The Damage (David Blake 2)

by Howard Linskey

  Palmer and Kinane must have thought so too because they didn’t say anything about the way he looked, not at first. Instead they listened, hearing him out without interruption as he told them the latest take from the Sunnydale estate, which was down on the usual amount by a fair sum.

  ‘Who gave you that amount, Doyle?’ asked Palmer.

  ‘Braddock,’ answered Doyle, ‘it’s always Braddock that gives me the amount.’

  ‘And did he give you a reason?’

  ‘No, he never said anything about it.’

  Kinane and Palmer showed no emotion at this news. They asked him a couple more questions, the usual day-to-day stuff, then they let him go. As Doyle reached the end of the bar, Palmer called out to him, ‘Oi Doyley,’ and he turned back to be told, ‘you look almost employable.’

  Doyle beamed at Palmer then immediately felt self-conscious, turned and left the bar.

  Doyle crossed the hotel foyer, silently cursing himself for looking so uncool in front of the big men. He’d smiled like a simpleton as soon as he received a bit of back-handed praise from a street legend. He left the hotel wondering if they would ever take him seriously.

  Doyle was about to cross the road to follow the riverside path back towards the Quayside. No one, least of all Doyle, saw the gunman as he emerged from the shadows behind him, raised his hand, pointed his Makarov pistol and shot Jaiden Doyle twice in the back.

  5

  .......................

  ‘They want me to set up a job for them, using a local man,’ explained Peter Dean.

  ‘Who does?’ asked Billy.

  They were sitting at a table in Billy’s flat, a chaotic place that made Dean’s tiny flat seem ordered by comparison.

  ‘Never you mind Billy,’ said Peter, ‘they want to remain anonymous. That’s why they are paying me. You can think of me as the client, if you like.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t care, do I? All I care about is the money and what the job is…’ Billy seemed suddenly to recall that nobody had actually told him what was required yet, ‘What kind of work is it?’

  Peter Dean took a deep breath and said, ‘A hit.’

  ‘A hit,’ Billy laughed, but then he noticed that Dean wasn’t laughing, ‘you’re fucking joking, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m deadly serious,’ said Peter.

  Billy’s mouth opened like he was about to form the words of a reply but he didn’t say anything. Instead he thought for a moment and finally said, ‘that’s not what I do. I just deal.’

  ‘You don’t have to pull the trigger yourself, that’s the beauty of this. I just want you to find a local man who can do it for us, tell him all about the fella these guys want to remove, give him some inside information to help him complete the job, then pay him and see him on his way.’

  ‘Why don’t these people just do it themselves then? Why pay us?’

  ‘They’re not from round here and, like I said, they want to remain anonymous.’

  ‘Right, I see,’ said Billy, ‘well it’s their money I suppose,’ he took a drag on his cigarette, tapped it against the ashtray, then added, ‘talking of which, what are they offering?’

  Peter told him and Billy whistled like he couldn’t believe it. ‘Who is the bloke then? The one they want removing?’

  For the second time, Peter Dean took a deep breath. This was the moment where he risked everything, up to and including his life, on a single roll of the dice. If he had misread the situation, if Billy didn’t really despise David Blake, or was too scared of him, if he simply wanted to get back into Blake’s good books by telling him there was a plot against his life, then Peter Dean was a dead man. But then Peter was as good as dead anyway, without the funds needed to prop up his fading empire. So he told Billy Warren who the target was.

  ‘David Blake? Are you sure?’ Billy’s eyes widened as Peter nodded, ‘Jesus fucking Christ man!’

  There was a moment when Peter fully expected to be asked if he was mad, before witnessing the nightmarish prospect of Billy picking up the phone to David Blake or, worse, Joe Kinane, then Billy said, ‘that’s a hell of a risk you are asking me to take.’

