by Nick Oldham
He was nothing special to look at.
He wasn’t six foot six with a scar across his cheeks, tattoos on his arms and built like a brick shit-house. He was very average-looking. Five-ten. Firmly, but slimly built, with a pinched, unfriendly face with very closely cropped grey hair. Nothing stood out, except that aura which warned without speaking.
In the days of the triumvirate of Munrow, Rider and Conroy, Munrow had been the most violent out of the three. Conroy would rather have had someone else to do his dirty work; Rider needed the right set of circumstances to light his blue touch paper, otherwise he was a pussy cat.
During armed robberies it was always Munrow who would shoot some poor bastard Group 4 guard’s foot off. Just for the hell of it. Always him, when arguing, who would pull a triple-edged Stanley Knife blade and swish it across somebody’s cheek. Cuts like those were impossible to stitch.
He had been brought up to be violent and loved it.
In the end he was the only one of the three who went to prison. It would have been him eventually anyway.
Eleven years in Strangeways had done nothing to soften his approach to life. He came out with a vengeance and the idea that he’d pick up the pieces where he’d left them. Assume his rightful position in gangland — at the top.
Things had changed dramatically.
The gangland he knew no longer existed. With the glaring exceptions of Moss Side and Salford, it was all much more subtle and organised. Now the buzzwords were ‘compromise’ or ‘negotiation’ or ‘strategies’. Words Munrow did not understand.
When he approached Conroy expecting to be let back in, he found the door wedged shut. He quickly saw the reality that he was not wanted any more.
All he had left was a rundown off-licence and two poxy launderettes which were throwbacks to the 1970s. Most people had their own washing machines now. Who on earth wanted to use a scruffy launderette?
He was virtually broke and needed to get back into the mainstream.
Which he decided to do by violence.
Munrow cast his eyes around the room. Some of the men were contacts from another era who had been left behind, like him; some were young bucks who wanted a chance to prove themselves. All were capable of murder. What’s more, all were willing…
They were to be the nucleus of his new business team.
Munrow opened his mouth. Prison life had put an even harder edge on his tobacco-stained vocal cords. Behind every word he spoke there was the hint of a cough ready to break. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and spoke whilst the smoke was in his lungs.
‘ We control the doors,’ he said gruffly. ‘We control the drugs in and out. Simple, innit?’ Smoke drifted lazily out through his nostrils and mouth. ‘And tonight we’re gonna make inroads into this problem of the doors. I don’t want nothin’ fancy. Just hard and fucking violent. We do three clubs tonight. Two at the same time — midnight — and the third, all of us together, at quarter to two. Dennis, are the cars ready?’
Dennis nodded. He was one of the balaclava twins who had dealt with Rider.
‘ Is everybody tooled up?’
Heads nodded. They were eager to go and get some action.
‘ Good. This should be fucking easy. They’re all tarts on the doors these days. They won’t be expecting us and we do ‘em good and proper. In and out. Don’t waste time, Make your point, then leave before the cops, or anyone else, has time to get there. And don’t use shooters unless absolutely necessary… we’ll leave that for later when we all get together.’
The bedroom upstairs at the back of the pub smelled of beer. From the plug-hole in the cracked sink emanated the unmistakable whiff of blocked drains. The walls were damp, paper peeled off, adding to the aroma.
There was another stronger smell in the room: that of decaying human flesh.
The room was an unhealthy environment for anyone to be in, let alone someone who’d been shot in the leg and had received no medical treatment for the wound.
Such as in the case of Jonno, the young man who had been shot by John Rider a few days before at Blackpool Zoo.
He was lying in a flimsy metal-framed camp bed. He had drifted into unconsciousness again, a blissful state for his body which could no longer tolerate the excruciating pain from the badly infected wound.
Sat next to him on a stool, leafing through an old Woman s Own was the man Rider had quickly christened as ‘Curly’.
Munrow came into the room.
