by Emmy Ellis
At the flats, George parked up. He got out, checked the area, then poked his head through the driver’s-side doorway. “We’re safe, although… Martin, is that the photographer?”
Martin peered across at the bench. “Yeah.”
“Fucking weirdo, standing on there taking pictures like that.” George shook his head and gave the neighbour a quick glare.
Everyone tumbled out and into the foyer. In the lift, packed tight, no one spoke. She sensed the anxiety in Will and reckoned she’d be the same in his shoes, in a small ascending box with three strangers, two of whom appeared big and intimidating, not to be messed with; look at them funny and you got your lights punched out. He must think she’d immersed herself in a right bad crowd.
The lift did its familiar lurch, and the doors swept aside. George led the way down the corridor, and Martin opened his flat up. He went off to sort the coffees, and the twins entered the living room. Will dropped his backpack by the front door and followed Orchid in, sitting beside her on the sofa.
“On you go then, Orchid.” George stared through the window. “Let’s get this out in the open. Leave the plan for us to explain, though.”
“Orchid…” Will said. “Benny mentioned that.”
She told the story, Will remaining quiet throughout, his eyes going sad at the mention of her job, what she’d ended up doing, how she earned her money, and despite her telling him she enjoyed her life here, she could tell he didn’t believe her. A sex worker was a far cry from a nurse. Yes, she helped people, but not with medicine. He blew out a stream of air at the news of Anthony being shot, killed, then he smiled, relief drooping his shoulders. Martin brought the drinks in halfway through, then came Will’s story, what he’d been doing since she’d left, ending with his last job, where Len had shot a security man.
“Fucking rough gang you hang out with,” George said.
“It’s all I’ve known.” Will shrugged.
“A sorry state of affairs. Now then, I need to tell you who we are, what we do, just so you know that if you fuck with us, you’ll end up dead.” George smiled and gave him the barest of details, just enough to put the shits up Will—to put the shits up anyone. “So as you can imagine, the amount of people we’ve helped into the Thames, Anthony and those fellas included, well, you don’t want to find yourself in there, too, do you. I’ve got this circular saw, see, and—”
Will shook his head. “No, I don’t need to know that bit. Jesus. And I thought Benny was bad.”
Greg grunted. “Benny sounds like small fry. You’re on our patch now, playing by our rules. And now I’m going to tell you a little story, about what’s going to happen next, and it goes something like this…”
Chapter Eleven
Orchid, Will, and Martin spent the next couple of days playing on the Xbox, pacing, eating, and sleeping while awaiting news from Benny. Will had messaged him, per the plan, saying he’d left Birmingham to look for Rebecca and would let him know if and when he found her. What he had heard, so the first text went, was someone called Anthony had been killed by leaders of an estate.
Benny hadn’t deigned to reply, and being holed up in Martin’s flat, no work to occupy her, no familiar belongings around her from her place, the sense of standing on a cliff edge spiking her nerves, Orchid was slowly going mental.
“What if he’s glad to see the back of me?” Will said in between games of Call of Duty, his controller falling between his open legs. “What if he doesn’t message back? Or worse, what if he’s been caught for that job and is in the nick? They could trace my phone and nab me as an accomplice. We haven’t been watching telly to know if the shooting’s been on.”
“I’ll stick the radio on in a few,” Orchid said. “It’s almost news time. And I’ll ask George to get you a burner to use for now.”
Martin yawned. “Can’t say I’ve minded this.” He gestured to them lounging about. “Easiest job ever.”
Will’s phone went off, and they all jumped, staring at it on the coffee table, the bloody thing twisting in a circle from the vibration, the screen alight. Orchid tensed and asked herself if Benny had kept Will dangling as a form of punishment, or if he was too angry to respond right away, or he was letting Will know, by his silence, that he called the shots.
In a row on the sofa—Orchid, Will in the middle, then Martin—they drew close to look at the phone, which Will held.
