonding moment, nor a turning point in this man’s life. He wouldn’t change after this experience, except maybe get worse. Revelations that change a leopard’s spots only happen in bad fiction and Hollywood movies. In the real world people just get meaner, their traits intensify, their personalities harden, until the moment they get too old for the world to care and they slip into wrinkled irrelevance. I had no doubt that next time this man came across somebody like me he’d spray their eyes first and ask questions later, if at all. We all pay our meanness forward.
I turned on my heels and started walking. His car door slammed shut and the vehicle started with an asthmatic wheeze. When I glanced back over my shoulder, the car was nothing more than a distant pair of twinkling red lights at the end of the street.
14. – Stanton
EVEN THIS early in the morning, the A19 was loud and busy. Fast moving vehicles kicked up rain spray in both directions. Walking along the ragged grass verge that skirted the road, I stayed as far from the traffic as I could. The engine roar and exhaust fumes were giving me a headache, so I decided to save myself some time by calling a cab.
Ten minutes later, a brightly branded taxi pulled into the hard shoulder and a horn beeped. The passenger window lowered as I approached and an Asian man with a broad Teesside accent asked me where I wanted to go. He watched me with wary eyes as I explained my destination, and seemed reticent about letting me in. It was only when I wafted a fan of notes in his face that he agreed to take me and even then he didn’t seem too happy about it.
I told the driver where exactly I wanted him to drop me, sat back and turned on my phone. I’d received a voicemail. “Er, fuckin’ hate these things,” my brother mumbled. “If you’d answered your fuckin’ phone when I called earlier you’d now know that Thrombo got took to hospital tonight. His lass called us up, screaming like crazy, saying it’s our fault. Apparently a couple of guys came over looking for us. When Thrombo told them he hadn’t seen us in ages, they called him a lying cunt and kicked seven shades outta him. Before they left, they decided to step on his right hand for the sheer fun of it. Pretty badly broken, apparently. His lass sez it looks like some sorta fuckin’ Jeremy Beadle claw, or summat.”
Thrombo was the nickname of our mate Darren. Over the years he’d earned the Thrombosis moniker by being an annoying clot that went around fucking up the system. No job was too big or too small for him to screw up. He was the kind of bloke who could mess up something as simple as telling a couple of bruisers that he wasn’t hiding the Stanton brothers under his stairs. He’d probably mouthed off, or done something equally as stupid.
But he didn’t deserve a kicking for looking out for his mates, and sure as shit didn’t deserve to get his hand broken for it. Thrombosis might have been an idiot, but he was loyal and, compared with most of the cunts in our line of business, a fairly sound bloke.
I made a mental note to visit Thrombo and find out who’d done this. Then I would add their names to my ever-increasing shit list and make them pay for crossing us. As the cab made its way towards South Bank, I started thinking about our ever-dwindling circle of friends and what this would do to them. I knew that some would walk away and, of those that didn’t, some would try and betray us for the money. I wouldn’t know for certain until I heard the words from Darren, but I got the feeling that whoever had done this was trying to smoke us out.
That gave me an idea: scaring the shit out of people works both ways. So maybe my brother and I would do some scaring of our own.
15. – Stanton
I ASKED the cab driver to let me out about half a mile from where I needed to be and walked the rest of the way. My brother and I had moved from Thrombosis’ pad in Stockton to Grangetown, where we were staying with an old friend and associate called Toby.
Toby lived in a pebble-dashed semi-detached house that the council kindly paid for, although they were getting less kind about it as time passed, leaving the place in desperate need of some tender loving care.
The front garden had last seen a lawn mower sometime in the 20th century. Tall weeds grew through cracked paving stones that made an uneven path to the warped, ill-fitting front door. It took most of my strength to pull it open, then sapped the rest when I had to close and lock the fucking thing.
The hallway was as neglected as the rest of the house. Rising damp mottled the lower part of the walls with black mould and the skirting boards were falling apart in moist chunks. The carpets were as bald as a stripper’s crotch and had seen just as much action over the years. Old cannabis smoke and negligence permeated the air, though the scent of fresh weed wafted in from the living room. I heard somebody sigh, along with the crackle and
squeak of leather upholstery. I followed my nose.
Toby sprawled across the sofa with his head against one arm and his feet on the other. In one hand was a book, the other a joint, and on the TV in the corner a dark-haired porn actress screamed with pleasure as several men fucked her simultaneously. Even though the volume was low I could still hear her clearly.
“Hi honey, I’m home.”
Toby tilted his head back and gave me the once over. “And what time do you call this?”
“I might ask the same.”
“Can’t sleep.”
Toby refocused on the book and waved the spliff in the direction of a leather armchair. Like everything else in the house it was long past its best; wads of cream-coloured stuffing poked through holes in the upholstery and burn marks dotted the arms, where lazy smokers had stubbed out their joints and cigarettes. I sat down and pointed at the TV.
“How the fuck can you read with that going on?”
Toby shrugged, his attention fixed on the book. “It’s just background music to me. Can’t read in silence.”
“How about some real music?”
“Can’t read to music, either,” he added. “Besides, the sound of Sasha Grey cumming is music. To my ears at least.”
Toby put the book face down on the carpet and turned off the TV with the remote. The leather popped and crackled in distress as he sat upright. He ruffled his curly black hair and fixed his dark eyes on me. He tried to look serious, but his oversized upper-lip gave him a permanent sneer that undermined him. His was the kind of cruel-looking face that made strangers want to punch it. It had got him into more arguments than he cared to remember, and started a few fistfights, too. He was trying to grow a moustache to offset the damage that his dodgy genes had caused, but unfortunately for him the best he had managed in nearly a month of trying was a bare covering of black bum-fluff that would shame a fourteen-year-old.
The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Page 7