“Yeah,” he said, “you’re right. Sorry. But you know what I mean.”
“Tell me about the Irish in Manchester,” I said, changing the subject back.
“According to the Internet, lots of them came over during the potato famine of the nineteenth century,” he said. “And, as far as I can tell, the rest followed their beloved George Best over more than a hundred years later. And those that don’t actually live in Manchester fly over to support the soccer team. A love of Manchester United is probably the only thing that Irish Catholics and Protestants agree on.”
“And are they playing at home today?” I asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Chico said. “Grudge match against Manchester City. The place will be awash with Irishmen.”
22
Chico and I decided to split up and each visit a few of the more than twenty pubs in the bedroom suburb of Didsbury. However, we decided to give a wide berth to those closest to McCusker’s home just in case he was out for a pint at his local pub.
We had driven slowly, but not too slowly, past the address that Norman Whitby had given me. Somehow it was nerve jangling to be so close to McCusker, and Chico clearly shared my anxiety as he furiously opened and closed his Swiss Army penknife.
If his house was anything to go by, Billy McCusker had done quite well since his empty-handed flight across the Irish Sea six years previously. It was a mock-Georgian, red-brick mansion with imposing white pillars on each side of the front door, mostly hidden away behind high wrought-iron gates and a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
“Seems he’s not very keen on visitors,” Chico said. “But that fence wouldn’t keep out anyone determined enough. It’s no good putting the razors along the top of the fence like that. It needs to be standing away from it to be any good.”
“So you could climb it?” I asked.
“Piece of piss, mate. I’ve climbed lots of fences like that. Do you want me to do it now?”
“Maybe later,” I said, deciding against asking him which other fences he’d climbed and why.
I dropped Chico outside the Bell Inn near East Didsbury station for him to work northwards along the line of pubs on Wilmslow Road, while I parked the Range Rover near the Didsbury Medical Centre and started working the same line south towards him, starting at the White Hart.
I used a cover story that I was thinking of buying a property in the area to talk to the locals, especially about if there was any crime in the district.
There were plenty of the usual gripes about local youths running wild and terrorizing the neighborhood with drugs or racing cars up and down residential streets, but little about any real mobsters.
“How about within the Irish community?” I asked the barman behind the bar at the White Hart.
“I try and steer clear of them,” he said without any warmth. “I mind my own business.”
“Does that imply that there is something going on?” I asked, leaning forward to keep my voice down and to encourage him to answer.
“I couldn’t say,” he said.
“Couldn’t or won’t?”
“Couldn’t and won’t,” he said, then he went off to the far end of the bar to serve one of his sparse Sunday-night clientele.
“Does the name Billy McCusker mean anything to you?” I asked him quietly when he finally came back.
“I think you’d better leave,” he said.
“Is that a threat?” I asked.
“Look upon it as a friendly warning.”
“How friendly?” I asked, pushing my luck.
“I mind my own business, nothing more. I suggest you do likewise. Now leave.”
I finished my Diet Coke and left.
Twice he had said to me that he minded his own business. I wondered if by that he meant not the usual sense of not gossiping about others but that he literally minded his own business by paying protection money to keep it safe.
Along with drug dealing, protection rackets were one of the great scourges of inner-city life the world over. Insurance, some of the gangsters termed it, or surety, against getting your premises trashed or set on fire. The courts called it extortion or demanding money with menaces, but, whatever it was called, it was all basically the same thing: Hand over a share of your hard-earned cash or we’ll smash up your pub, shop, restaurant or whatever and put you out of business.
I walked down the road and went into a second pub, The Chequers, which was completely empty of customers save for two men leaning on the bar, chatting to the pub owner.
I bought myself half a pint of lager and again trotted out my story to them about wanting to buy a property in the local area.
“Try West Didsbury,” said one of the men. “It’s far nicer than here in the east.”
“Why’s that?” I asked him.
“Nicer houses,” he said, “and nicer people.”
“Not so much crime neither,” said the second man.
“Is there much crime round here?” I asked, looking concerned.
“Far too much,” said the second man. “Drug dealing, mostly, with the addicts breaking into cars and houses to get cash for their next fix. If you ask me, they should be strung up.”
Fortunately, I thought, no one was asking him.
“Any organized crime?” I asked.
“The drug dealing’s pretty organized,” said the first man, missing the point.
“How about the Irish community?” I asked. “Are any of them into drugs?”
“We don’t see much of them round here,” he said.
“I wish,” said the pub owner miserably from behind the bar.
The conversation, as always, turned to the big match the following evening between the Manchester rivals.
“I reckon United will get beat,” said one who was clearly a City fan.
“No chance,” said the other.
Their soccer rivalry quickly broke up their drinking session, and, one after the other, they departed, leaving me alone with the owner.