The stench hit him, clawed its way up his nose. Gangrene. He gagged and covered his nostrils with his hand. ‘How’s he doin’?
‘ Not good. Needs a doctor.’
Munrow eased the blood-stained sheet off Jonno’s body and exposed the leg. The true aroma of the wound whooshed up towards him like an invisible swarm of flies.
The leg was in very bad condition.
The bullet had lodged in the outer part of Jonno’s right thigh and the wound had quickly putrefied even though it had been repeatedly washed and cleaned. Now it was turning green and mouldy-looking, like Gorgonzola, and this was spreading rapidly through the muscles and into his groin. At the very least Jonno had lost his leg.
Munrow had been very reluctant to send Jonno to hospital or get a doctor to see him. That meant questions. Questions meant answers. Answers meant cops.
In the old days he would have brought in a friendly, paid-for GP. Now Munrow didn’t have the contacts.
Jonno moaned and smacked his lips, which were dry and flaking. His almost-transparent eyelids flickered open a fraction. He mumbled something that made no sense. Sweat rolled off his forehead. He was burning up inside. His eyes closed wearily. He turned his head to the wall.
‘ What we gonna do?’ Curly asked.
Munrow’s cold eyes looked sideways at Curly. ‘Dump him.’
Just after midnight Conroy was watching a pornographic video which had a weak and predictable storyline centring on the punishment of young schoolboys and occasionally their masters.
He was at his house in Osbaldeston.
Two bodyguards and their girlfriends were lounging about downstairs, probably snorting cocaine. Two more security guards and their Alsatians roamed the grounds outside.
Conroy was in the master bedroom, lying splayed out naked on the bed. His long hair had been freed from its pony tail. The huge TV monitor in the centre of the room was showing the video. He masturbated himself slowly throughout the feature presentation. Having watched the film a dozen times beforehand, it was his intention to hold himself back from shooting his load until the climax of the film, during a mass rape scene at the end.
It was one hell of a good film, calling for full audience participation.
And it was nearing the end.
Six trouserless boys were led uncomplaining into the headmaster’s study and told to bend over and touch their toes.
The headmaster picked up his cane and flexed it. The camera pulled back to reveal that he wore no trousers himself and was sporting a huge erection. Conroy quickened his pace. In a moment the police would swoop and the real fun would begin.
The phone next to his bed rang shrilly.
With a snarl of annoyance he picked it up, thankful he had not reached the point of no return.
‘ Yes? What the fuck do you want?’ he barked.
‘ Boss… ’ It was one of his guards. ‘We got trouble in town. Two of the clubs have been hit.’
‘ What?’ he screamed. ‘Who by?’
‘ The Thunderpoint and the Electric. All the doormen have been trounced.’
So it wasn’t the cops.
Conroy abruptly lost his appetite for self-fulfilment and young boys on film. He picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV, blacking out the favourite part of his favourite movie.
‘ Get a car sorted. I’ll be down in five. Get tooled up just in case.’
Conroy and his men were in Blackburn less than twenty minutes later. They went straight to the Electric which was within spitting distance
of the railway station and was formerly a cinema.
He did not actually own the club outright, but held a fifty-one per cent stake in it, the remaining forty-nine per cent divided between Morton and McNamara through a complex series of financial manoeuvrings which kept their ownership as secret as possible. Conroy covered the door with his own men and this ensured that only his dealers had access to the clientele and therefore he had a stranglehold on the drug trade inside. The Electric was not a big club, holding a capacity of two hundred. Nevertheless he cleared about?1500 per week through it in drugs money alone.
It was very rare for him to put in a personal appearance at such a low level. He tried to keep his distance from the streets these days.
Dundaven usually dealt with things here and Conroy was a tad uncomfortable as he sat in the manager’s office and glowered at the head doorman who sat on the couch, a towel pressed into a nasty gash on his cranium. He had escaped lightly. The two other doormen had been whacked into oblivion and taken to hospital by ambulance.
