And strangers still tried to start fights with him.
Despite his unfortunate looks, Toby was as good a bloke as our profession allows. He didn’t indulge in violence, didn’t fuck over his mates at any price, and was always ready to lend a hand or, more often than not, money to friends who were down on their luck. He was one of the few people I knew whose moral compass wasn’t forever spinning out of control.
“I take it your heard about Thrombo?” he said and dragged on the joint.
I nodded.
“Can’t be having that,” he said, exhaling. “I need me hands for stealing shit. Youse two are gonna hafta leave, like now.”
“Another night? Could do with the kip.”
Toby shook his head. “Can’t risk it, mate. When all the shit’s blown over I’ll be happy to put youse up again, but till then I’m gonna hafta be cautious. Money’s tight as it is, and it’ll get even tighter without the use of me mitts.”
“We can pay.”
Toby wafted his hand and made a sound like a punctured tire. “Don’t insult me, mate. S’not about money. If it was about that I’da sold you out for the reward a week ago. When I need money I steal, that’s it. No, this is about self-preservation. Sooner or later, whoever visited Thrombo will get round to visiting me, and when they do I don’t wanna trace of you here.”
I nodded. Toby had put us up at considerable risk to himself for over a week and for no charge. Despite the fact that my brother was eating his way through Toby’s fridge and freezer he never once took the cash we offered. I knew that if I really insisted he’d probably put us up for a few more days, but that would involve either threats or pleading. Either one of those would mean the end our friendship. And friends like Toby and Thrombo, the kind you could really trust, were as rare as hens’ teeth. Instead, I slapped my thighs and stood up. “Well, I better go get the big lad, then. I guess he’s sleeping?”
“Like a six-foot-four baby.”
16. – Owden
AFTER AN hour of fitful sleep, Bob Owden finally blinked himself awake. A weak sliver of light cut between the gap in the curtains and announced another grey morning. Bob placed his hands behind his head, stared at the ceiling and thought about the Stokesley Slaughterhouse, Jack Samson, Rose Bennett, and coincidence.
He concentrated his mind until it was as narrow and bright as a laser, but couldn’t focus on the right clues. The more he thought about things the more cogent answers eluded him. He knew that he needed to tap into a rich source of local gossip and find out what had been going on for the last couple of weeks; alliances forged, friendships broken, jobs pulled, and heads smashed. He also knew that would be easier said than done.
Regular criminals wouldn’t talk openly with him. They were afraid of what saying the wrong thing might cost them. They chose their words carefully, minding their Ps & Qs, and said nothing that might incriminate them or their friends. Unless he summoned them they treated him the way that he expected to be treated – as the boss, the man who got things done.
Big Bad Bob Owden, the man who ran Teesside.
There was only one place to go for the kind of gossip he needed. Only one person he knew would give him the truth in all its unpalatable glory, because he didn’t care what would happen if he said the wrong thing. Bob knew that he needed to visit his former business partner, George Harris.
It had been a long time since anybody had called Harris by his given name. Now he went by the nickname Pissy George – a name that had been well earned. Most days he could be found in local dives, regaling regulars with tales from his past in exchange for drinks.
George told his tales with a raconteur's skill for finding the wit in even the most horrible moments. He disguised horror with a funny line or an amusing voice, and his timing was impeccable. Disarming his audience with well-practiced charm was a very good way not to pay for drinks, but it was also a great way to get people to open up more than their wallets. Most of them hoped to impress him with an entertaining anecdote or frightening story. The problem for them was George’s inability to ever get truly drunk and his frighteningly good memory.
Back in the day, George and his eidetic memory made lots of money counting cards in casinos, until they wised up and banned him. When that income stream dried up, George worked for Bob, using his memory and his intellect to crush their competitors. But he couldn’t handle the rough stuff. Whenever Bob hammered an opponent’s kneecaps or smashed their skulls until George could see the pink and red meat beneath, his memory locked those images inside and tortured him at night, as fresh and terrible as they were when first formed. So he drank to forget. The only issue was that he was as talented at drinking as he was at remembering. Every word people told George could be remembered right to the last detail, which made him an invaluable asset for Bob when he needed the local gossip.