Benny: You fucking what? He’s got himself killed? No wonder I haven’t heard from him.
“What do I say?” Will asked.
“Okay,” Orchid said, “act like we haven’t set a trap. Just be yourself.”
Will: Yeah, shot. He’s been dumped in the river. They don’t mess about down here. You get offed then disappear.
Benny: How do you know it’s the same Anthony?
Will: They mentioned his hair, and it gave him away—blond tips aren’t exactly trendy now, are they. Couple that with the spikes, and he’s like some throwback from the eighties. They were taking the piss out of his suit, too.
Benny: Where did you hear this info?
“Shit,” Will said.
“Make something up,” Martin suggested.
Will: I was in a pub. Got lucky. Some blokes were chatting. They said the dead man had a Birmingham accent.
Benny: Right, then that proves it. Bollocks. And I’m dogged off at you. Why didn’t you ask if you could go to London?
Will: Because I don’t need your permission. I’m an adult.
Orchid’s stomach cramped at that, the fear of old encroaching. Even though she wasn’t anywhere near Benny to feel his wrath, to see his face morph and skew his features, danger seemed to waft out of the phone along with the bleep of his incoming message.
Benny: I’ll pretend I didn’t read that. So what’s going on now? Do you know where she is?
“He’s naffed,” Will said. “Good. I want him to know I’m not his whipping boy anymore.”
“Aren’t you still a bit scared of him?” Orchid asked.
“Yeah, but God, he has to understand he can’t order me about even though I’m not there. He does my nut in.”
Martin placed his Xbox controller on the coffee table. “I don’t want to poke my nose in, but I kind of have to because The Brothers are paying me to mind you. Keep it cordial. George and Greg said that, remember. We don’t need Benny raging by the time they arrive.”
“Write back.” Orchid nudged Will and peered at the screen.
Will: No. The estate leaders got wind of those men going to find her—balaclavas and shotguns—and because she’s protected by them, Anthony and the men got shot.
Benny: Those leaders sound hard as fuck.
Will: I don’t plan on pissing them off by myself, so can you and Mum come down here? I know where they’ll be. Rebecca will be with them.
Benny: That’s a turn-up. Okay, let’s work out where to meet.
“Hold up, I’ll message the twins, see what they want you to say.” Martin got on with that, his thumbs flying over the little keyboard on his mobile.
Orchid bit a nail, imagining Benny in Mum’s kitchen, the pair of them talking about whether to let Len and Trev in on this, and how to proceed if they didn’t go down that route. Did Benny really think he could take on two London leaders and be successful? He had such a high opinion of himself, he probably did.
With the location and time set, Will passed it on to Benny. Tonight, at eight o’clock, Orchid would come face to face with the two people she despised more than anything. The thing was, would this be over once the twins had sorted them, or would Len and Trev poke into why Mum and Benny hadn’t come home? She wasn’t sure if she wanted her elder brothers dead, they were victims of circumstance, too, although saying that, out of the four of them, Orchid and Will were the odd ones out, the two kids who didn’t fit into the family’s criminal mould. Len and Trev had banged on about that, sneering, bullying them, calling her a weirdo for having her head stuck in a comic, and a creepy cow for collecting orch
ids. She’d always had a tummy ache around them, anxiety visiting in their presence, remaining there long after they’d left her alone.
George had said they’d deal with Len and Trev later down the line if they came sniffing, arriving to rock the boat. Would they come, though? Orchid had an idea they’d take over the business once Mum and Benny didn’t return, and they’d love not being bound by Benny’s rules, free to act however they wanted. They might be brothers, but they didn’t have the nous of The Brothers, and she reckoned they’d trip up somewhere.
She needed a break. “I’m going to make some lunch.” She wandered into the kitchen and stuck the radio on, catching the tail end of some rap song or other, then the news introduction music blared out in that urgent way it always had, staccato notes designed to gain the attention, warning you of the ills to come. Buttering bread, she listened to the male voice filtering out, the first headline a shooting in Birmingham.