  Billy didn’t believe that though, not really. He was used to ducking and diving, always had been and he was already pretty sure he could sort this, without actually going anywhere near the sharp end himself. Delegation; that was what was required here. He could put a lot of space between himself and this job if he planned it right and the money was, well, astounding. When the amount was mentioned, Billy couldn’t believe his luck. Jesus, who did they think they were going to kill, the Prime Minister? Peter explained he would receive half once the hit man had been approached and engaged, and the rest once the job was completed.

  ‘Interested?’

  ‘I might be.’

  ‘But can you do it?’ asked Peter. There was a worried look on the older man’s face like he suddenly thought he might have overestimated Billy’s contacts. ‘Do you know the right man to make this happen?’

  ‘Oh yeah, no sweat,’ answered Billy, ‘I know a bloke that would do it easy,’ he assured Dean, ‘in fact he’s exactly the man for this job.’

  ‘So,’ asked Peter, failing to hide his nervous excitement, ‘are you going to do it?’

  Billy took another long drag on his cigarette, ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he answered, ‘won’t I?’

  ‘What’s so important I have to drop everything and fly over there? I was with you a couple of weeks back,’ I was in the computer room on the first floor taking the promised call from Kinane. ‘I thought you and Palmer could handle everything.’

  I turned my seat while I listened and looked down through the open window so I could see Sarah’s slim shape cutting gracefully through the water, rolling from side to side as she powered towards the far end of the pool.

  ‘I know,’ Kinane admitted, ‘we can, usually.’

  ‘It’s not Braddock again, is it? You’re not still banging on about him.’

  ‘No it’s not him,’ he assured me, ‘but while we are on the subject I have to say…’

  ‘We are not on the subject,’ I told him firmly, ‘you just said it wasn’t him. You know my view on Braddock. Just leave it.’

  ‘Yeah and you know my view an’ all,’ he told me, but my silence was enough to shut him up, ‘it isn’t Braddock.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘We’ve got some problems,’ he sounded almost sheepish.

  ‘What kind of problems.’

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  Sarah finished her lengths and climbed out of the water. She walked over to one of the loungers and picked up a large white towel, then began to dry herself with it.

  ‘Start with the bad news,’ I said, ‘then give me the other bad news.’

  ‘Amrein’s been on,’ he said, ‘says he has to have this meeting with you about the Gladwells. It’s urgent, he reckons.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I sighed, ‘I know. I’ve been stalling him. I don’t really want to have a cosy chat with him about the Gladwells.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame you,’ Kinane admitted, ‘what do you want me to tell him?’

  ‘Tell him I’ll talk to him when I’m back in the country,’ I conceded, ‘which sounds like it’s not going to be far away. What else have you got for me?’

  ‘It’s Toddy,’ he said, like he couldn’t quite believe it, ‘it’s not looking good.’

  ‘You’re kidding me. I thought Fitch was all over it.’ My lady lawyer was the dog’s bollocks and harder than most of the men in our crew.

  ‘She is, big time. I know she always runs the Police ragged when they drag you in for questioning,’ said Kinane, then he added, ‘but it’s her that’s telling me it’s not looking good.’

  I had pinned all of my hopes on our expensive lawyer picking the Police procedure apart on this one, looking for anything that might have made evidence inadmissible or violated Toddy’s human rights in some way. Ever since he had been lifted by th
e Police on the Sunnydale estate months ago, we had been fighting a losing battle to get our Toddy off the hook. Mainly because he had three kilos of H in the boot of his car.

  ‘The Polit found a lot of product on him,’ Kinane reminded me, ‘she thinks he’s on for a stretch.’

  This hit me hard. I always thought something could be done to get Toddy off, or minimise the sentence if he was sent down. Maybe he’d only get a year or two and he could handle that. We would look after him, take care of his mum and his girlfriend, compensate Toddy for the time served and make sure he had a future when he got out. That way he’d be less likely to cut a deal. If he had any notion his sentence was likely to be a long one he’d be far more open to offers from SOCA, to name names before disappearing into a witness protection scheme.

  ‘What are we telling Toddy?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Kinane, ‘just that it will be alright. He’ll probably get off on a technicality.’

