Queen of Green

by V E Rooney

  “That’s boss. I’m really made up for you.”

  Ste, Brian and John echo encouraging sentiments. We are genuinely happy for him but silently we all realise that things won’t quite be the same from now on. Not for any of us.

  John and Brian are sceptical about becoming small cogs in Sean’s giant engine but I can tell that they are secretly excited. Their vanity wins over their trepidation because Sean has promised them extra and more lucrative work on a regular basis. That’s with the caveat of us passing whatever unofficial probation period he sets out for us. They think it’s their chance to get into the big time under the auspices of a proper Liverpool gangster, complete with his own crew and everything else that comes with it.

  It is Ste who gouges at my conscience the most. He is even unhappier than I am at the prospect of becoming one of Sean’s minions. I think in Ste’s mind, he saw himself as an unofficial partner in my business but in reality he was only ever my employee. This remains unspoken between us. I find myself having to reassure him that although we have no choice about this, it could work out well for us. Yes, we’re pretty much Sean’s bitches, his boot boys, but in return we have the knowledge that no other dealers will try to muscle in on us, as would surely have happened at some point. That will not happen now, not that we now under Sean’s cloak of protection and patronage. We are now part of his organisation and no other fucker will dare touch us.

  I try to tell myself that this was inevitable, that at some point we would become too successful for our own good. But it kills me. The boys are trying to be magnanimous about it, in that they are not openly blaming me for our predicament. I feel like I have let them down. But then I remind myself that they could’ve walked away from me at any time and they didn’t. Their choice was freely made, as was mine, when we, each of us, decided to pursue this path. And this is where that path has led us.

  Sean is a busy boy. A very busy boy, and an enterprising one at that. He has his fingers in so many pies the fucking bakers are struggling to keep up with him. He has the obligatory security company supplying bouncers to various pubs and clubs across the city. It’s like a rite of passage for gangsters – many start off as bouncers themselves and work their way up to running their own firm. There’s no better way of controlling the drugs trade – you keep your rivals out while you offload your own supply to your own captive audience.

  He has accumulated sun bed shops, newsagents, gyms, car repair outfits and three pubs of his own on the south side, all fronted by associates. All the cash he rakes in from his unofficial business has to be washed through legitimate fronts. I guess I was doing the same but on a much smaller scale. He also has a network of properties in the city and beyond, most of which are legitimately rented out to tenants, but some of which double as safehouses, storage units and boltholes for his associates. The jewels in his personal property crown are a six-bedroom house in Woolton and a three-bedroom waterside apartment in Albert Dock, both of which he uses as his HQs (and both registered under false names, of course).

  When he’s not carving out deals or planning the demise of some cocky cunt, Sean likes to kick back by watching the Reds at Anfield, going to the races, or flying off to some mysterious destination to do business. Sometimes he’s gone for a couple of days, sometimes a couple of weeks. I don’t ask questions because it doesn’t involve me.

  Sean is clever with his money. He’s not some flash bastard throwing cash down at every opportunity, or tooling around town in some expensive look-at-me pussy magnet vehicle, or deliberately drawing attention to himself as the top man. If he wants to meet up with friends, associates or even business rivals, he does it mostly in private property. If he wants to go out on the town, he’s never without his own team of bodyguards. And he’s clever. Clever enough not to let his machismo and his ego get the better of him. He keeps the busies at arm’s length and keeps a healthy distance from anyone he susses as a troublemaker.

  The day after Sean’s first visit to my flat, and I am left to ponder what the fuck he wants from me, I get my answer. His two smirking heavies turn up - Paul and Lee.

  “Boss wants to see you,” said Lee, the smaller bullet-headed one, as his eyes move up and down my body.

  “Does he now?” I say wearily. “And he sent Tweedledum and Tweedledickhead to pick me up,” I say with a sneer as I grab my jacket and slam my front door with a loud bang. I’m so fucked off right now I don’t even wait for them, instead I just bomb down the stairs. I can hear Paul, the taller one of the two, laughing at Lee.

  “Haha! You’re the dickhead!”

  Then Lee is shouting after me. “I don’t like your tone, love!”

  We head to the car park by the Co-op and I duly get into the back seat of their car. Paul starts the motor up while Lee is fiddling about with the radio so they can listen to the Man Utd-Arsenal match. They’re chinwagging about the league table, who’s injured, who’s shit and who isn’t shit. As we navigate our way out of Kirkby, every so often, Lee lets rip with a massive fart in the passenger seat. “Get a load of this, love,” he chortles as he lifts his right arse cheek up and lets one go. It sounds like a wet one, like a motorbike being revved. To pre-empt the nasal assault that’s just about to hit me, I open the window and cover my nose with my sleeve.