Bob showered, dressed, drank a strong black coffee, grabbed a bottle of whisky on the way out of the house, and was at George’s place in thirty minutes.
He parked on a terraced street just off Borough Road and made sure to lock the doors, double-checking the handles before he walked away. This wasn’t the kind of street where the idiocy of an unlocked door went unpunished. It was the kind of street that had lost its real name over the years in favour of the moniker The Needle Exchange. Most of the terraces were boarded up junky hangouts, and the few properties that didn’t have metal mesh or boards over their windows were regularly broken into to feed heroin and crack addictions.
George’s house was one of the few places the junkies left alone, probably because it looked like it should have been condemned a long time ago. Years of neglect had left most of its pebble-dash on the pavement, and decades of wet rot had made the window frames as brittle as balsa wood. These were pristine in comparison with the front door, which was so warped it looked like it had been painted by Dali. Bob shook his head when he thought about how far his former friend had fallen.
He knocked twice. Big flakes of grey paint broke off the door and fluttered down to the jagged carpet of pebble shards. Bob heard the sound of somebody grunting from inside as they attempted to pull the door back. It creaked and shrieked in its frame, but eventually came open.
“Long time no see,” Bob said, trying not to looked shocked.
Just six months had passed since he’d last seen George, but in that time his former business partner seemed to have aged a decade. His jaundiced skin was creased like old wrapping paper, and broken blood vessels formed an elaborate roadmap along the bulbous surface of his nose. A smothering of Brylcreem kept his long white hair pasted back, otherwise it drooped lifelessly in front of his face. Only the pale blue eyes remained the same, still twinkling with intelligence and guile. There was a slight smile at the corner of George’s mouth, but no warmth in the gaze.
“I’d hoped you’d forgotten me,” he said.
Bob waved a bottle in front of George. “You’re not the only one with a decent memory. An eighteen-year-old Talisker, if I’m not mistaken.”
George opened the door wider, grinning. “Why, Ambassador, weeth thees Ferrero Rocher you are really spoiling me.”
17. – Stanton
MY BROTHER wasn’t pleased about being woken at such an early hour. It took ten minutes of shaking and one cup of water in the face before we finally got him out of bed. He threatened to kill Toby and me on several occasions until one of us thrust a whisky-laced coffee under his nose. That perked him up a tad, and a couple of lines of coke sealed the deal. I did a few lines of my own, along with a mug of coffee thick enough to tar roads with.
We snuck out the back door and hopped a few garden fences until we emerged onto the street behind Toby’s place. My brother had parked the car there, and luckily for us nobody had realised that it was stolen yet.
We drove towards the Yorkshire Moors, keeping to the back roads, while I tried to think of somewhere to stay that didn’t involve paying a fortune in hotel fees or another night leeching off our friends.
N
ormally, the country quiet and manure scented air would have been enough to get my brain into gear, but forty-eight hours without sleep and the constant whine of my brother made it impossible to think. He just wouldn’t give up on the idea that we should flee, and took great pleasure in telling me so. After an hour of it, I’d had quite enough.
“Whyn’t you shut the fuck up?”
My brother pulled into a layby and glared at me. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel and glove leather crackled. “I didn’t ask to be woken up, like, and I sure as shite don’t wanna be driving your hairy arse all over Yorkshire.”
“If you let me think for a while you won’t have to.”
I pressed the side of my head against the passenger window. The cool glass chilled my skin all too briefly, then left it feeling damp. Pressure in my skull made me close my eyes, but I couldn’t keep them shut for long because this made the pain worse. I opened them again and looked out at the world. There wasn’t much to see. Morning mist enveloped the car and covered the landscape in a pale haze.
