‘We’ve been through this countless times.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘but he’s cautious. You would have to be in his shoes.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him we’d been in business with the Haan brothers for years without a hitch and they were more than satisfied with our credit history.’
‘Was the Turk happy with that?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, ‘happy we could pay, but not too happy I’d reminded him our former suppliers were looking at life sentences.’
‘He knows that comes with the turf,’ I said.
‘Maybe he thinks we had something to do with it?’ he offered.
‘Not if he has done his homework. If he has checked us out, and he will have done, he’ll know we are not undercover cops trying to make a name for ourselves and we don’t grass,’ I took another sip of beer, ‘well, not about anyone that actually matters.’
‘Yeah, I know that,’ he agreed, ‘if he’d thought I was an undercover cop I’d be floating face down in the Med.’
‘So the deal is on?’ I asked him.
‘The deal is on and the first shipment is on its way. Our million Euros saw to that and he needs two million more by the end of the month to establish a line of credit.’
‘He’ll get it,’ I assured him.
‘Then we are back in business.’
‘Thank fuck for that. Another eight weeks and we’d have been out of product completely.’
It had taken months of delicate negotiations with the Turk to get us to this day and we were almost out of supply. Newcastle would have been open to anyone with product in his back pocket and, sooner or later, they would have taken over. That’s how vital it was that Palmer shook the Turk’s hand in Istanbul.
Danny was in a good mood that night. Turning my older brother’s life around is the achievement I am most proud of. If you’d known him a couple of years ago you wouldn’t recognise him now. Back then he was a basket-case and nobody really knew why. All we did know was that he’d had a bad experience in the Falklands War when he was still a teenager and it had somehow messed up his life. He could never hold down a job after he left the Paras and, by the time he hit forty, he was walking round like a zombie; no job, no partner, no prospects, no money, shit flat, shit life. He basically mooched round the grottier pubs in Newcastle living off benefits and whatever money I threw him. That all changed when I was in the shit. Nobody could argue that when I really needed Our young’un he was there for me. Virtually everybody I knew and trusted was dead at that point. We had no crew left so I had to rebuild from scratch.
That was when men like Palmer and Kinane earned their stripes. They stepped up and stood alongside me to take on Tommy Gladwell and his Russian henchmen. Danny was right in there with me. He stood by me and I made sure he got his reward.
We all had a few pints that night and Danny got a bit loud. Nothing like he used to be when he was into the sauce but just enough to be embarrassing. He was banging on about our childhood, when we had no money and he had to look after me because our Ma told him to.
‘I tell you I couldn’t get rid of him. He’d follow me every-fucking-where.’ The lads who worked for me were lapping this up, which only encouraged him. ‘If I wanted to go to the pub with me mates, he’d still be tagging along. We’d tell him to go and sit in my pal’s car and if he didn’t come inside we’d bring him out a bag of crisps. It was the only way I could ditch him.’
‘And he never did bring me any crisps,’ I told them.
‘And we never did bring him any crisps,’ said Danny, as if I hadn’t already spoken.
‘We’d come out hours later when it was dark and he’d still be sitting there, bubbling.’
I could really do without this. In my line of work I don’t need anybody questioning whether I’m a soft arse, so the image of me crying, because my brother was a twat to me when I was a nipper, wasn’t doing me any favours. I knew why Our young’un was doing this. It was the last thing he had over me, the only remaining point where he could still say he was a bigger and better man than me. Those days are long gone and I could crush him in front of the guys in an instant, with a few carefully chosen words. I could say that it’s just as well I am more generous with his wages than he used to be with his crisps, otherwise he’d starve. I could basically make it clear that I own Danny, but what would be the point of that? Danny realises he owes everything to me and, even though I know he is grateful, on another level that has to hurt. No one really wants to be in debt to their younger brother. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to understand that.
‘He was horrible to me when I was a kid,’ I tell them all, smiling like it was such a very long time ago, ‘I think that’s why I’m such a cunt now.’ And they all laughed at that one.