The cops had been and gone, fobbed off by the manager, by the time Conroy arrived.
‘ What happened?’
‘ We didn’t stand a chance,’ the doorman whined. ‘They pulled up outside, two cars, three in each, balaclavas on. They were into us before we could do fuck-all.’
Conroy sighed. Men in balaclavas. Right up Munrow’s street.
‘ And..?’ he urged the man on impatiently.
‘ And they beat the living crap out of us with baseball bats or pick-axe handles — I don’t know which. You don’t really care when you’re being clonked. They both fucking well hurt.’
‘ Why weren’t you ready? I thought protection was your job. It’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’
The doorman looked sourly up at him. ‘Ready? Give us a break,’ he said. Although he knew he was talking to the boss, the pain in his head made him angry. ‘Why should we be ready for that?’
‘ Because I fucking pay you to be ready, you fucking wanker! Where were your bats?’
‘ Behind the cash counter. If we had them on us all the time the cops’d pull us. We keep’ em out of sight and only grab’ em when we need’ em.’
‘ You mean you didn’t need them tonight?’
‘ We was attacked — out of the blue. It weren’t like trouble was brewing.’
‘ Did they say anything?’
‘ No.’
Conroy sat back and crossed his legs. He was annoyed and worried at the same time. Fucking Munrow! This had to be down to him. It was times like this that Conroy needed Dundaven. He would have arranged to sort Munrow out in the most appropriate way. But with Hughie locked away, a vital link in his set-up had been severed.
Shit. How to get Munrow out of his hair? Then he remembered Tony Morton’s suggestion which, reading between the lines, went something like: Get John Rider to do your dirty work for you.
But how could he get Rider sufficiently riled with Munrow to take him out?
Conroy rolled his neck. It cracked obscenely.
‘ Let’s have a look at the Thunderpoint. See if it’s the same pathetic story,’ he said to his bodyguards.
It was.
But at least he had had an idea about Rider and Munrow. A double whammy. One which would sort both of them out.
They were ready for the piece de resistance.
Possibly the biggest club operating in Lancashire, that midweek night was the Salsa, near Fulwood, just off the M55. Out of town, plush, up-to-date with state-of-the-art sound and lighting, it was frequented by footballers, Manchester pop stars and other minor celebs. The Salsa was a good, well-managed, profitable club with a capacity of almost fifteen hundred with it usually reached on Friday and Saturday nights.
The Salsa was the jewel in Conroy’s crown. He owned one hundred per cent of it. A poor week netted him five grand in drug money alone. In entrance fees, which went through the books and were properly audited, the club grossed over?50,000 each week. Easily.
Conroy strove hard to keep it one of the best clubs in the north. It was the only one he ever visited. He often paid celebs to frequent it and give it the necessary credibility. You could almost guarantee to see somebody well-known, whatever night of the week. The off-chance of dancing on the same floor as a pop star or a five-million-pound footballer probably drew in an extra two hundred bodies a week.
It was a perfect target for Munrow to make his point.
From the car park they made their way in a businesslike manner to the front of the club. Staves and bats were secreted up sleeves or down trouser legs. Shotguns were held firmly under jackets.
The balaclavas went on at the last moment. Within seconds they had pole-axed the doormen and entered the club.
They rampaged through the place like a pack of wild dogs. Indiscriminately hitting innocent people, smashing tables and destroying the disco console.
Munrow made his final point by having two of the bouncers dragged onto the dance floor and laid face down.
In full view of all the customers, many of whom were drugged up to the eyeballs, he placed his shotgun in the soft flesh at the back of the left knee of one of the bouncers and pulled the trigger. He did the same to the other.
Munrow and his business associates then fled.
And not one witness, out of a total of four hundred and ten people, saw a thing.
Funny, that.
