by Anna Smith
‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Kerry,’ was all he said as he embraced her.
Jack Reilly stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting to greet Kerry. He must be in his forties now, she thought, a snapshot of him as a young man in the firm flashing up in her mind. She knew that her father trusted him as though he was his own son, and he was the favourite of all the crew. Jack, an ex boxer, was clever as well as handy on his feet and with his fists. As he came forward, part of her was almost overcome by the gentle, quiet respect of these men who she knew were hard, raw individuals whose loyalty was without question. None of what happened in the last few days, and especially yesterday, would break them. They were men of violence. But she could see they were shaken. They had all grown up together, their fathers villains through the years with her father, and the younger ones with Mickey. They all enjoyed the wealth that came to them from the firm, and they never flaunted it. But now, with the events of the past few days, they seemed to be on the losing side.
Frankie Martin stood behind them, his dark hair slicked back, shining in a charcoal-grey suit, ever the sharpest dresser on the block who had always looked like he spent more time at the mirror than anyone. He was Mickey’s best friend and most trusted sidekick, who had more or less lived with them since he was twelve. Growing up, Kerry had been a little bit in love with him when she was thirteen, but he was twelve years older than her, and never saw her as anything other than an annoying little sister. Now he looked rich, prosperous, and he was. He took her in his arms.
‘So sorry, Kerry. Your mother was a great lady. And Mickey . . .’
His voice trailed off as he broke away from her, and Kerry looked him in the eye. The uncomfortable truth was that he was part of the problem, because he was Mickey’s closest associate. He must have been involved in everything Mickey was doing, so he was part of what had brought them all to this. He was with Mickey when he was murdered, but he had told everyone he had no idea who had shot him. It had been a routine business meeting, he said. Someone must have ordered the hit. They had plenty of enemies – it went with the territory. That was all Kerry was told by Danny, but her gut told her there was more to it. But she had asked Marty for the most trusted people, so here they were.
Marty remained seated at the table, and Kerry sat down next to him as they all took their places. She waited to see if Marty was going to speak, but he looked at her. She was in charge now, and all of the faces were waiting for her. She cleared her throat.
‘Gents. Thanks for your condolences.’ She self-consciously touched her face. ‘These are hard days, the hardest of my life. But I know they’re hard for all of us. I need everyone, now more than before, to be tighter than ever with each other, with everyone they work with. Do you understand what I mean?’
She glanced at each of them momentarily and they nodded in agreement. She turned to Marty.
‘Marty and I had a talk this morning about the business, and I’m dealing with some things, looking over papers and stuff. As you know, I’ve been away.’ She paused, knowing they were hanging on her every word. ‘This was not my life. My mother sent me away because she didn’t want this for me. I have lived a completely different life from all of you. That is not to say I don’t respect you or understand what you have done over the years, for my father and my family and for the whole organisation.’ She swallowed, took a sip of water. ‘But I’m here now. And I’m here for good. You probably know I’ve been in London in recent years working in corporate law. But I’ve told the company that I’m not coming back, that I have family commitments. My life is here now. From here on in, everyone reports to me or to Marty, who will keep me informed on everything. Nothing moves unless I say so.’ She waited for any response. None. They listened. ‘But I’m telling you this: there are going to be some changes. I will discuss them when I’m ready, and I will expect the same loyalty from you that you have shown to my brother and father. Because that is what they would expect.’
‘That should go without saying,’ Danny said, his face like flint.
‘I know, Danny. But I’m saying it anyway. I was young when I went away. I didn’t know much about my father’s business. They shielded me from it. But I know he was a crook, and I’m not ashamed of it.’ She sat forward. ‘But what I want to know is how it came to this. What has happened in the way we do business these days that people can walk into a funeral and murder people.’
‘We live in violent times,’ Frankie Martin piped up.
‘I know we do. But we are supposed to be able to protect ourselves. Someone let us down yesterday. I need to know how that happened.’ She looked directly at Frankie, who didn’t flinch. ‘Someone let Mickey down when he was gunned down five days ago. So I want to know what’s going on.’
‘We’ve been looking at what happened to Mickey, Kerry. We’re trying to get to what’s behind that,’ Jack said.
‘Good. Well, that’s why we’re here. I want to know all of that. And then I want to tell you something else. This doesn’t end here. This is only the beginning.’
Silence.
‘You mean you want to go after them?’ Jack said.
Kerry looked at him but didn’t answer, waited to see what else he said. He went on.
‘There are some real crazy fuckers attached to the Manchester mob, Kerry. That’s who we think was behind Mickey, and yesterday’s shit. We’re working on it.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘They deal a lot with Eastern Europeans. Mickey was involved in that. We . . . well, he was always looking for other investments. Something went badly wrong. The gunmen got away yesterday – though two of them got hit, so that might throw up something of who exactly they are. But so far the word we’re getting is pointing to the Manchester mob – to Joe “Knuckles” Boyle’s gang.’
Kerry clasped her hands on the table as she looked around at everyone.
‘They’re going to have to pay for what happened.’
There was a silence and shuffling of feet. Eventually, it was Frankie who spoke.
