The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1)

by Robert Parker

  On the phone, I type: ‘Tomorrow morning, 10am. Piccadilly Gardens. Nice and public. Let’s talk it through.’

  And another appointment is set in my ever-busying social calendar. I need to see where Jack’s head is at.

  ‘Jack, I’m gonna take these phones and documents with me, is that ok?’ I ask.

  ‘Whatever, Ben,’ he says. He’s hurting. This battle is taking it’s toll on him - the strikes to his life, or at least the life he knew, taking body blows that are leaving him groggy and jaded.

  ‘And tonight?’ I venture.

  ‘You go alone’, he says. ‘You go do what you’ve got to do. I just... don’t know anymore.’

  I pause, and hope that he looks up at me, but he doesn’t. Defeated.

  ‘I’m on your side, pal. I promise you that. I’ll call you in the morning. A night off might do you good. I’m gonna borrow the car too. Is that ok?’

  He doesn’t respond, so I leave him to it, grabbing the car keys off the counter. He’s got all night to dwell and obsess, but I don’t. Yet again, I’ve got shit to do, and I want to be as ready for it as possible. Tonight could define a lot of things, and I want to start as I mean to carry on.

  18

  I can hear the squeak squeak shuffle of sneakers on hardwood. It’s a reassuring sound - as opposed to the smell of the disabled toilet cubicle in which I’m standing. I don’t think they are used very often and they are seemingly cleaned even less.

  I am at the basketball centre, hiding. I have been at the centre a while, and even caught a bit of the game. It was of quite a good standard, actually. I used to play a little on Bastion, and enjoyed head to heads with our American comrades whenever they came to town. I’d always felt I was a bit handy at basketball, but this lot here in this Stockport suburb would've smashed me and all my army buddies into the paint.

  I’d seen Jeremiah immediately, and recognized that sadness in his eyes, which everyone who has had something stripped away from them wears like an unwanted badge. We know our own. I reason that the disabled toilets are the best place to get a private moment with him.

  I am wearing the best clothes I now have, namely the jeans and shirt, and hide behind the door of the bathroom, clutching the light cord. Waiting. My speech rehearsed. I hope the man has access to those networks that would interest me, and I hope that what I can offer him in return will be of use. I think that, considering he’s about to come into contact with someone who has been in very recent face-to-face contact with the Berg, the summit and it’s guardians, and is willing to share that very info, he will be both very popular and valuable to the police. Most definitely.

  I realize that being here is a gamble and there are no guarantees, but he’s the best hope for the kind of ally that I want to recruit. It has crossed my mind that he may, in fact, no longer be a policeman, but my instinct believes otherwise. The police are known for looking after their own, and have been so low on numbers for such a long time that I am sure they will have done what they could to keep hold of an officer in need. The fact that, in the newspaper piece, he was already talking about the Berg so soon after he had regained consciousness, suggests the birth of a grudge that he was prepared to carry forward. An itch that I know for a fact, since the Berg are very much at large, he is yet to scratch. If what happened to him was as defining as it seems, I am hoping he has angled his career along the very avenues that would see him in the best possible position to bring the Berg down. And now, with 8 further years of career progression, he should be in a decent enough position to help me.

  I hear voices outside. I pray it’s him - any longer in here and I’ll be heading out for a drink wearing L’Eau du Hot Piss for cologne. Hardly the smell that inspires the helpless divulging of secrets.

  The voices come closer. And closer. I still can’t hear the individual words, but it’s the escalating boom off the polished gymnasium floors that gives away the approach. Please. Please.

  But the voices dull, ebb and quieten, ever softer. No... I am condemned to wait in this literal shit-hole a bit longer.

  Suddenly, with a soft pop and click, the door opens. I hear the soft whirr of wheels on the old linoleum floor of the bathroom, and Jeremiah is in here with me facing away. As soon as the door swings back into place, I hit the lights, and we are doused in a smelly, inky blackness. Showtime.

  ‘Jeremiah. I’m so sorry to do it this way, but I need a moment of your time. Please don’t alert anyone I’m here.’