  ‘He believes you?’

  ‘Don’t know, yes, at least I think he did.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure then,’ I told him, but he didn’t seem to detect the sarcasm.

  I realised now I’d placed too much faith in the lawyer. Susan Fitch was expensive but she knew her stuff. She was a formidable adversary and had torn more than one Police officer apart in the dock before now. They’d arrive there all brash and cocky, with a notepad full of concrete evidence, just waiting to send a villain down. Then they’d be confronted with a hard-faced analytical mind just waiting to pounce on any tiny little detail, blowing a contradictory or misrepresented piece of evidence out of all proportion until they were dizzy from it. Susan Fitch was known for getting even the most hopeless cases off scot-free. The Police bloody hated her for it. But not this time it seemed, at least according to Kinane.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ Kinane had reason to be disbelieving. We paid good money to ensure the Sunnydale estates were way down the Police’s list of priorities. Like me, they took a realistic view of the heroin trade there. It had been going on for thirty years and was never going to end, so why fight the inevitable? We were the ones who got rid of the low-lives dealing there and replaced them with our men. The estates had become a huge money earner for the firm. Our move into the Sunnydale high-rises was so successful we expanded, branching out into every other estate in the city. Now we were a presence in every run-down hell-hole in Newcastle, but better us than the alternative. Obviously the people who worked for us weren’t saints. How could they be? They dealt drugs and, on occasions, used violence. But we made sure they never went too far. People didn’t get killed on our watch, we didn’t deal to children or get teenage girls high for free then pimp them out so they could pay for their addiction, and the drugs we sold weren’t cut with strychnine, rat poison or household bleach. We cleaned up the trade, ending the tendency to settle every minor dispute with a drive-by killing. Sure we had to get rid of the local hoodlum who ran the patch before we moved in but they usually got the message, eventually, and the short, sharp shock we administered was a small price to pay to bring order where there was chaos. Even the Police understood that. It wasn’t exactly junkie nirvana on the estates now but, in the real world, it was about as good as it gets.

  Because the Police knew we were the best-worst option they left us to it. So at first we couldn’t work out why Toddy had been lifted. Panicked phone calls were made, as we demanded to know what the hell had gone wrong. It was only then we realised just how unlucky Toddy had been.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ I tried not to show my exasperation but this wasn’t going to be an easy one to fix, if Susan Fitch couldn’t pick holes in the arrest then no one could, ‘this is all we need.’

  ‘Tell that to Toddy,’ said Kinane.

  I ignored him, ‘you said there was more bad news.’

  ‘You could call it that. Doyley has been shot.’

  ‘What?’ This, if anything, was even more startling news, ‘Jaiden Doyle? Where?’

  ‘Outside the hotel and in the back – right after the usual meeting with Palmer and me.’

  This one I just didn’t get. Doyle was a low-level operative in our firm. He ran a team of dealers for Braddock in some of the high-rises on the Sunnydale Estate, but that didn’t make him a target for anyone. This didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘He’ll live. The bullets went through him, just missed his lung and his heart, assuming he’s got one. To be honest, I don’t give a fuck about his well-being. His sort are ten a penny. What worries me is that someone had the balls to have a go at him. Everybody knows he’s on our payroll, so he was protected.’

  Kinane was taking this like a personal affront and well he might. If you took a pot shot at one of our lads you were basically giving Joe Kinane the finger. You were saying you didn’t give a fuck about our enforcer coming after you – and Kinane wouldn’t take kindly to that attitude from anyone. He had been right to call me. Right now it was hard to imagine anything worse than Toddy facing a stretch and someone having the nerve to shoot one of our guys on our own doorstep. Even so, the last thing I needed right now was another long-haul flight back to the UK, with a load of shit to deal with at the end of it. I’d always thought that, as time went by, I’d be able to delegate more and more of the day-to-day business but it seemed that there would always be some things in our world that only the boss could sort.