Cabin fever wrapped its unpleasant, claustrophobic arms around me. I’d spent the last sleepless week in a car, so maybe more time inside, breathing in heater fumes, wasn’t what I needed. I opened the door, letting cool, damp air flood the car, then put my feet on the grass verge.
Just as I was about to get out of the vehicle, my brother jostled with me a friendly punch on the shoulder. When I turned around, he was smiling. “We could squat somewhere?”
I gave him an icy stare. “No electricity, no running water, no comforts of any kind? Bollocks to that. We might as well just buy a fuckin’ tent.”
“Then what? We’re fresh outta friends we can trust, which leaves us with those we can’t. What about granddad?”
“Oh, right, that’s a fuckin’ brilliant idea, that is. You been eating brain tumours again?”
He waved a fist in my face. “I’ll give you a fuckin’ brain tumour in a minute.”
I pushed his hand away. “Contrary to what you believe, punches to the head don’t give you tumours, you fuckin’ idiot. Granddad? Seriously, that’s the best you can come up with? The old bastard tried to sell us out, remember?”
“That was a while ago. Mebbe he’s changed.”
“Yeah, the miserable old fuck’s probably got worse.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“So’s stealing from your grandkid’s piggy banks.”
My brother’s eyebrows rose.
“He stole from me piggy bank?” he asked with a hint of child-like surprise.
I nodded. “Caught him when I was twelve. Asked me not to say owt.”
“What did you say?”
“That if he put the money back and put an extra fiver in each, I’d keep schtum.”
“Bet he didn’t like that.”
“Threatened to beat the shit outta me. But I told him if he did that I’d cut his balls off when he was asleep. That took the fuckin’ wind out of his sails.”
“Always wondered where that fiver came from.”
“Well, now you know.”
My brother stared out of the window for a few seconds. “Blood’s thicker than water.”
“Not when it’s made of whisky, it isn’t. Forget that wizened old shite.”
“Then we’re outta options.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of a bird squawking angrily in the distance. I stepped out of the car and the pressure in my skull began to recede. For the first time in a while the inside of my head didn’t feel like the contents of a slop bucket.
I hopped a fence and started walking across soft, waterlogged grass that squelched beneath my feet. Lost in my head, I walked and walked, until I heard something faint in the distance. It sounded like somebody shouting my name.
I turned and realised just how far I’d walked. My brother was a tiny speck about half a mile and several fields away. He was calling out to me and waving his arms to get my attention. I was about to shout a reply when a name popped into my head. A blast from the past that owed us his life. I ran back to the car as quickly as I could. When I arrived I stood panting for several seconds, trying to get enough air in my lungs to say that name.
“Piper,” I said through gasps.
My brother frowned for a few seconds, whilst his brain played catch up. Then he grinned when he realised what I was talking about.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Why not?”
------
Long before we decided that stealing from criminals was a viable career option, my brother and I collected debts for Alan ‘Peter’ Piper. We visited feckless gamblers, scared housewives, and substance abusers who needed payday loans at interest rates that would make Wonga’s executives nod their heads in admiration. Normally our presence alone was enough to ensure prompt payment, but occasionally we had to deal with those who, for one reason or another, couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. Let’s just say that after awhile we hurt enough of the right people to ensure that nobody missed a payment when we came knocking.
However, that didn’t mean that everything was hunky dory. Piper’s line of business meant enemies and lots of them.
One day, a couple of disgruntled debtors decided they’d had enough of Piper’s interest rates and chose to cancel their debt in a more conclusive manner. They bided their time and followed him around, studying his patterns, finding his weak spots. And when the time was right they hit him with everything they had.
If they’d struck ten minutes earlier or later they probably would have cancelled their debt permanently, but the thing is they didn’t. They made their move just as we were visiting him at home for a meeting. These guys had worked out that Piper was weakest on home turf, during the walk from his car to his house. They caught him halfway through the hundred-yard walk up the driveway and stabbed him.
