Then I started thinking about Thrombosis and felt a double dose of guilt. He was a solid bloke, a rarity in this business of bastards and betrayal, and deserved better than a broken hand and severe concussion. But at least that was a guilt I could alleviate.
By pushing back. By finding out who did it and making them pay.
I got out of bed, had a cold shower, and wandered downstairs.
My brother was watching the TV with slack-jawed intensity, chuckling from time to time. A naked, pretty girl was on top of a well-muscled stud, riding him and wailing with pleasure. The camerawork was jerky and murky, the sound muffled. A voice exhorted the stud to fuck her harder. I recognised it as Piper’s voice and realised the girl was Bethany and the stud she was shagging was the bouncer my brother had hospitalised. This was a home movie from our host’s private stash.
Scrunched up tissues were scattered around my brother’s feet and the air reeked of stale farts and cum. I wrenched open one of the sash windows and let fresh air into the room.
“The fuckin’ place stinks. You do realise we’re guests here?”
My brother diverted his attention away from the screen. “So?”
“So treat the place with bit of respect.”
“Whyn’t you relax a bit?”
I switched off the TV at the button and shouted down my brother’s protests. “Because we’re Alan’s guests, you fuckin’ idiot. You think he’ll be pleased to see his living room floor littered with your jizz rags? You think he’ll be happy to see you wanking off over his girlfriend?”
My brother scoffed. “Well, judging by summa the shite I’ve been watching on these videos, I wouldn’t be the first fella to wank off over his girlfriend.”
“Wherever you got these discs from I want you to put ‘em back.”
“Get with times, Grandad,” my brother said. “They’re all on hard-drive, and I was finished with ‘em, anyway.”
“And clean this fuckin’ place up before we go.”
“Why? Where we off to?”
“Hospital.”
26. – Owden
BOB SAT at his desk and fumed. He felt the blood pump through his veins and heard it thumping behind his ears. Sweat soaked his clothes. Even with the air-conditioning on full-blast he couldn’t cool down, because his rage burned bright and hot.
He couldn’t get the Stokesley Slaughterhouse out of his head. It was there constantly, antagonising and enraging him. But at least he had somebody to blame now:
The Stanton brothers.
The identity of the third person didn’t concern Bob yet, though he suspected Dave Lockhart. Besides, he’d torture it out of the brothers when the time came. For now his priority was finding them.
Bob got out of his chair and stepped away from the desk. He picked up a baseball bat and walked in circles around the room. He swung the bat as hard as he could, raising a breeze, and imagined it shattering Eric Stanton’s skull. Usually, letting his imagination run riot in this way helped him calm down. This time it didn’t help at all.
Bob threw the bat into a shadowy corner and started shadowboxing the air. He threw combinations at anything in his eye line, working hard enough to generate even more sweat. It dripped off his nose and chin, making dot patterns on the flooring. He danced around the room for ten minutes, shuffling his feet, and imagined all manner of Stanton-related injuries.
Raffin was right. He should have killed them years ago when he’d had the chance. He’d been arrogant enough to think that a warning would do the trick, that fear and a savage beating would keep them in line. Now he knew how wrong he was – when it was far too late to do anything about it. He kept turning on the spot, throwing savage combos, until he realised Jimmy Raffin was watching him from the office doorway.
The hitman’s eyebrows were knitted together. He was wearing his puzzled expression. “You look angry, boss.”
Bob lowered his arms and gasped for breath. “The… Stantons.”
“What about them?”
“We need to… find them.”
“Why?”
“Because I… want them.”
“Because of Rose and Emily?”
Bob shook his head and took several deep breaths to slow down his heart.
Jimmy paused. He seemed to be weighing up what he wanted to say.
“Then why?”
“Hollis.”
Jimmy’s complexion drained white. “You think they…”
“I don’t think owt… I know it.”
Jimmy’s eyebrows lowered into another frown. This time it suggested worry.
“How?”
“I did some investigating today.”
Jimmy smiled without humour. “George,” he said, almost to himself.
“He put me on the path.”
“And you’re sure it’s them?”
Bob took off his soaked shirt and threw it in the same corner as the baseball bat.
“I’m sure.”
Jimmy watched in silence as he towelled down, grabbed a fresh shirt off a hanger behind the office door and put it on. Whilst he buttoned his shirt, Bob kept replaying Frenchy’s words in his head.
“A man your age should be at home with his pipe and slippers.”
He was beginning to wonder if people thought he was too old to run things; that he should be at home sucking on some Werther’s Originals like some senile granddad on television; benevolent and harmless. Bob knew all too well that you only ran things for as long as the people believed you ran them. Once people stopped believing, you stopped being in charge.
It looked like he would have to make them believe again: starting with the Stantons. He looked Jimmy up and down and said: “Why’re you still here?”
Jimmy remained on the spot like he was glued to it. His face was slack and his eyes were as blank as a freshly cleaned blackboard.
Bob tutted like he was dealing with a special child. “The car.”
“Where we going?”
Bob thought about something amusing that Frenchy had told him. It had cheered him up momentarily, before he started feeling worried and angry again.