Were they laughing because it was funny or laughing because I was the boss? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Hunter changed the record on the jukebox. Somewhere far away Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were singing about an American Girl.
10
.......................
We used to take the Drop down to Amrein’s home; a huge country house in Sevenoaks that had state-of-the-art security and rooms for all of his bodyguards. We don’t do that any more. I think his faith in the place was dented when we broke in and left Tommy Gladwell’s severed head on the windowsill of his summer house.
You could describe that as the low point in our business relationship but we are both realists and we moved on. Amrein needs me to keep sending the Drop every month and I need the information, influence and protection it buys me. It’s what’s known as a symbiotic relationship. We don’t have to like each other, and Amrein certainly doesn’t like me. Not after that little incident. But he knows he was bang out of order. He betrayed me by going behind my back and giving information to Tommy Gladwell and withholding it from us. He knows I could have – maybe should have – had him killed for that, and for the blessing he gave the eldest Gladwell boy to take over our operation when he was supposed to be on our side. I think, if his superiors had known what he was up to, they’d have saved me the bother of killing him. His little bit of entrepreneurialism would have been the death of him. So, although Amrein undoubtedly despises me for scaring the crap out of him the way I did, he also understands that I was well within my rights and, if I’d handled things a little differently, it would have been his head on the windowsill not Tommy’s. So there’s an uneasy truce between us these days but, like I mentioned, we don’t meet in Sevenoaks any more. Instead he prefers nice, big shiny hotels in neutral cities, places with wide open spaces and lots of witnesses. Today though, he is meeting me on my patch, in a conference room at the Malmaison in Newcastle. They think he’s the MD of a Financial Services company. Me? I’m wondering why he is affording me the courtesy of driving all this way from Kent to see me in my city to talk about the Gladwells. It can’t mean anything but bad news.
The two of us sit together at the end of a large conference table, his bodyguards stand against one wall, rigid, like they are about to come to attention on the parade ground. My lads are opposite them. They look a bit more laid back, but they’re just as alert, ready for anything. They have to be with Amrein and I am sure he feels exactly the same way about me.
We have a corporate video running in the background to drown out anyone who might be trying to listen in. Just as the video cuts to shots of prosperous and youthful-looking retirees with perfect teeth, striding across a foreign golf course, we get down to business.
‘Arthur Gladwell is dying,’ he told me.
‘I know.’
‘Indeed, but he hasn’t got long,’ he cleared his throat and I wondered if he was still nervous about mentioning the Gladwells in front of me, ‘it’s only a matter of days, which is why I need to facilitate a meeting as soon as possible.’
It strikes me as ironic that a man like Arthur Gladwell, who has controlled most of Glasgow since the mid-seventies, when he brutally murdere
d his predecessors and their lieutenants, chopping them into small pieces while some of them were still alive, should meet his final end like this. Lung cancer has ravaged his body and it looks like he is about to succumb. The nastiest, most violent man in three decades of the Glasgow underworld has finally been defeated by the debilitating power of a cigarette.
Like Amrein says, it’s only a matter of time for old Arthur. There are those, however, who say it isn’t the cancer that has seen the old buzzard off but the grief for his eldest son, Tommy, the apple of the cruel old bastard’s eye, the man destined to be his heir, but that isn’t my problem. It is another irony that, if Tommy Gladwell had been patient enough to cling on for two more years, he’d have inherited his old fella’s empire in Glasgow and he wouldn’t have needed to take over our city. In other words he’d still be alive, but hindsight is perfect vision.
‘Alan will take over?’ I asked.
Alan Gladwell was the second son. Harder, nastier and, I was reliably informed, more intelligent than his elder brother. Not the best choice as far as we were concerned but I assumed his rise to the throne was inevitable.
‘Yes,’ acknowledged Amrein.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked him, ‘or his.’
He straightened his little wire-framed glasses on his nose before coming to the point. I got the impression he was choosing his words carefully.
