*
I glanced out of the window and watched as the large black Lexus pulled up outside the café. The driver parallel-parked it, taking a moment to get the vehicle straight against the kerb. There wasn’t much room between the two vans but he rocked it quickly back and forth until it was slap bang in the centre of the space. The car came to a halt, the driver’s door swung open and out stepped the hardest man in the north-east of England.
Joe Kinane was so big he made every car he drove look like a toy. He reminded me of Noddy in fact, always out of scale, far too large for the car he drove around in. Kinane stretched like he’d been cooped up in the car for too long, then he glanced towards the window, saw me sitting there, nodded and walked up to the café, frowning all the way.
The door swung open like someone had just kicked it but that wasn’t misplaced aggression, it was just Kinane’s natural awkwardness. Here was a bloke who really didn’t know his own strength. Joe Kinane was around six-four in his socks and weighed in at about two hundred and forty pounds. He was in his early fifties but remained undiminished for it. There was no sense that Kinane had seen his better years and was on the wane. Certainly no one was brave enough to suggest this to him. Pride alone would have forced him to knock them into a different post code.
Kinane had been talent-spotted by Bobby Mahoney while still a young man. Back then Bobby hadn’t been the top dog. He was still an emerging force, carving out a name and a reputation for himself. He had reached the stage where he had earned respect from those within his profession, but there were a number of candidates who could just as easily have taken on the role of Top Boy in the city and he was merely one of them. Another candidate was Alex Clarke who, along with his two brothers, came from a long line of criminal stock. They were hardened villains whose father and uncles had been frightening people for two decades before they came along. The rise of the Clarkes seemed almost pre-ordained in those days. Certainly Bobby was aware of them and would have been wary of their reputation, which involved a ruthless and enthusiastic use of violence.
The Clarke brothers decided to take over a pub they’d taken a liking to. It was on the outskirts of town but doing well because it was right opposite a thriving club they also had their eye on. The brothers gave the owner an ultimatum; sell to them for way below market value or stay put and have the place burned down around him, but the owner refused, so they decided to pay him a visit. They didn’t realise that a new man had started on the door that night. That man was Joe Kinane.
I can’t remember the other Clarke brothers’ first names; they are just a footnote in Geordie criminal folklore – but I do know that Joe Kinane killed one of them in the fight and paralysed another. Alex Clarke got his face and throat slashed with the broken bottle he tried to use on Joe, who took it off him and turned it against his attacker. At least he was able to run from the building. The police found Alex by following the trail of blood and got him off to hospital before it was too late. It was rumoured that one of the senior detectives investigating the whole bloody affair actually shook Joe Kinane by the hand and said, ‘if it was down to me, son, they’d give you a medal,’ before they led him away. Joe Kinane became a legend on Tyneside that night.
Kinane was charged with murder at first, but only for five minutes or so; this was the Clarke brothers, after all, and the charge was soon dropped to manslaughter. There were mitigating circumstances, everyone knew the reason the Clarkes were in the bar that night and people were prepared to testify about it now that one brother was dead, another in a wheelchair and the third had gone missing, Alex having hopped onto a train to London as soon as his wounds had healed. Eventually far lesser charges were brought and Joe Kinane was given just eight months for what would now be described as affray. He only served four and, when he was released, with everything he owned in a brown paper parcel, he emerged blinking into the sunlight to find Bobby Mahoney and Jerry Lemon waiting for him outside the prison walls. They gave Joe a lift into town in Bobby’s Jag, bought him drinks and a meal, lent him money that didn’t need to be repaid to ‘get him back on his feet’ and finally talked idly about finding him a bit of work when he was ready for some.
A week later, Kinane started on the door of the Cauldron but it soon became clear his talents would be better utilised elsewhere and, along with the late, great Finney, he soon became one of the firm’s two enforcers. With them at his side, Bobby Mahoney’s rise was unstoppable.