  He doesn’t answer. Even though I can’t see him, I feel he has gone stiff as a board. I do genuinely feel bad about this, ambushing the poor man in the toilet.

  ‘I feel we could have a mutually beneficial relationship, if you see fit to allow it. I have information I’m willing to share from my intelligence, in exchange for information from your resources.’

  ‘What information could possibly interest me from a guy who jumps me in the toilets at my local rec centre?’ he replies, with a deadpan coolness I wasn’t expecting.

  Zing.

  ‘A fair point. Whatever it is you think of me, I promise you I’m well placed to deliver. And my intentions are completely genuine.’

  ‘A lot of bad things come from good intentions, my toilet-dwelling friend.’

  ‘True. I have come back from some time away to a country I don’t recognize. I see the leaches festering out of every seeping, puss-filled wound, and I want it to stop. I assure you I am well-placed to give Great Britain a thorough scrub, and I have both the resources and training to pull it off. I am committed, driven and extremely well-drilled.’

  Jeremiah falls silent, presumably while he takes in my proposal.

  ‘An ex-serviceman. With the tenor of your voice I’d say you’re not that old. Forty tops. That leaves about 30,000 sub-forty year old ex-soldiers. Your identity is being significantly whittled down the longer we talk. You sure you want to carry on this conversation?’

  Christ, he’s good. He’s even more than I hoped he would be, if I can get him onside.

  ‘I have inner-sanctum access to a group I think you have an interest in. The Berg.’

  The atmosphere in the bathroom takes on a whole new iciness. I press the point home.

  ‘In fact, I’m meeting them for a drink after I leave this bathroom. I’m taking them down. If you want them gone, help me succeed. If you are my help from the outside, I’ll give you everything you need to expose their whole operation. I assume you are still in the police force?’

  ‘No,’ he responds, sighing.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, genuinely disappointed. Might as well end the meeting here and now.

  ‘I am an officer of the Organized Crime Command, within the National Crime Agency. We are a fairly new unit, and provide intel to police to prevent organized crime operations.’

  What a result. It turns out Jeremiah is more perfectly placed than I could have hoped for, and my suspicions have been fully confirmed.

  ‘You will be the NCA’s golden boy.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about being anybody’s golden boy.’

  I feel his resentment rising, as the gravel in his voice rasps up from a place he had long locked it away to.

  ‘If you are saying the Berg can be taken out, then indeed you have me interested. But I need assurances at my end.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I need to know who you are.’

  ‘I can’t give you that. My success depends on my anonymity.’

  ‘You expect me to believe this? I’ve not got anywhere in life through being taken for a dope.’

  ‘I don’t at all. But I want to prove both my loyalty and that what I say is true. And then if you feel you can help me, let’s take these fuckers down.’

  I let that sit a moment, the words overhanging him like the ultimate bait - the retribution he so badly craves.

  ‘The Berg...’ he says, his voice distant and detached, ‘Made me watch the changing of the doors.’

  ‘What is that?’ I ask.

  ‘
It’s an unwritten rule between police and criminal gangs, in a given city. The police witness a symbolic act that illustrates a transference of power from one group to the next. The power in this case, was the turf rights to sell drugs in certain pubs and clubs across the centre of Manchester. The Berg took me, a young copper, and this dealer from a rival drug-running gang, and beat him half to death in front of me, to show me that they now had “the doors”. Problem is, I protested. I kicked and screamed, and I tried foolishly to arrest them all. Being so young, and new to the beat, I didn’t know that I was actually supposed to witness it. It’s a practice that has been going on between criminals and coppers in this city for years. It makes sure both parties know where they stand.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jeremiah,’ I say. ‘I know what happened next, you don’t have to say any more. I read about it in the Manchester Evening News.’

  ‘It didn’t mention that Michael Davison put a brick in a pillowcase, and beat me with it, did it?’