‘Alan Gladwell has approached us,’ he was using the word us instead of me, trying to make it all sound impersonal. I didn’t worry too much about Amrein being in league with another Gladwell. I figured he’d learned his lesson and he knew not to fuck with us again. I’d made it pretty clear what would happen to him if he did, ‘he would like a meeting with you, with your organisation,’ he corrected himself and I let him. He must have known by now that Bobby Mahoney was a dead man. Amrein would have looked for him, if only to satisfy his own curiosity about who was really in charge of our firm these days. If Amrein’s organisation could find no trace of Bobby then he was bound to be dead. Amrein knew I was the boss – and I knew he knew.
‘The meeting would be held on neutral territory, assuming you agree. You would bring your people and he would bring his, the same number so there would be no imbalance. We would handle the security.’ He meant he was guaranteeing my safety and that, similarly, if I tried to have a pop at Alan Gladwell, it would not be tolerated. I was less concerned about the security arrangements than the purpose of the meeting.
‘What does he want to talk to me about?’ I knew Alan Gladwell was no mug either and, by now, he and half of Glasgow’s underworld would know that his elder brother Tommy had been made to disappear by a rival firm in Newcastle. That fact alone should make me wary of Alan Gladwell, whose brutal methods were well known in his city. He liked to use pliers and blow torches on his enemies and I didn’t relish the notion of him using them on me.
‘What does he want to talk to me about?’
‘Edinburgh,’ he told me.
I hadn’t seen that coming.
When Amrein and his bodyguards had left we stayed behind to talk it through.
‘What did you make of that?’ asked Palmer.
‘From a business perspective, without any emotion attached, it makes complete sense. Edinburgh is an open market since Dougie Reid was jailed. It’s chaos up there. Between us we could control the place.’
‘Yeah but there is emotion,’ Danny reminded me.
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Towards the end of our meeting with Amrein I had struggled to listen to the details of Alan Gladwell’s proposal because I had been completely thrown by it. Why would he want to share a city with the crew that had killed his brother? Wouldn’t you have to be a total psycho to even contemplate it?
Whatever I decided to do it put me at risk. If I didn’t go into business with Alan Gladwell in Edinburgh he would probably take over the city on his own. Then his empire would be huge and even closer to our backyard than before. I didn’t relish that notion, ‘I need to think about this one.’ I told them all in a tone I hoped was final enough.
‘In any case, we have more important stuff going on in our own city right now,’ said Kinane.
‘You mean Doyle?’ I asked.
‘No, not Doyle,’ he said impatiently, and I realised he had been building up to this, ‘I mean Braddock.’
‘Oh not again Joe, not now. Can we please stop talking about Braddock?’
‘But he is taking the fucking piss!’ Kinane shouted, his eyes bulging and his teeth bared, ‘and he is taking it out of me, you, and every last fucking one of us!’
‘I know he is Joe.’
‘You know he is?’ He said it like this was news to him.
‘Of course,’ I assured him, ‘but what do you want me to do about it?’
‘What do I want you to do about it?’ he looked like he was about ready to burst a blood vessel, ‘something! That’s what I want you to do.’
‘Like what Joe?’ I was talking quietly to him in the vain hope this might calm him down a little. It wasn’t working. He banged his fist on the table and I admit that even I flinched at the impact.
‘Something!’ he demanded, ‘I want you to do something. Christ, man, I’ve been asking you to do something about this for months, or let me do something about it at least.’
‘Want me to have a chat with him do you?’ I asked.
‘A chat?’ he looked at me in disgust. ‘No, we’ve tried that, haven’t we. I’ve told him, my lads have told him, Palmer’s tried to put him straight and you’ve been to see him so no, not a word.’
‘Thought not,’ I said, ‘so what then? Rough him up a bit? Give him a bit of a kicking; think that will be enough to get him back on side?’
‘Back on side?’ he was booming at me now. Even Palmer was looking a bit concerned, as if Kinane might completely lose it and accidentally snap me in half before he realised what he was doing. Everyone knew the tales of the big man and his temper. ‘No, a slap is not going to get him back on side.’