Chapter Fourteen
The avenue was wide, tree-lined and very pleasant. Extremely middle-class. On either side of the road was a grass verge which was covered with a coating of pure white fluffy snow. Behind the grass verges ran wide footpaths, behind which were the garden walls which fronted the houses. They were all detached, five- or six-bedroomed affairs with driveways which had an entrance and an exit. Set back at the rear of the houses were double garages the size of small bungalows. The gardens were all lawns and landscaping. Stockbrokers and solicitors abounded here, a good place for them to live, not far from Manchester and the towns of central Lancashire. They had their own little railway station nearby that made commuting a doddle.
Rider looked at his watch. 7 a.m. A couple of minutes before, a milkman had trundled down the avenue in one of those electrified carts, in and out of the driveways, and now the place was quiet again.
It was very dark. A real winter’s morning. It would probably be ten before the night was completely shrugged off.
The dull ache in Rider’s body became more than uncomfortable. He changed his position slightly for the hundredth time, yawned again, long and weary. It had been a long night.
He shivered and hoped it wasn’t to be an unproductive one. Otherwise he’d have to revisit a certain transvestite and drown him/her in a toilet.
Rider was sitting in the front passenger seat of a tatty Ford Transit van parked up on the avenue, underneath the overhang of some roadside trees. The van was totally out of place, exposed. Rider knew it would only take one phone call from an early-rising public-spirited resident to bring the cops sniffing around. He was living on borrowed time and the later it got, the less he had.
With increasing restlessness he was observing the front of one of the houses about a hundred metres away.
It was fucking freezing and though the engine was ticking over like there were lumps of lead in the petrol, the pathetic heater was only gasping out lukewarm air. He wasn’t dressed for the cold, only wearing his nightclub gear of thin suit and tie.
Efficient as ever, Jacko, sitting in the driver’s seat, was appropriately dressed for the winter weather in a duffel coat, thick socks, boots and cord pants. His gloved hands were resting on the steering wheel. He constantly had to wipe the screen with the back of his hand to see through the thin veil of frost which was forming relentlessly on the inside of the glass as their breath froze.
Jacko looked glum and unhappy. He did not want to be here. He desperately hoped nothing would happen.
‘ You should get a decent van,’ Rider complained. ‘I’m freezing
my balls off sat here.’
‘ It is a decent van,’ Jacko replied stonily. ‘Is he gonna come or what?’
‘ Yes.’ There was more certainty in Rider’s voice than he felt.
‘ Then what?’
‘ Leave it to me. My problem.’
‘ I don’t like this one little bit, John,’ the other said nervously. ‘Why get involved? I know you got battered, but this is a dangerous world — and I really don’t want anything to do with it.’
‘ I know. You won’t be involved. Trust me.’
Jacko gave him a contemptuous glare from the corner of his eyes.
Rider was experiencing some guilt in roping the barman in, but he had no one else to turn to other than Isa, and she wouldn’t be much use in a situation like this. ‘I appreciate what you’re doing.’
The barman merely snorted, giving the impression he wasn’t remotely taken in by Rider’s words. He wiped the window again.
A vehicle turned into the other end of the avenue, lights blazing. It came towards the Transit. Rider got ready. But it was only the gritting lorry thundering past, showering the Transit with road salt.
‘ At least there’s nothing left to rot,’ Rider said dryly.
‘ One more remark about this van and we’re going,’ Jacko snapped. He meant it. ‘You could’ve used your Jag.’
‘ And he might’ve recognised it… Hang on.’
Another vehicle turned into the avenue from the same direction, travelling slowly. A car. Instinctively Rider touched Jacko’s arm. They both sank down.
This car turned into the driveway of the house they were watching and pulled up outside the front door. The security lights clicked on and bathed the whole front garden with white light. The car lights were switched off. A man got out, went up the steps to the door and pressed the bell.
Rider’s throat constricted.
‘ Is it him?’ Jacko hissed.
Rider couldn’t say for sure. He was three hundred feet away and he could hardly see sod-all through the iced-up screen.