  I’m appalled. Michael Davison, the father of those two fun-loving kids, and the husband of that beautiful woman, is a man of secret, extreme, bloody, premeditated violence. I grimace at the very thought of such a bone-crushing punishment, and can almost here the thuds and snaps of the act itself. ‘No, it didn’t.’

  ‘Manchester refused to wake up to the horrors of what’s really going on in the city, and it’s still happening now. They’d rather pretend the nastiness wasn’t actually there.’

  It’s a horrible, sad story. The naivety of broken Britain, and those that dwell on it’s shores. The Berg changed this man’s life forever, just because they wanted to sell drugs in a particular bar. And I’m going for a drink with them shortly.

  ‘Then work with me, Jeremiah. I know the central NCA offices, in Birchwood, are about 30 minutes from here. I’ll have something to you tomorrow. A package. It will be irrefutable proof that this is genuine, and that I am a man of my word, a force to be both trusted and reckoned with. Open it alone. I really hope you are on board, Jeremiah. Let’s change this place for the better. Goodnight.’

  Jeremiah says nothing, but I know I’ve made my point. He seems lost in thought, a lost train of consciousness that I have reawakened in him. I’m sorry to sadden him, and remind him of such obviously painful memories. Still in the darkness, I slip out, leaving him alone.

  Job done. Time for my next port of call.

  19

  The Lexus is purring. It has just started to spit from mucky clouds high above, and the wipers have come on automatically. I’m beginning to like this car. Anything to keep me thinking of the deceitful web that is unravelling around me, each new reveal more sinister and confusing than the last.

  I make the journey back into Manchester, along the M62, which is nothing more than a stop-start crawl. Over to my right, I can see Manchester’s skyline, winking and twinkling. Another city that never seems to sleep. I think back to the statistic Jack told me. 160 organized crime gangs. Over there. That seems like an absurdly high number, but I don’t doubt it. Manchester is a proud, progressive city, less susceptible to the navel gazing of other elite cities. Things get done with less self-importance - it’s what attracts big business, and it must be what also attracts illegal business also. Come to think of it, I don’t feel like there is a great deal of difference between big business and illegal business at times. They both swim the same way, in the same direction, just with different preoccupations. Both seek financial reward, of that there is no doubt.

  As I move slowly along the ring road, I remember that it is probably around here: the place where Jack ran that thief off the road, and everything changed. As he was traveling here, there had been a metaphorical fork in the road, with two destinies splitting off for him to choose. In so many ways, he chose poorly. His future was augmented, his character altered in a fundamental fashion. A boy no more. A moment in which a certain kind of manhood was sealed.

  I know those moments well. I have stood by many boys as they turned into men, fire and brimstone whipping over their heads, forcing life-defining reaction. I have presided over many of these transformations, like an observer at an exorcism. Only in these instances, it is the evil that is coming in, not going out. You can’t take back what happens in these moments, no matter what. The big difference here, however, is that Jack made this decision, while the boys I have led only did so to an extent. They put themselves into the frame for such scenarios, and orders took care of the rest. I suppose none of us are innocent.

  I turn off the motorway, and feed down through Stretford, near Old Trafford again, which now looks even more imposing under the night sky - a red neon coliseum, albeit smudged by drizzle. I hang a left as I go passed, and swing down towards the Quays. There are three high residential towers that look like the sails of a gigantic metal and glass yacht, and I keep them in my eye line as a point of reference. I know I am heading to Lumen, and I know roughly where it is. I’ll figure out parking as I get there.

  As soon as I think about it a square blue road sign emblazoned with a capital P presents itself, below an arrow to the left. I take it, and swing down along the waterfront.

  I would imagine that for those 20 to 30 days a year maximum, when Manchester actually has good weather, that this would be a lovely place to hang out, socialize, spend time. A little taste of a more luxurious, continental, marina lifestyle. Like a really, really, really, really shit Monte Carlo. I see the lumbering hulk of the Lowry, squatting like a metal beetle by the shore. I remember when it was first built, it seemed so ahead of it’s time that it caused offense, Manchester’s residents clamoring for a more conservative continuity to the architecture of their centre-pieces. And then, when planning permission was granted, more and more similar, forward thinking buildings were built in the city, not to mention my old pal, Beetham Tower.