‘Kerry, with all due respect, I think you have to trust us to do this our way.’
‘What’s your way?’ Kerry knew her voice had a snap to it.
‘They will pay. In terms of business.’
‘That’s not how it’s going to happen.’
He sat back, almost snarled, ‘You talking more carnage here? It’s getting like all-out war. I mean. You know nothing about this. It’s business. People get killed. People get caught in the crossfire. Can I ask you something? And I’m not putting you down. You’re in charge and you have our respect – of course. But have you ever even fired a gun? Have you ever even held one?’
Kerry glared at him, but didn’t answer. There was a stony silence in the room, and somewhere she had a sense of the others’ unease with the way Frankie was talking. It was as though he’d had some kind of clout around here because he was powerful as Mickey’s sidekick. But Kerry had worked in corporate affairs for the past fifteen years, and she knew when someone across a desk from her was lying, or squirming, or hiding something. And she was thinking right now that Frankie was protesting too much. Eventually, Marty broke the silence.
‘Okay. We have some things to get through here. Let’s look at the Manchester connection.’ He turned to O’Driscoll. ‘John. What can you tell us? You were down there recently.’
O’Driscoll sat forward, rubbing his chin.
‘What I found out from the people I talked to was that there’s been some trouble between Knuckles Boyle’s family and their rivals in Dublin, the Durkins. The Boyles, as we know, control everything that goes in and out of Manchester, and a lot of what comes up here. The Durkins were told they can shift some gear in Marbella, but everything has to go through Knuckles initially for discussion and agreement. But old man Durkin has retired, taken a back seat, and his son Pat Junior is running the show, and by all accounts he’s just taking liberties. So that’s when the rough stuff started. The Durkins have got some se
rious artillery on the go there. They do a hefty gun-running operation and deal with the London mob – the Hills. Mickey got us involved in that, and it spiralled from there.’
‘We know a bit of that, John,’ Marty said. ‘But we still have to find out what pushed the button so that Mickey got taken out the way he did. Something must have happened. There was no warning came here; not to me, not to any of us.’
‘And I was there, as you know,’ Frankie said. ‘It was a meeting that should have made us good money. I have no idea why it went down the way it did.’
Nobody spoke. Kerry let the silence hang, and studied the faces of everyone around her, not really sure what she was looking for, but knowing she would recognise it if there was even a flicker.
Then she saw it. It was in the face of Frankie Martin. She stared at him, willing him to look at her, but he didn’t. None of the rest of the men around the table showed any real suspicion of him, or if they had, then they were hiding it from her. But from that moment, Kerry knew what she had to do next.
Chapter Four
Sharon Potter was scheming. It occurred to her that she might have been scheming for a very long time, without being really aware of it. But it was only the last couple of days that it began to really grip her that she should start thinking about putting her plan into action, finding a way out. She lay next to Joe ‘Knuckles’ Boyle in their super-king size bed, far enough away from him that she didn’t have to catch the stink of last night’s stale booze wafting out of his gaping mouth. She watched his chest rise and fall as he breathed steadily in a deep, snoring sleep, his puffy man-boobs circled with spidery, greying curly hair. She felt a twinge of disgust, remembering last night, when she’d pretended to be asleep as he’d come in pissed, and she’d heard him stepping out of his clothes and padding barefoot on the marble floor across the room to slip in beside her. He hadn’t even had the decency to take a shower, and she could smell the perfume on him as he flopped into bed and flaked out. Bastard. Sixteen years they’d been together. Sixteen bloody years, of lying for him when the heat came close, covering his tracks and watching his back, visiting him in jail when he was doing time. And now it came to this. A younger woman. She wouldn’t have been the first by any stretch, and Sharon knew that. But this one seemed to have her nails dug deep into him. She hadn’t even had the dignity to be discreet as she’d fawned all over him last night right in front of her nose.
Sharon slipped out of bed and pulled on her cobalt blue silk Chanel bath robe and walked out of the room. He would sleep till midday with the blackout blinds shielding him from the blinding Costa del Sol glare. It was already eight in the morning, and the sun was splitting the road, the heat rising in the distance as she went out to her terrace, where she stood surveying the blue of the ocean twinkling in the early morning sun. She picked up a packet of cigarettes from the table and sparked the lighter, then she drew deeply, feeling the tobacco sting all the way down to her lungs. She’d been trying to give up the fags, but the last two weeks she was back on twenty a day. She took a deep breath and let the smoke out. Then she opened her robe to let the sun warm her body, and stood that way for a few seconds, until she heard the click of the high steel gates open in the villa across the road. She pulled her robe over and tied it, then stepped back out of sight, so that she could see them but they couldn’t see her. She watched as the women, five or six of them, young, Eastern European, traipsed silently down the stairs towards the waiting blacked-out cars. They were tall, skinny, typical Ukrainian or Russian girls, escort girls with faces and figures to die for, and all of them had that haunted, gaunt, sullen look. Probably been kept up all night on cocaine to keep the party going. She’d seen them arriving as she’d come home early, having had enough of the dinner-party-come-orgy round at Ted Massey’s villa.