  I sighed, ‘I’ll take a flight in the morning.’

  6

  .......................

  Sarah put her book down and asked ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go back to Newcastle though.’

  ‘When?’

  I shrugged, ‘May as well be tomorrow. The sooner I sort things out, the quicker I’ll be home again.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like nothing,’ her voice was calm but I could tell she was worried. We were both playing the same game, assuring each other that we weren’t really concerned about anything; that my short-notice business trip to Tyneside was a routine one and she was merely taking a passing interest.

  ‘It’s just stuff,’ I managed, ‘you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I know. Stuff…’

  ‘Make sure you eat properly while I’m away,’ Sarah had a bad habit of not bothering to eat if I wasn’t there to share it. Like a lot of girls, she thought toast was a meal.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Five a day,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Is wine part of my five a day?’

  ‘It’s made of grapes, so I’ll let you have that.’

  ‘You’re the expert on matching it with food, which wine goes best with Maltesers?’

  ‘Hey, I mean it. Eat proper food or you’ll waste away. Then you’ll lose that great figure of yours and I’ll go off you completely.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m getting fat anyway,’ and she surveyed her impossibly flat stomach for the umpteenth time that week, scrutinising it critically.

  From where I was standing she looked good. Very good in fact. And it was a shame she wasn’t feeling well at the moment because I was about to fly off for a few days and I quite fancied a going-away present. Fat chance of that though. In fact, about the only time I got to see her body these days was when she was wearing a bikini. It was strange, I’d seen Sarah naked dozens of times but when she stepped from the shower that morning and saw me, she immediately covered up before I got so much as a glimpse of her. I didn’t understand what that was all about, but I’d come to the conclusion there was a great deal I’d never understand about women.

  ‘Be a good girl while I’m away,’ I told her as I bent to kiss her on the forehead, ‘try not to sleep with the Gurkhas.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she smiled sweetly back up at me, ‘but I can’t promise. I get so bored and what’s a girl to do?’ This time I bent lower and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Thanks for that comforting thought.’

  Being the boss has its advantages. Wherever I go t
hese days I get treated like the head of any decent-size corporation, which of course I am, and I’m shown straight into the first class lounge before I board the plane. It’s fine in its own way but I am getting a bit too used to this sort of thing to really enjoy it.

  A pretty young thing appeared from nowhere and gave me a smile like I was the centre of her universe, but it was all in the lips, her eyes were expressionless. I wondered how many fat, bald chief executives fall for this and try it on with her.

  ‘Champagne or orange juice, Sir?’ she asked me, and her ruby-red, heavily-glossed lips formed themselves into an inviting ‘O’ as she said ‘orange’ and, for a moment, I wondered what those lips would be like around me and if her blonde, tied-back hair would stay in place while she moved her head up and down. Christ, I am going to have to do something about the drought I’m in. It’s not Sarah’s fault that’s she’s suffering from depression. I understand, I really do, but this no-sex thing is turning me into a dirty old man.

  ‘Champagne,’ I answered, and she took a long glass by the stem and handed it to me. It’s daft really. I’ve got cases of the stuff back at the house in Hua Hin and all of it better than this bought-in-bulk inferior fizz the airline offers, but there’s still a poor, Northern boy trapped inside me somewhere who would shout ‘don’t be daft man, it’s free!’ if I refused it. I don’t think my mother ever had a glass of champagne in her life, except maybe at a wedding.

  I sat for a while waiting for my flight to be called and tried to read a book. Somewhere there’s a serial killer on the loose and a maverick detective with a liking for hard drink is tracking him down. Years ago I could have read the whole thing on my flight home and enjoyed it for what it was, but I just can’t get into it. I’ve got a lot on my mind, what with Sarah not doing so well. Then there’s Toddy’s case and now even Jaiden Doyle has given me something to think about. Who would want to shoot one of my men? Lots of people probably, for a whole variety of reasons, but I have to work out who stood to gain most from the act and actually had the balls to go ahead and do it.