“We’re gonna go see Gupta Patel.”
27. – Stanton
THROMBOSIS SHUFFLED in his hospital bed. “Got an extra night here, ‘cause I faked being faint,” he said, looking proud of himself.
Visiting hours were over, but we’d managed to sneak in past the skeleton crew of a Matron and a couple of nurses. They were too busy elsewhere to notice a couple of unwelcome visitors in one of the private rooms. In all the time we had been there nobody passed by, not even an orderly.
“Why the fuck would you want an extra night in hospital?” I asked. “Stinks like cleaning products and death in here.”
Thrombo pulled a face like he was dealing with an idiot. “Well, for a start they’ve got me in my own room, and who wouldn’t want that, right? And the nurses wait on you hand and foot, which is like the best thing ever, you know? I get breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed. And the nurse who comes round this ward’s got a massive pair of norks and an arse you could bounce coins off. And I wouldn’t mind a pop at the matron, either.”
My brother smiled and said: “Quality.”
“I mean, that’s what every guy wants, right? Ya’ know, he wants a nurse to wait after him?” Practically everything Thrombosis said ended up as a question, I think partly because he didn’t have a clue.
Purple bruises and contusions covered the entirety of Thrombo’s face and there was a stitched gash on top of his head. A fat bandage swathed his left hand and a couple of the fingers on his right hand had been splinted.
“How’s the left?”
“I’ll never box again.”
“Not being funny, mate, but it’s not like you were ever gonna make a comeback.”
Once upon a time, Darren Travers had been a high-ranking amateur boxer and bare-knuckle fighter, but those times were several years, one car accident, and several stone in the past. I doubt he’d have managed
one round these days before suffering a heart attack or a stroke. He could barely lift a pint glass without pausing for breath. He looked offended at my accusation though, and waved his right around. “You never know, like. I coulda come back if I lost a bit of weight.”
“A bit?”
“I’m not that fat,” he said, looking angry.
“Who did it?”
Thrombosis sucked his top lip between his teeth and chewed on it the way a terrier chomps a toy. For a second I worried that he wasn’t going to say anything, but then he let out a sigh and said: “Bernie Burgess and his lad.”
Damn. The fucking Burgess family, again.
“Why?”
“They came round last night and invited themselves in. Then they asked us where you were. Said I hadn’t seen you. But they weren’t having none of that. They said I was a lying cunt, said you’d been seen coming in and outta my place. I asked who said that, ‘cause somebody told ‘em a lie. Anyways, they start stomping around the house, turning it over. That didn’t bother me much, ‘cause I knew they wasn’t gonna find nowt. But when they started manhandling me electronics and shit like that, well, that got us a bit radged. I told ‘em to leave me fuckin’ stuff alone and fuck off. That was when Bernie sapped us.”
Thrombo pointed at the scar on his head. “Then his lad gave us a kicking and stomped me hand. Kept doing it until I told ‘em I still hadn’t fuckin’ seen you. I think if I’da told ‘em I was lying it would’ve been a helluva lot worse. They were coked up and nasty. They wanted a fuckin’ fight, you know? Anyway, I think they bought it, because they didn’t hang around. But before they left they told us to give you a message,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“Which is?”
“That they’re gonna keep on at everyone you know until they flush you out. There’s gonna be nowhere for you to hide.”
“Then you won’t mind if we use you to kill two cunts with one stone.”
“A plan?”
“Of a sort.”
Thrombosis held up his bad hand. “As long as they feel summa this then, yeah, I’m in on it.”
I smiled. “They’re gonna feel a lot worse than that.”
28. – Owden
GUPTA PATEL’S head office was a two-storey slab of corrugated grey panels and pale brick on the Riverside Park Industrial Estate. It doubled as a storage facility for his spice import business, so covered a lot of floor space. At that time of the evening the front door was closed to visitors, so the place had to be entered via a gate that led to the parking area outside the main warehouse.
Jimmy pressed the intercom button and waited. A voice on the other end crackled out a demand for name and ID. Jimmy mentioned two words that got them through the gate.
A tall, muscular Indian man with a face that looked like a screwed-up wash-leather approached them through a large loading bay door at the rear of the building. He gave Bob and Jimmy a sour look. “Boss sez I need to frisk youse.”
Bob shrugged. “I’ll save you the trouble, lad. Only thing I’m packing is nine inches.”
“Colour me impressed,” the man replied. “Still gotta frisk you, though.”
Bob lifted his arms above his head. “Have at it.”
The man patted him down, grunted his approval, and stepped towards Jimmy. Who wasn’t quite so accommodating, and folded his arms as the bodyguard approached.
The man turned his head in Bob’s direction and gave him another sour look. His downturned mouth looked like a horseshoe hanging on a nail.
“Play nice, Jimmy,” Bob said. “Lad’s just doing his job.”
“If he touches me, he’s going down.”
The man grumbled. “Look, fella, the boss is paying us to do a job. If I don’t do that job then the boss don’t pay us. I don’t want no chew.”
Jimmy finally raised his arms and let the man search him, although he wasn’t happy about it. When the man had finished his examination, he hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Okay, if you fellas fancy following me.”