Sharon sat down at the white stone-topped patio table and drew on her cigarette, glancing down at her little paunch of a belly above her scrupulously waxed bikini line. No amount of ab exercises or spinning classes could ever turn that into a six pack. She liked her grub too much for that, though she did watch her diet and her drinking. At forty-three, Sharon knew she was no match for the parade of airhead birds who flocked around Joe Boyle like he was George fucking Clooney whenever he swanned into a bar or café in one of the fashionable spots on the Costa. Whether it was the smell of his money or the lure of feeling they were part of the edgy Costa crowd who hung around Joe and his entourage, she never quite knew. It was probably the cocaine more than anything. Most of them were coked out of their silicone tits half the time, and no party down in the port went without a blizzard of charlie racked up on every table. They didn’t even bother to hide it. Sharon had been there and back with all that shit long before she even met Joe. She watched these women from the sidelines these days, with their puffed up, pouty mouths, and faces botoxed and frozen, and she didn’t envy them one iota. Not their youth nor their figures, and certainly not their delusions that they were actually going somewhere in life. She knew that a few of them worked for Joe’s organisation, some as arm candy for visiting gangsters he might be entertaining, others occasionally to accompany a dealer way down the food chain on a drop so that they would look like just another glam Costa couple out on the razzle. Sharon had copped on early that there was a lot more to be gained if she could hook Knuckles Boyle in and keep him. That was sixteen years ago, when he followed her around like a dog after a bitch on heat. He wasn’t the big-time Charlie that he was now, and she’d been with him through leaner times, when he was making trips to Spain and Amsterdam to deliver money or pick up drugs. And she’d been with him when he did his time in jail, waiting for his release so he would make a step up, because he had kept his mouth firmly shut when the cops had promised him the good life if he grassed up his bosses. She’d given him a handsome son, Tony, thirteen, away at private school in the Scottish Borders, hopefully learning not to be a gangster like his dad. But the past three years had been tough on her. She always knew about the women, and stood by him nonetheless. She was part of his business, and over the years as he branched out and was given his own turf, she had become a key part of his growing empire. She knew and tracked every movement of his drug operation and bank accounts, and his money-laundering. She made herself crucial. But while Joe admired her and was impressed by her brightness and organisation, she could sense he was turning off from her, for younger women. It was hurtful, because she had loved him once, no doubt about that. Not any more. Or at least not blindly, like she had for a long time. The writing was on the wall, she knew that, and one of these days he’d tell her it was over. But she wouldn’t be allowed just to leave – that wasn’t how it would work with her. She knew too much. One of these days, she knew, she would be made to disappear. In fact, call it paranoia, but she didn’t actually like the way Joe looked at her sometimes. As though he was plotting something. That’s when she’d started planning her way out.
Sharon padded through the hall towards the massive kitchen feeling her feet cold on the marble floor, and went to the fridge. She took out the large jug of fresh orange juice she’d prepared yesterday and poured herself a tumbler, then spooned some peach yoghurt into a small bowl. She flicked on the kettle for some coffee, and as she stood listening to silence in the house and the kettle beginning to gurgle to life, her mind drifted back to last night at Ted’s house. She’d had a few drinks herself and was enjoying the evening along with some of the other men’s girlfriends and women she’d known over here for the past decade. None of them were whiter than white, but most of them were good enough sticks to spend some time with. She began to rerun the part of the evening that had sparked her interest, and she could still see Joe’s sneer on his face when he talked around the table to his mates. The women were at the other end of the table, mostly engaged in chat about TV soaps or clothes – all the usual shite – but Sharon was more interested in the chat at the other end.
*
‘They say she’s a bit of a cold fucker,’ Knuckles sai
d, looking across at Jimmy Hall. ‘I hear she’s laying down the law, telling the boys that everything has to go through her.’ He sniggered. ‘I know what she’s needing. I’d go right through her, if you ask me. She’s a bit of a darling too, by all accounts. A beauty. What else have you heard, Jimmy?’
Jimmy Hall swirled the big lumps of ice in his tumbler of Jack Daniel’s and looked at Joe. ‘Just that, really, Knuckles. It’s early doors. She’s only just stepped in after Mickey’s untimely demise, so I guess she’s trying to flex her muscles a bit. Her being a bird an’ all that. She’s going to have to do that to look the part in front of all the blokes, isn’t she?’
Knuckles shrugged.
‘Suppose so. But she can’t be swanning around all over the shop thinking she has any clout outside of that fucking shithole in Glasgow. Mickey didn’t run his own show up there, not by any stretch. He was up to his arse with all of the rest of the mob, working hand in hand. In bed with fucking Pat Durkin and his pikey mob, and Billy Hill. Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Not having those cunts muscling in on my turf. So Mickey had to go. The shit at the funeral – well, they had to get a message good and proper.’ He sniffed. ‘But it wasn’t meant to end the way it did – with her ma getting fucking shot at her son’s funeral. I mean, I feel bad about that. But they’ll have to get over it, and this Kerry bird will have to understand that if she wants to work with the big boys, shit happens sometimes. We can’t have her thinking she can move the goalposts. Someone needs to talk to that girl, make her understand how the world works.’