I would never say this to Kinane’s face but he and Finney were very much alike and, possibly because of this, they never really got on. Each one thought he was harder than the other man and itched for the opportunity to prove it. Seven or eight years ago now they almost got the chance. There was a row, the details of which have been lost in the mist of time and been clouded by myth, but it involved money, a dust-up with some rival villains and an argument about who exactly did what to whom, when, and on who’s orders. In the end, Bobby sided with Finney and Kinane was banished from the inner circle, forbidden to earn a living in any way that might impact on Bobby’s business. Most people with Kinane’s talents would have left the city at that point but Kinane clung on, opening a ramshackle gym which kept him going during the wilderness years.
I had managed to avoid falling out with Kinane, despite being one of Bobby’s trusted lieutenants, and he was the first person I brought into the organisation when I took over. When Kinane walked into a room with me people shut up and they listened.
‘Found the place okay then?’
‘Eventually,’ he told me, and he looked around the room, as if he was about to start addressing everyone in it, ‘why anyone would choose to live down here is beyond me. It’s a shit-hole.’ He said it loud enough for a couple of people to look up from their plates, but they soon looked back down again once they realised who was doing the talking. The area we were in was Kings Cross, which used to be a shit-hole but was well on the way to full gentrification, transformed by the renovation of the St Pancras Hotel, the building of up-market apartments and the European rail link. I suspect Kinane disapproved of it all simply because it wasn’t Newcastle.
‘Get yourself a brew, Joe. You’ve come a long way.’
He nodded and walked over to the counter just as a manager emerged from a side door. The girl who’d served me was clearing cups and wiping tables, so the manager served Kinane. The manager was young and keen and almost as shiny as the five grand’s worth of gleaming espresso machine behind him, which looked like it could power a steam train.
‘Yes, sir, what can I get you?’ he chimed.
‘Coffee, white, two sugars,’ ordered Kinane.
‘You mean you want a white Americano?’ the young man corrected him with a nod towards the tariff behind him. Kinane looked at the man with distaste then squinted at the tariff with its Grande-this and Frappe-that, scanning the dozens of Americanised-pseudo-Italian phrases, looking for the simple word coffee. When he couldn’t find it, he gave up and turned his attention back to the manager who was looking a little impatient now.
‘No,’ explained Kinane quietly, ‘I do not want an Americano, you soppy cunt. I want coffee, white, two sugars. Got that?’
The manager stared at Kinane and nodded quickly, ‘Yes sir.’
‘Go on then.’
And the young manager quickly put his head down and got his arse in gear. Seconds later there was a steaming cup of coffee with milk added, resting on a saucer on the counter between them. The manager did not stop there. He even came out and fetched two sugar sachets from the self-service section, returned to the counter, tore them open and poured them into Kinane’s coffee, then stirred it for him. Kinane paid him with a gruff, ‘There’s a good lad.’ The manager gave him his change, quietly thanked him and quickly retreated through the side door again.
Whenever I can, I prefer to drive. Public transport is a disgrace in this country. Okay, I don’t have to worry about the cost like most people, but think about it, go by plane and you stand around wait
ing for an age to board the bloody thing. Then there’s that intrusive paper trail with passports and boarding cards; all easy to trace later, which isn’t ideal in a world where you’d really rather nobody knew where you were going or what you were about. And don’t get me started on the trains. Last time I bought a first-class ticket I told the bloke behind the counter I wanted to buy a seat not the whole fucking train. So much easier to just climb into your car when you want, and go where you want.
I don’t normally expect Joe Kinane to drive all the way down here to pick me up but he wanted to talk and this was as good a way of doing it as any.
‘Is Palmer back from the Turk?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Taking his time, isn’t he?’
Kinane’s ludicrously broad shoulders shrugged, ‘It’s a tricky business, isn’t it?’
‘It was a tricky business,’ I agreed, ‘initially. Negotiating with a new wholesaler always is, but this meet was supposed to ratify what’s already been agreed. I don’t know why it should take this long,’ I observed.