“Very quiet tonight,” I said.
“Too bloody quiet,” he said. “Always is on Sundays, but this is worse than I’ve ever known. It needs to pick up in the summer—that is, if we get a summer. Nothing but bloody rain last year. Another one like that and I’ll go bust.”
“Shame you can’t pay for protection against the weather,” I said. The pub owner gave me a sideways stare. “Tell me about your Irish trouble.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“I’m not a copper,” I said, “just a fellow sufferer.”
“I don’t care if you’re the bloody Queen of Sheba, mate, I’m not telling you anything. I think it’s time you went.”
“OK, I’m going,” I said, draining the rest of my lager. “But does the name Billy McCusker mean anything to you?”
“No,” he said, but a tightening around his eyes told me that it did.
“How about the Shankill Road Volunteers?”
“Never heard of them.” I could tell he was lying by the tiny beads of sweat that had suddenly appeared on his brow.
“How much do you pay?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Does he collect from all the pubs in Manchester?” I asked.
The owner stood there, looking at me for a moment in silence, as if deciding.
“Does he?” I repeated.
“Someone does,” he said. “All those that are still in business. All those not burned down or smashed up. All those with an owner not in the hospital or the cemetery.” He spoke with all the pent-up venom of one who’d had no choice in the matter for too long.
“McCusker?”
He nodded ever so slightly, as if the small size of the movement would somehow diminish the betrayal.
“Have you been to the police?”
> He laughed. “You must be bloody joking. My friend Bert Goring from the Carpenters Arms, he did that, and now he’s six feet under, at least what’s left of him is. They torched his pub with him in it. Barricaded the doors so he couldn’t get out.”
“So you pay?”
He nodded again. “A couple of grand a month. Almost half my profit. I put it down on my tax return as insurance expenses.”
“I’m here to stop McCusker,” I said.
“You and whose army?” he said, mocking me. “You don’t have a chance. He’s got the local cops wrapped round his little finger. And it wouldn’t make much difference to me anyway. It might even make things worse. Better the Devil you know, eh?”
“But surely you’d like to be rid of him?”
“Another would simply pop up in his place, just as McCusker did after the previous guy got run out of town. There’s always going to be somebody.” He sounded resigned to it. “I’ve been in this wretched business for twenty years now and I’ve never not had to pay someone for protection. It comes with the territory. What makes me angry is how they claim they are doing us a favor. It’s enough to make you sick.”
“So I can’t count on your help, then?”
“No, you can’t,” he said categorically. “I’d rather be alive and poor, thank you very much. Now, it’s time you went, I’ve said too much to you already.”
I went outside and called Chico, who answered at the fourth ring.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m still in the Bell,” he said, “chatting up a nice, cuddly redhead.”
“You’re meant to be working, remember?”
“I am,” he said. “This particular redhead is a cleaner, and, amongst others, she cleans the big house with the razor-wire fence.”
“How on earth did you find that out?”
“I just came in here and said loudly that this must be a pretty awful place if people needed to protect their houses with fences like those round a prison camp, and she just said straight out that it was mostly for show. I’d better get back to her. How about you?”
“Never mind me. Get back to your redhead and find out what you can. I’ll call you again in half an hour.”
I marveled at how he did it. He’d always been able to chat up six birds successfully in the time I took to fail with one, and a stint as a married man had clearly not cost him his touch.
I wandered farther down Wilmslow Road past a parade of shops and the Fortune Cookie Chinese restaurant, with its name written bright in red neon lights.
The next pub I went into was much fuller than the previous two, not least because of two giant TV screens showing the final round of the Masters golf, live from Augusta, all the way across the Atlantic.
I ordered a diet cola and sat down on a barstool to watch.
“On your own?” asked the girl behind the bar, placing my drink down in front of me.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m up here house hunting.”
“You should talk to Shane Duffy over there.” She pointed at the back of a well-built man facing away from me in a group watching the golf. “He works for an estate agent.”
“Right,” I said. “Thank you. I will.”
“Hey, Shane,” she shouted across the crowded room, “I’ve got a customer for you.”
Shane turned around to face me.
I’d last seen him twelve days previously in the parking lot at Towcester races just before he’d kicked me in the face with his boot.
• • •
I THINK I recognized him fractionally before he did me and that gave me a few seconds’ start.
I came out of the pub door like a greyhound leaving the traps and turned north up Wilmslow Road, hurrying back towards the parade of shops and the Chinese restaurant.
I didn’t like to look back in case the lightness of my face gave me away. The street lighting was minimal, and I was wearing dark trousers and a black windproof jacket. Perhaps he hadn’t seen which way I’d gone, so I moved quickly but silently, staying as much as possible in the shadows of the roadside trees.