  “You dirty fucking bastard,” I chide Lee as he sits there laughing. Paul isn’t impressed with Lee’s feat of pushing air through poo in his car. “If you fucking follow through in my car I’ll lamp you. I’ve only just had these seats done.”

  I don’t bother asking where we’re going because I know these two cunts will just try and come up with some smarmy remark to put me in my place. Truth be told, I don’t want to talk to these cunts anyway. I’ll talk to the organ grinder, not the monkeys.

  We’re driving down the M57, then onto the M62, then Edge Lane. Looks like we’re heading to Toxteth. New territory for me. About 15 minutes later, we pull up outside a parade of six tatty shops just off Beresford Road. Four of the shops are shut, their respective metal shutters daubed with years of graffiti and grime. Of the two that are open, one is a Chinese chippie and the other is a newsagent. Above the shops are what look like single-storey flats underneath a long gable roof, but all the windows are sealed by solid metal grills. These dwellings haven’t been lived in for a long time.

  Paul and Lee usher me to the end of the parade and to a narrow alleyway which is blocked off by a set of padlocked metal gates. Paul fetches a heavy bunch of keys from his jacket, opens the padlock, pushes the gates inward and leads me to the back of the shops. We are in a rubble-strewn yard area serving all six shops, with high brick walls enclosing the space around three sides. On top of the walls are tightly-bunched coils of razor wire. To the rear of each shop unit are heavily fortified metal doors. The shop on the end nearest to us has its own small wrought iron staircase leading up to a landing and another metal door, but this one looks new – not like the battered and weathered doors on the other shops.

  As soon as I turn the corner, and see the small staircase leading to the building door, two fat-arsed Rottweilers which are on the stairway landing burst into life, like dormant monsters guarding some temple, awakened by intruders. They snarl and bark and strain on their metal chains which are tied to the railings on the stairway, their leather collars digging into their throats. These two brutes don’t care if they strangle themselves as they try to launch themselves at me, their teeth glistening in the morning sun, drool flying everywhere as they rear up at me. Paul confidently bounds up the stairs and brings his arm up as if he’s about to hit them.

  “Tyson! Shut up! Floyd! Down!”

  Tyson and Floyd as names for Rottweilers? How fucking original. There must be a compulsory manual handed out to male hard knocks as they embark on their lives of crime. Page 4. Section 2; Clause 7a: In the event of purchasing guard dogs, be sure to give them the names of famous boxers in order to add to your aura of thuggishness. I’d be more impressed with Paul’s hard dog credentials if they w
ere named something innocuous like Laverne and Shirley. See how fucking hard us Rottweilers are? We’ve got birds’ names and we don’t give a fuck.

  The dogs still bark but they hesitantly retreat and eventually lie down. Lee and I sprint up the stairs as Paul opens the metal door. The door opens into a small enclosed wooden staircase, presumably leading up to the flats above. The stairway is barely wide enough for me to clamber up, never mind the two twats who are chaperoning me.

  At the top of the staircase, we step into a large open-plan space stretching across the length of the entire six shops. There are no flats. It’s a massive weed factory. There are three long lines of trestle tables stretching from one end of the space to the other. I reckon there are at least 300 plants in here, alongside grow lamps. At the far end of the room is a mattress on the floor, some blankets, an old, cracked and stained porcelain sink with one tap, and by that an old double kitchen cabinet on which stands a kettle and some mugs, a box of teabags, a couple of juice bottles and a carton of milk. On the floor are some plastic carrier bags and dog food bowls.

  I look up at the wooden beams supporting the gable roof, through which hang six wires with bare lightbulbs on the end. There is a small skylight at each end of the roof, barely big enough for a child to fit through. The wall at the front holds the windows, blacked out by the metal grills outside. The window frames are wooden and rotting, probably the original ones from when this place was built in the 1930s or 1940s, judging by the yellowing paint which is peeling away. Some of the windowpanes are cracked and broken and there are thin plastic binbags taped over where the panes have gone completely.

  Just to my left near to the kitchen cabinet stands a lanky streak of piss in a tracksuit who’s on the smack by the looks of him, all sunken eyes and skin the colour of cat vomit. He looks at me, wide-eyed and blank. Sean steps out from behind him.

  “Ready to start work?” Sean says to me.

  “You what?” This had better be a fucking joke. I’m hoping my gobsmacked expression tells him that.

  He nods at the plants. “Thought we could do with some of your green finger magic, girl,” he says, as he gazes around the room. He looks over at smackhead. “Tony here has been having trouble getting this lot up to scratch.” At this, Tony looks shame-faced, bows his head to the floor and then looks up at me. “Thought you could have a look, see if you can salvage them,” Sean says.

  A gardening emergency, eh? I look around the vast room. There are various plants at differing stages of growth but it’s obvious they’re not in good shape, even though there are plenty of lights and automatic feeding equipment around. I step forward to the nearest plant and scrutinise it. It’s a Sativa/Indica mix but it looks really weak and is being held up by two sticks. “How far is this one along?” I say to Tony.