‘I don’t either but he’s carrying a million Euros. He’s got to be careful, hasn’t he?’
‘I guess so.’ I conceded. I didn’t know what worried me more; that Palmer was late back from carrying a one million Euro deposit intended for our new drugs wholesaler or that Kinane had got a bit sniffy with me when I queried this. Kinane was showing a commendable loyalty to Palmer; considering they worked together a lot that was understandable, but his first loyalty was supposed to be to me. I didn’t want the two of them becoming too close – a firm within a firm. The fact that it had never entered Kinane’s head that Palmer could have done a runner with the money, or been killed by the Turk for it, concerned me too. You need imagination to stay alive at the top of our profession. That’s why they need a guy like me running things, so I’m trapped, because they won’t survive for five minutes on their own without me. Right now I just wanted to get back to Newcastle, so I could sort out the mess as quickly as possible, then take the first flight back home to Sarah. I was getting the nagging feeling that it wasn’t going to be that simple.
7
.......................
We stopped halfway for a break. Kinane chose a truck stop because he ‘wasn’t going to pay over the odds for a fucking Panini and a muffin. Not when I can get a proper fry-up for half the price.’ We sat at a formica-topped table that was in need of a wipe-down. There was a plastic sauce bottle shaped like an over-sized tomato with congealed ketchup on its nozzle. Through the grubby lace curtains I could see rows of lorries parked up outside. We were the only ones who’d arrived by car.
A good fry-up was one of the things I missed the most, along with a proper pint. Kinane lived off this stuff and I joined him. We both ended up with plates piled high with bacon, sausage, fried egg, fried tomato, fried bread and baked beans, washed down with mugs of piping hot tea. By the time I’d finished I could almost feel my arteries hardening. Kinane chuckled to himself as he mopped up the remnants of his egg yolk with his fried bread and stuffed it into his mouth.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I almost forgot.’ He mumbled while he chewed, ‘Peter Dean wants a meeting with you.’
‘You’re not serious? Not after the last one. I hope you told him “No”.’
‘I would have done but…’
‘Christ, Joe. I rely on you to keep old timewasters like Dean away from me. Haven’t I got enough on my plate already?’
‘Hear me out,’ he said, ‘you want to be rid of him and his stupid schemes, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well now’s your chance. Peter has found a backer.’
‘A money man?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Are you telling me someone is about to invest in Peter Dean?’
‘So he says.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘He reckons he has the man and the money all lined up.’
‘Well good luck to him,’ I said, ‘but what the hell has that got to do with me and why does he need a meeting?’
‘Because the Gallowgate Leisure Group owns fifty per cent of Phoenix Films.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Nope. I checked. It’s true. Bobby must have chucked him a bit of wedge for old time’s sake or out of charity or something.’
‘Doesn’t sound like Bobby. So Peter needs my permission to receive investment?’ I still didn’t get it.
‘According to Peter, this backer of his wants to buy us out.’
‘But the company is valueless.’
‘Peter has persuaded him otherwise. According to him, this mystery backer will pay one hundred thousand pounds for a controlling stake in Phoenix Films, so fifty grand is ours if we agree to walk away.’
‘Fifty grand? You’re joking. We’d walk away for nowt. We’ve walked away already. I didn’t even know we owned a stake in his so-called company.’
‘Then this will be the easiest fifty thousand we’ve ever made. All you have to do is meet Peter and sign his papers.’
‘That’s fine with me,’ I told him, ‘if someone wants to throw their money away then who am I to dissuade them, but I don’t want to go to that disgusting flat of his. Set something up elsewhere.’
‘He asked to meet you in Chi-Chi, on the terrace there.’
That figured. I could imagine Peter Dean sitting on the terrace outside Chi-Chi, pronounced “she-she”, an establishment that, like him, had delusions of grandeur. He’d be wearing his sunglasses whatever the weather, dreaming he was really on La Croisette at the Cannes Film Festival instead of peddling smut on Tyneside.