I went straight into the Fortune Cookie restaurant, closing the door firmly behind me.
“Table for one, sir?” said a young Chinese man in almost perfect English.
“Thank you,” I said, “but can I just use your bathroom first.”
I could tell he didn’t like it. Probably too many people simply wanted to use their facilities and then leave. “Downstairs,” he said reluctantly.
I went down as he’d directed and came face-to-face with a large, angry dog that looked to me like a Rottweiler. It snarled at me in an unfriendly manner and barked twice, loudly.
I nearly went straight back up to take my chances with Shane Duffy, but, thankfully, I could see that the dog was secured to a ring in the floor under the stairs. Nevertheless, I flattened myself against the opposite wall as I edged passed it to the gentlemen’s, hoping that the ring and the dog’s heavy chain collar would both hold against its pull.
I waited in the lavatory cubicle for what must have been only a few minutes, but it seemed like much longer. No one came in or even tried to.
I emerged slowly, and the dog barked at me again, curling its upper lip and revealing a line of very sharp canine teeth.
What was such a vicious-looking animal doing in a Chinese restaurant?
Its barking couldn’t have been that good for business. And, surely, stir-fried dog wasn’t on the menu.
I came back up the stairs into the main part of the restaurant very gingerly, checking the faces of the sparse clientele to ensure that Shane Duffy wasn’t one of them, sitting there patiently, waiting for me to reappear.
He wasn’t.
“Was that a table for one?” asked the young Chinese man in a slightly sarcastic manner.
“Yes, I think so. Did anyone come in after me asking if I was here?”
“No, sir,” he said. “Were you expecting anyone?”
“Did anyone come in at all after me? Someone who didn’t stay?”
“No, sir,” he said again. “How about a table by the window?”
“No thanks. I’ll have a booth.” I pointed at the one I wanted.
I sat facing the door and called Chico.
“I need you, right now,” I said to him.
“Where are you?”
“Holed up in a Chinese restaurant with one of the bad guys outside looking for me.”
“Bad guys?” he asked.
“One of the men who beat me up in the parking lot at Towcester,” I said. “I came across him in a bar.”
“Oh,” said Chico. “So much for our low profile.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I really need you here, and pronto. I daren’t go outside in case he’s waiting for me.”
“OK,” he said. “The cuddly redhead’s boyfriend has turned up anyway and he hasn’t taken kindly to my interest in her. It’s time to move on, so I’ll come and rescue you. Where’s the car?”
“Parked near the local medical center. But the key is in my pocket.”
“That’s careless,” Chico said, rubbing in the fact that I was clearly out of practice at this investigating lark. In the past, we had always left a spare car key hidden in the underside of a wheel well in a magnetic box so we could both access it.
“I wasn’t expecting to have to do a quick getaway.”
“Always expect the unexpected, that’s what you used to say.”
“Sod off,” I said.
“What’s the name of the restaurant?”
“The Fortune Cookie. It’s north of you on Wilmslow Road, on the left. The name is lit up in bright red neon. You can’t miss it.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Be careful,” I said. “And don’t come and sit with me when you get here.”
/> “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. See you in a bit.”
Chico had been an investigator for years before I’d started at the detective agency. He had taught me much of what I knew about the business, and he’d probably forgotten far more than I’d ever known.
The young Chinese man came over with a menu in a red padded folder, which he placed on the table.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
“Just some tap water, thank you. And I’m afraid I won’t be eating after all. I’m just waiting now for a friend to come and collect me.”
The young man wasn’t particularly pleased.
“You’ll have to pay a cover charge,” he said. “For the water and the use of our facilities.”
“OK,” I said. “If it helps feed that dog of yours. I presume it has a purpose?”
“It’s a guard dog,” he said. “We let it loose in the restaurant at night to deter thieves.”
And “insurance” bagmen, I thought. Those who collect the protection monies.
“Do you have much trouble?” I asked.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“A fellow sufferer. One who’s fighting back.”
“Don’t look for help from me,” he said. “I’m a translator by training. I’m only running this place because my father and mother are now too frightened.”
“Didn’t they pay?” I asked.
“Why should they?” he said angrily. “They worked hard all their lives for their own benefit, not for someone else to come and demand half their profit for doing nothing.”
Why should they, indeed, I thought. Except the alternative was to be frightened out of their own business.
“What happened?”
“Three men attacked my father in the alley out back and then ransacked the place, breaking everything. Two years ago now, but he has hardly set foot outside their flat since. And the restaurant used to be thriving, but now . . .” He spread his arms out. “Look at it. Not enough customers to pay the rates, let alone anyone else. We’ll be gone soon.”
Be pragmatic, that’s what D.C.I. Watkinson had said.
Dick Francis's Refusal Page 22