  I am directed to the arse-end of the beetle where there is an opening for cars. Within a couple of minutes I am parked up and beeping the car’s keyless locks. It feels great to be roaming the city, tasting freedom one heady morsel at a time. Walking from the car, a confidence transforms my walk to almost a strut, and before I know it, I’m out in the open again, swaggering up to the entrance of a fancy waterfront bar. Lumen. As in lights. As in illuminate. I hope to be both illuminated and enlightened throughout the course of the evening.

  I am sucked through glass revolving doors, from a cold, neon night straight into a warmer, moodier one. It is softly lit, warmly arranged and lightly visited. Piano music twinkles somewhere within, with no visible source, providing a ghostly, intimate soundtrack. A huge glass bar rests at the back, highly staffed, with tables and low candelabras in front. Booths line the sides, each with their own locked fridges. Stylistically the bar resembles an antique shop in Valhalla, with it’s concoction of fur, wood and vintage. Is this cool? Christ knows.

  The inhabitants of the tables are all seated, relaxed, their Saturday nights in their tentative infancies. Perhaps some are pre-show at the theatre or perhaps enjoying the fourth or fifth drink of a post-matinee sup. That beer I’ve been fantasizing about, looks ever closer. I don’t want to dull my senses at all, and want to be at full complement for when the talking starts, and there are facts to be gleaned. But one can’t harm.

  ‘Ben!’ I hear a shout over the rolling ivories. So close, yet so far yet again to that elusive pint Alcohol was my crutch at one point, when I was at my darkest, and it is nice to have left that reliance behind. I do miss the taste though. I turn to the direction of the voice, and see that one of the booths has a couple of inhabitants I missed, buried at the back. Dolled up, one for glamour, the other for sophistication, are the two women I met earlier in the day. Tina and Carolyn. I head over to them, and I feel a little prod of nerves as I walk. I feel myself smooth my shirt, and reach up for my face. I find myself chastising myself for being so weak. Have I missed the company of the opposite sex that much? I think the answer might be yes, if these butterflies are anything to go by.

  I’m nervous around
women. Save for a period that got me in a pickle, I always have been. I had a period of confidence, right at the start of my army training, when I felt the world could be mine, and any life I wanted was ripe for me to pluck. More than that I was being groomed and readied to be all that I could be, and I certainly felt like it. In some physical ways, I feel like that now, after 20 months of soul-searching and clean living. Ten feet tall. I’m no more experienced of course, with a cynicism borne from a progressive jading. Back then I was a man in the immediate prior to his prime, with all the hopes and anticipations that went with it.

  As I walk over to the women, admiring them for the two contrasting beauties that they are, I find myself reminiscing fiercely to the last time I was in a bar chatting with the opposite sex. A decade earlier, over on Canal Street. It has literally been that long. Through fear, mistrust of both the opposite sex and myself, a misplaced sense of chastity and plain stubbornness, I have not been with a woman in just over ten years. In any sort of romantic or sexual sense. And here, ready to join them at their table, in this sensually lit bar, I can’t believe what I have been missing.

  I’m a man of many things, and loyalty is one of them. I have been so fiercely loyal, and duty-bound to my country, that I have devoted my life to it’s protection. I always felt that that very same application, that same sense of doting, could be applied to a wonderful woman and a relationship. I could always picture myself having so much to offer as a husband and father, and, at least on the latter, I came very close.

  I was visiting Manchester from Sandhurst, having travelled up for a few weekend pints on a break from my training. The actual rigors of training were difficult, the mental pressures hard, but the sense of purpose it imbued in me also left me energized, and kept me alert, fresh and above all, happy. I met a girl, on a night out. And we fell head over heals. It wasn’t ideal with my constant to-and-fro’s from my training camps and exercises, but I maintained it. I thought she may well be ‘the one’, but that’s just what we all say when our eyes are at their most retrospectively rose-tinted.