‘Alright,’ I agreed, ‘but make it a drink, not lunch. I’m not eating at the same table as Peter. He makes my skin crawl. Fuck knows what he’s riddled with. Get Councillor Jennings to join me there for lunch after, no later than twelve-thirty. Half an hour with Peter is long enough, even for fifty grand.’
On a good day I can imagine Bobby Mahoney is looking down on me and he understands. I can convince myself he knows I had no choice but to do what I did. He is pleased, in fact, that I am taking care of his daughter, while simultaneously preventing anarchy on the streets of his beloved city and, consequently, he is not likely to pay me a disapproving visit in the night, like the ghost of Hamlet’s dad. On a good day, I can calmly evaluate the facts behind his death and my involvement in it. I can coldly and clearly state that I had no choice and that Bobby Mahoney understood this, right up to the point when I pulled the trigger and killed him.
Bobby had watched as Tommy Gladwell got a former officer of the Russian Spetsnaz, called Vitaly Litchenko, to press a gun against my head. He told me he would kill me if I made a wrong move. He then handed me a Makarov pistol with one bullet in it and ordered me to shoot Bobby. If I accepted he would let me live. If I refused he would kill me. I was given ten seconds to make up my mind and at the end of them I chose to live. I killed Bobby. I think about that moment every day. If I hadn’t done it, Tommy Gladwell’s Russians would have killed us both. That’s what I tell myself.
No one was more amazed than I was when Tommy didn’t go back on the deal. He let me live, stuck me on a train to London and told me never to return. No one was more amazed than Tommy Gladwell when I came back and killed him and his Russian thugs. Well, no one perhaps, except me.
‘Do it,’ Bobby ordered me, right before I killed him, ‘you’ll be doing me a favour,’ and I believed that at the time, because I really wanted to believe it. ‘Get out of here, find Sarah and take care of her.’ That was the last order he ever gave me and I obeyed it. I found Sarah and I have been taking care of her ever since. I console myself with that fact. On a good day.
But not all days are good. Some mornings I wake and recall, with awful clarity, a recurring dream I have, where I am back in that room down at the derelict factory with Tommy Gladwell and his Russians and, this time, the words coming out of Bobby’s mouth are very different. He’s a
sking me if I am really going to kill him just to save my own skin; if all the years I’ve known him mean nothing to me; if I am such a coward that I am actually going to go ahead and do this? Then I do it anyway, but this time it all happens slowly and in vivid Technicolor. I shoot Bobby in the head and every streak of blood splashes in slo-mo against the white walls behind him. Then I wake with such a start, I sit straight up in bed before I realise it’s a dream and the very first thing I see when I open my eyes is Bobby’s only daughter lying next to me, blissfully unaware that I am the man who pulled the trigger on the father she loved so dearly.
But not this time. Today, when I wake from that dream, I am alone in a hotel bedroom and, for a moment, I’m so disoriented by jetlag that I don’t even know what part of the world I’m in. I look around me, then remember I’m in my hotel on the Quayside with a view that would overlook the Tyne river if I hadn’t drawn the curtains to blot out the afternoon light so I could get an hour’s rest.
I stumbled groggily to the bathroom, ran the cold tap and caught water in my cupped hands. I brought it slowly up to my face and it had the desired effect. It jump-started me back to the present. I looked in the mirror at my pasty face, with its contrasting bloodshot eyes, and contemplated going back to bed for the whole afternoon but I resisted. I had things to do.
My first call was to Susan Fitch. I told her my concerns regarding Toddy and his case.
‘I’m a lawyer, Mr Blake, not a miracle worker,’ was her considered response.
‘Should I remind you how much we paid your firm last year, Mrs Fitch?’ I asked.
‘And should I remind you that Martin Todd was caught with three kilos of heroin in his car, which makes him not just a dealer but a heavy-duty one? He will be damned lucky if I can get him out of a life sentence.’
The Damage (David Blake 2) Page 6