‘I thought that too,’ I said calmly, ‘which is why I ruled it out. I reckon once he’d recovered he’d defy us even more. He’d keep all of the money and all of the stash, try and get a supply from someone else, then go to war with us; him and his whole bloody army of scum bags. We’d win, of course, but we’d be fighting gang members in hoodies for weeks on those estates before we restored order. The Sunnydale estate would be our Afghanistan. I’d be committing men, money and resources way beyond the value of the outcome.’
He was looking at me closely now, like he was trying to spot a hole in my argument. When he couldn’t see one he said, ‘Well, exactly.’
‘So then, not a word and not a slap, which leaves what?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Go on then,’ I told him, ‘say it out loud. You want me to kill him.’
Kinane folded his arms, ‘You’ll hear no argument from me.’
‘Great, thanks for that Joe. You’ve just reminded everybody why we don’t let you make the decisions,’ if Kinane had looked like he had the hump before he seemed about ready to explode now. I was the only person in this city who could get away with talking to him like that and I never did it lightly, but there were times when I had to reassert a little authority over guys like Kinane, men who could literally tear me apart with their bare hands if they chose to. My only chance of surviving as boss was to outwit and out think them. I had to make them realise they wouldn’t survive without me to hold their hands and wipe their noses for them. ‘Think about it. If we kill Braddock, he’ll instantly become some fucked-up urban martyr, a cross between Reggie Kray and Robin Hood. Rightly or wrongly, he has managed to win the hearts and minds of those vermin on the estate. They think he is the king of their court. If we kill him there will be a riot and there’ll be no proper business done for weeks.’
I could see by the fact that Kinane was quietening down that he agreed with what I was saying, but I wasn’t finished yet. ‘Secondly, when
he’s in the ground, who are we going to give the job to, eh? Who is hard enough, sneaky enough and nasty enough to control Sunnydale and, more importantly, before you start looking round this room, who would want the bloody job? Do you want to sit there every night in Braddock’s flat sending out runners everywhere to terrorise the local heathens? Thought not. Perhaps one of your sons would like a go at it, eh?’ he opened his mouth as if to say something then frowned and closed it again. ‘No, didn’t think so.’
‘Braddock is an eighteen-carat bastard,’ I said, ‘I don’t like him, you don’t like him and I doubt anyone in our organisation likes him, but we don’t have to like him. Who but a complete cunt could keep order for us down there? Now, he’s dipping and he’s taking too much, I know that and you know that and he bloody knows it too, which makes him a crook and a thief but then we are all crooks and thieves, so what can we expect? As it stands, I am getting good money out of Sunnydale. Not as much as we would like, or feel we deserve, but the alternatives are far more expensive. So, here’s what we are going to do. We are going to let him carry on for the time being. We are going to keep letting him know we ain’t happy, until he finally gets the message and doesn’t step over another line.’
Kinane held up a hand. All of a sudden he was normal again, like an ocean calmed after a storm has blown out, ‘I hear what you are saying, I do, and I understand it. You might not think I do but I’m not stupid. All I am saying is; it’s a risky strategy.’
‘Everything we do is risky, Joe,’ I reminded him, ‘and I live with that risk every single day.’
I stood up and told Palmer we were leaving, so I could draw this one to a close. We all made for the door and in the foyer of the hotel I stopped to speak to Kinane again, ‘I never said you were stupid Joe,’ I assured him, ‘I just don’t want you making all of the decisions. Let me deal with Braddock.’
He nodded but he didn’t look convinced.
I needed some time on my own to think, so I took one of the firm’s cars and pointed it north. The Merc made short work of the road and I soon left the city behind me. I was driving on autopilot and I couldn’t remember a mile of it afterwards. I was too busy churning it all over in my mind. I didn’t relish the prospect of entering into business with a family whose eldest son I’d killed. There was no easy answer to my problem. The Gladwells were never going to go away. They would cast a shadow over my city for years whether I agreed to become their partner or not. This was one deal where I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t. I knew either way, I would always be looking over my shoulder.
The Damage (David Blake 2) Page 8