Actually, they stabbed him several times, but like most first-timers they fucked the job completely. They tried wild prison stabs instead of controlled deep ones, which gave Piper the opportunity to fight and run.
As we came up the drive, Piper was running in circles on his garden lawn like a demented dog. His shirt was soaked through with blood and he screamed for somebody to help him. Two idiots in ski masks chased him with their huge knives. Security lamps and garden uplighters made the spectacle look like surreal outdoor theatre, or in this case outdoor fucking farce – the two men kept slipping on the grass in their eagerness to land the killer blow. It was like watching a blood stained version of the Keystone Cops.
The two men were so wrapped up in their assassination attempt that they didn’t notice as we parked the car. Hell, they didn’t even notice our existence until we were on Piper’s lawn, practically breathing down their necks.
In the ensuing melee, my brother took a blade in the shoulder that was meant for our boss and I took another in the side. My brother managed to disarm one of the men by literally breaking both his arms. After that, they stopped feeling quite so brave, and scarpered like the cowards they were.
Once Piper got of hospital, he developed a gooey-eyed man-crush on my brother and me, telling us on numerous occasions that he’d be forever in our debt. He spent time trying to hang out with us and gave us all the cushy jobs. In his eyes, we were a lifetime supply of beer and pornography in one perfect package. So when we finally decided to leave and do our own thing – as in fucking up villains for quick cash – he was gutted.
Even though the nature of our departure was farcical (we almost lost ten grand of Piper’s money to a rival), he still wanted us back. He offered more money, the chance to start our own franchise, and tempted us as much as he could without appearing weak. When we turned his offers down, he took it with as much good grace as he could muster; meaning he didn’t threaten to kill or maim us. He also left the door slightly ajar – if we ever decided to come back to the fold, he’d welcome us back with open arms. More importantly, he told us to call him if we ever needed a favour.
The time felt ri
ght to call it in.
18. – Owden
GEORGE WAVED his right hand in the direction of a shabby armchair. Food stains and red wine splashes adorned the fabric. Bob looked for a clean spot to sit, but realised he’d have to settle for slightly cleaner than the rest. He worried about hygiene.
Noticing Bob’s reticence, George smiled. “Excuse the décor,” he said. “Maid’s year off.” He wandered out of the room and into the kitchen. He came back a few seconds later with a folded towel, which he placed on the seat. Bob finally sat down and patted the towel.
“Laundry day?”
George shook his head. “That’s my wank towel.”
Bob looked at him wide-eyed, his mouth slowly dropping open, before directing his gaze at the thing he was sitting on. George laughed out loud as Bob jumped to his feet and looked for something to wipe his hand with.
“Are you demented?” he said, his face draining of colour.
George continued laughing.
The colour returned to Bob’s cheeks. His jaw muscles began to flex and his hands made big fists. He didn’t like being the butt of other people’s jokes; his sense of humour only stretched as far as laughing at the misfortune of others. Rage clouded his brain, tunnelled his vision. The only thing he saw in his mind’s eye was George on the floor, his face smashed to pieces, brain matter leaking through holes in his skull.
He turned in George’s direction, ready to kill. The old alcoholic was already backing away, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender, memories of Bob beating people to death with his bare hands as fresh in his head now as they were twenty-five years ago.
“It was a joke,” he yelled, backing towards the kitchen door. “The fuckin’ towel was clean. Swear to God.”
Bob lowered his head and rushed forward. George turned and reached for the door handle, but was too slow. Bob slammed into him at top speed, crushing him against the doorframe, forcing air from his lungs. The alcoholic gasped for breath, but Bob wrapped a hand around his throat. George’s eyes went wide, his face reddening as he choked. With the last of his strength he croaked a few words, squeezing out the sounds. They weren’t much, but they reminded Bob that he’d come here for an important reason. He blinked one, twice, three times, and loosened his grip.
The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Page 8