Fuck.
The man jumped straight into the report. “Police have issued a statement regarding David Buchanan, the security guard shot outside Spangler’s Casino. Mr Buchanan passed away an hour ago after battling to recover from an operation to remove a bullet close to his heart. An armed raid has turned into a murder inquiry. If you saw anything, or know anything, please contact the police on…”
Her blood seemed to freeze, and she couldn’t breathe properly. “Will?” she called, her voice broken. “Will…”
Her brother and Martin rushed into the kitchen, and she stared at them, tears burning. What should they do? Anonymously grass Len up for being the shooter? At least he’d be out of the way then. But would Len, in turn, grass Will, Trev, Mum, and Benny up? She couldn’t stand the thought of Will going to prison. Len might also spill stuff from the past to get a lighter sentence for cooperating—she wouldn’t put it past him, he was a sly fucker—then she’d get arrested for Mrs Didders and—
“What’s the matter?” Will asked.
“The security guard’s dead.” The words sounded hollow, without feeling, although she did feel, far too much. She switched the radio off.
“Shit.” Will slapped the fridge freezer.
The motion sent a receipt floating to the floor, which had been slotted into the top of a wedge of other papers held on by a red phone box magnet. Seemed Martin liked London memorabilia, as a Tube station disc for Piccadilly and Big Ben magnets kept pizza and Indian takeaway menus in place.
“Bloody hell.” Will picked up the receipt and put it back.
Martin tunnelled a hand through his hair. “Right…right, let’s be rational here. I’ll let The Brothers know. This could cause a…a problem.” He left the room, digging his phone out of his jeans pocket.
Orchid knew what he wasn’t saying—“Your brothers will need to be sorted after all…”—and she didn’t know how she felt about that. All her family gone, except for Will, what with Nan dying. To preserve their freedom, could she let the twins kill them? Mum, not a problem, the woman was a toxic bitch who should never have had kids, and as for Benny, he was a vicious bastard, but Len and Trev…
“They’re going to want to kill them, aren’t they,” Will said.
“Hmm. How do you feel about that?” she asked.
“I hate them as much as Mum.” He shrugged. “Can’t help it. Look at what they allowed. We were little kids, Beck—fuck, Sunflower, whatever—and they let us go out there nicking, and that thing with Mrs Didders, that wasn’t fair on you. They were older, and when they got to eighteen, they should have taken us out of there, but they didn’t.”
“I didn’t take you with me,” she reminded him.
“I was an adult then, well able to leave by myself, but I didn’t, I fucking stayed, because it was all so ingrained in me, in all of us…”
He’d answered whatever question was going to come next—was it right of them to accuse their brothers of colluding with the main gang members and not caring for their younger siblings, when Orchid and Will had been just as bad, doing whatever it took to survive?
“We’re no different to Len and Trev,” she said. “We were all victims of Mum’s and Benny’s games. She agreed with him using her children to do jobs—what kind of sick woman is she?—and all because she was either scared of him, too, or infatuated with the wanker, and I’m betting it’s the latter. They moulded us, shaped us into thieving workers, all of us afraid to go against them, but Len and Trev, they liked it—that’s where we’re not the same.”
“But you got out. I’ve just got out. They could have.”
“Do you think Len and Trev will once Mum and Benny don’t go back?” She laughed. “I doubt it. The chance to be kings of the manor? They won’t pass that up.” She stood by her earlier thought of them taking up the reins—they had egos the size of skyscrapers and wouldn’t be able to resist. “Did Benny cover all your arses on that last job? I mean, properly? Like, will the police find them—find you? You’re the only one I’m bothered about here, so if Len gets this pinned on him, he could take you down with him.”
Will went over the precautions, the stolen vehicles, the locations of where they’d switched from one to another. “And we ended up at this house Benny had just bought. I told you this already.”