He took them into the loading bay, which was stacked high with crates and boxes. The warm smell of Indian spices and dust tickled their nostrils and throats as they made their way through the maze. A couple of Indian men, carrying plastic bags on their shoulders, stared at Bob and Jimmy as they passed. The three men ascended the stairs and went into a large empty reception room. Gupta was already there, sat on the bright red visitor’s sofa. When he saw them he pasted a fake grin on his face and got up. He approached at a slow and uncomfortable pace.
“Bob, what brings you to my humble abode?” he said, extending a hand.
“Long time no see,” he replied, shaking it. “Oh, you know, just wanted to have a few words with you about something very close to my heart.”
“No worries,” Gupta said, turning his attention towards the tall Indian. “Raj, go and get us some drinks.”
Raj alternated his gaze between Bob and Jimmy. “You want owt?”
“Aye, tea if you’ve got it,” Bob replied.
Jimmy shook his head.
Gupta waved Raj out of the room and took small, awkward steps in the direction of his office. It was sparsely furnished, with a single desk beneath a large window that looked out into the warehouse, an old filing cabinet near the desk, a couple of chairs, and a small black leather sofa in the corner nearest the door. He rounded the desk and lowered himself carefully into his seat, grimacing as if he expected the landing to be painful.
“Didn’t you used to have a pretty young thing that worked out there?” Bob said, waving his hand at the reception. “Dark haired lassie?”
Gupta’s face slackened a touch. “You mean, Mary?”
“If that were her name?”
“She left not so long ago, like,” he said, sitting down with a slight whimper.
“Sorry to hear about that. That were the kinda lassie that’ll brighten the darkest of offices.”
Gupta grimaced again as he shifted in his seat. Bob remembered what Frenchy had told him and suppressed a smile. “What’s up with you?” he asked.
Gupta’s grimace disappeared, instantly replaced by a natural looking smile.
“Playing squash. Got smacked in the nads with a racquet by one of me lads, didn’t I? Hurts like fuck, it does. Don’t be playing with young ‘uns is the lesson I can take away from this.”
Gupta was well renowned for his Poker prowess. He bluffed better than anybody else around and his Poker face was the stuff of legend, so it was only because Bob knew the real story behind the injury that he knew he was lying. He decided to let Gupta hang himself with his own line of bullshit.
Bob grabbed a seat and pulled it up to the table, maintaining eye contact with Gupta. Jimmy walked over to the sofa and dropped on to it with a loud sigh. Raj came through the door carrying a prissy teacup on an equally petite and delicate saucer and a tumbler of Scotch. He placed the cup on the desk in front of Bob, slid the tumbler towards Gupta, and started moving towards the empty space on the sofa.
Bob looked at the ornate handle, then at his hands, and knew that his fingers weren’t going to fit through the gap. Gupta rolled his eyes when he saw the cup and coughed loudly.
Raj turned in his direction. “Boss?”
“Were you expecting Liberace, or summat?”
Raj’s face went slack. “Boss?”
Gupta waved his hand in the direction of the cup. “This fuckin’ thing. What the fuck is it?”
“It’s a cup.”
“Is it really? Looks more like summat from me daughter’s fuckin’ Wendy house. This is a man we’ve got here, not some fuckin’ fairy. Bring him a man-sized mug.”
“It’s fine,” Bob said.
“No, it’s not.”
Raj stooped slightly, his mouth turning down at the edges. “Didn’t see any other cups, boss. This was the only one that was clean.”
“Would it hurt to fuckin’ clean one yourself?”
Raj stiffened and his face went tight. Gupta’s eyes widened
for the briefest of moments, and he flinched. Both were over in the blink of an eye, but Bob knew what they meant. Raj wasn’t one of Gupta’s usual people; certainly his reaction wasn’t the kind that you’d expect of a regular payroll bruiser.
Bob extrapolated. Raj was protection from the Stantons, hired during the period after the hit went out. Gupta was scared, probably even more so after last night’s injury, which meant he would jump when he told him to.
Raj realised he was being watched by everybody in the room and stooped again.
“Guess not,” he said.
He turned on his heels and squeezed into the space beside Jimmy, who made no effort to budge over.
Gupta grinned at Bob. “Just can’t get the staff.”
It suddenly dawned on Bob that Gupta was deflecting his attention, trying to move the conversation away from his injured crotch, and the reasons behind it. He was always going to find fault with Raj, no matter what beverage he brought through the door, only the bodyguard had played right into his hands by bringing it in such a woefully inadequate cup.
Gupta frowned, brought a hand to his chin, stared at the desk for a couple of seconds and raised his eyes to Bob’s. “Now, what was your problem again?”
“I didn’t say.”
“You didn’t? Coulda sworn we were talking about your problems, like.”
“We were talking about your crotch.”
“We were?”
“We were.”
Gupta nodded. “Yeah, like I sez, got a squash ball in the nads. Was playing one of me lads.”
Bob fixed on Gupta’s dark eyes, holding his gaze in the hope that he would blink.
“That weren’t what you said earlier, lad.”
The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Page 12