“I know, but I’m trying to see it from the police’s point of view.” Her mind raced. “Okay, he chose a route with no CCTV, that he knows of, so that’s good, and dumping the Transit in the clearing was fine, but who knows whether that factory had any?”
“We left the Fiat in the staff parking area, he said there were no cameras. He checked when he left his own car there.”
“Cameras don’t have to look like cameras these days. It could have been hidden. Were your faces covered?”
Will closed his eyes briefly. “We took the balaclavas off in the clearing, threw them in the van so they’d get burnt.”
“That was a mistake. If there was CCTV at the factory…”
“But it was dark.”
“Okay, you might be safe then, any images might not show up. Christ, this is horrible. I don’t know what to do, what to think.”
Martin came back in. “Um, things are going to be taken out of your hands.”
She stared at him. “What are you saying?” But she knew.
“The Brothers, they don’t like loose ends.” Martin lifted a shoulder.
“What does that mean?” Will glanced from Martin to Orchid.
She carried on making sandwiches, her hands shaking. “They snuff everything out that can cause a problem to whoever they’re helping. I’m under their protection, so they’ll do whatever it takes to make me safe. Do you understand?”
“Len and Trev?” Will breathed heavily.
Orchid nodded. “They’ll maybe send people to Birmingham—then again, from what they said about that before, they’ll probably want Len and Trev down here.”
“Fuck me…” Will scratched his ear. “It’s for the best, isn’t it? I hate them. They were bastards to us.”
She had to concede the point. Len and Trev had been arseholes, and God help her, she wanted to be free, wanted Will to be free, once and for all. Did that make her as evil as them—Mum, Benny, Len, and Trev? And Anthony? Or was it survival instinct? With all of them gone—that was a better word for it, rather than dead—she and Will could move on, do good in the world to make up for all the bad.
“The Brothers should do what they think is best,” she said.
Will nodded. “And we won’t have to see it, not like with Mum and Benny.”
“No, there is that, although we don’t have to watch them be killed either—we had the choice. George and Greg aren’t total monsters.” She looked at Martin. “They’ll lure Len and Trev down here?”
Martin sighed. “When your mother and this Benny are dealt with, the next step is for Will to contact your brothers and make it so they can’t resist coming here. George wants them in the river. It’s the safest way. The twins have never been caught so far, putting people in there. If their me
n go to Birmingham, where they don’t know the streets, where they don’t have a copper in their pocket… More risk of them being caught.”
“We don’t have to have anything to do with it,” she said. “The Brothers can do whatever without us there.”
Will paced. “But I want what was offered. George said we can kill them if we wanted to. Don’t you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can.” She paused. “Well, I can, because I hate them that much, but it’s the guilt afterwards. Mrs Didders and… I’m still dealing with that.”
“Who’s Mrs Didders?” Martin asked.
“Some old dear,” Will said. “It was a long time ago, when we were little.”
“But the others weren’t,” she whispered. “The ones that meant I had to run.”
“Nothing came of it, though, did it.” Will sat at the table. “It was put down to a turf war gone wrong. The security guard who Len offed, that’s a different matter. Len and Trev need to go, end of.”
She didn’t disagree, she just didn’t want to kill them. If Will took on the job, that was up to him, but Orchid didn’t want anything to do with it. Not even watching.
Chapter Twelve
Rebecca didn’t much like being a teenager. Hormones, the science teacher had said, could get you feeling so angry you wanted to scream, and that was true. Rebecca always wanted to scream lately, hormones or not. Mum and Benny had come up with the idea of her and Will selling drugs at school, and they did this inside the little open-sided, apex-roofed hut on the playing field. She hated handing out shit that could hurt people, but if she didn’t, she’d face the consequences. That was the thing with living in her world, she had to obey or suffer. Was she cruel to want to obey? Did that mean she thought her life was more important than those of the kids who bought pills at the risk of popping a dud Ecstasy tablet? Did their high from a molly justify her punishment if she didn’t provide the damn things?