  He shuffles forward. “About four weeks.”

  This scraggy little thing should be a lot further along by now. “How often are you feeding and watering them?”

  Tony scratches his head. “Same as ever, watering every three days, feeding every two weeks.”

  “Show me what you’re feeding them.”

  He scuttles off to the table by the wall and brings back a two-litre container of bog-standard plant feed. I wrinkle my nose up. “This stuff is too strong, it needs watering down otherwise it’ll overpower them,” I say as I look at the label. If he’s been giving them this then it’s no wonder they’re not coming along.

  Tony looks at Sean and shrugs half-heartedly. “It worked alright in the other place before, though, that’s why I don’t know what’s up with them now,” he says plaintively. It turns out that Tony’s plants have recently been rehomed into these buildings after his last location had to be vacated sharpish due to the electricity company asking awkward questions about the abnormally high level of energy being used.

  I bend down and look at the base of the plant, then slowly dip my finger into the soil and rub some between my fingers. It’s far too dry, probably because in an old building like this, in these old converted houses, humidity is escaping through cracks and holes in the walls and cement and not enough moisture can gather to keep the soil moist. No wonder these plants are limping. It’s the equivalent of being slowly strangled from the roots up while being force-fed at the same time.

  I turn to look at Tony. Poor lad, it’s not his fault, he’s not an expert. “We don’t have to write them off just yet. Stick to every two weeks for feeding but from now on, start watering them every two days and see if that helps. After 36 hours, they should be standing up more by themselves. And put some water in this plant feed, that’ll help disperse the nutrients they’re getting. Hang on, have you got a jug or a bottle or something?”

  Tony looks around and comes back with a large empty water bottle. I pour the plant feed into the bottle. Then I take it to the kitchen sink tap, put one part of water into it and shake the bottle to mix it up. I hand it back to Tony. “Empty all the feeders and put this in. Every two weeks for food, every two days for water, got that?”

  “Yeah, I’ll try that, nice one. Ta.” He smiles at me. Poor sod actually looks grateful. I look at Sean. “Give them 36 hours to get upright again. And you should probably get the holes in this place filled in if you’re gonna keep them here,” I say as I point out the cracks in the brickwork.

  Sean doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me and gives me the smirk. He takes the door keys off Paul and then tells Paul and Lee to go outside and get the motor running. He walks over to me and puts his hand in his inside jacket pocket. For a second I think he’s pulling a gun on me, but he brings out a wad of notes bundled up in an elastic band. “Best get to the DIY shop then, hadn’t you?” he says as he hands me the wad.

  “You what?”

  “You’re the plant expert. If the greenhouse isn’t up to scratch then you’d best make sure it is.”

  “What? I have to stay here and fucking renovate the place?”

  “Got it in one, girl. Tony here needs to go keep an eye on some other things for me, so for the next few days you’re the live-in gardener.”

  “Oh, am I? And what about my own stuff?”

  “I’m sure your lads can keep things ticking over there while you’re over here. Consider this a priority. I’ll be back in a couple of days. In the meantime, my lads will be keeping an eye on you.”

  With that, he throws the keys to me and heads out of the door with Tony trailing behind him. Tony gives me an apologetic shrug but I can tell the fucker thinks I’ve drawn the short straw.

  The rest of that day consists of me doing the best I can with a shaky wooden ladder I find in the far corner of the room, a large tub of Polyfilla and a few rolls of plastic sheeting. After Sean and his minions leave, I learn to distract Tyson and Floyd from ripping my throat out by chucking the contents of dog food tins left behind by Tony onto the stairway landing, giving me enough time to lock and unlock the outside door and get up or down the stairs when needed.

  Truth is, I’m not so much scared of these dogs as I am scarred by the memory of my own dog. I’ve not spent any time around dogs since I had my puppy all those years ago. The horrific image of his tiny, limp and bloodied body lying on the kitchen lino, the pattern of blood spatters on the kitchen cabinets, the searing memory of his agonised howls and squeals as my Dad kicked him and stamped on him…they come back to me every time Tyson and Floyd fix their black, soulless eyes upon me. Some people say that dogs have a sixth sense – if they do, I hope that these two vicious mutts can sense my residual pain and be gentle with me.

  Day two. My meals come courtesy of the newsagent’s stock of Pot Noodles and the chippie downstairs. Toilet breaks involve me nipping to the spit and sawdust old fellas’ pub over the road, slipping in and out as fast as I can to avoid interacting with the clientele. When the pub is shut, I use a plastic bucket in the corner of the roof space which I have to empty outside in the rear yard. If this is some kind of initiation trial by Sean, he’s really not incentivising me to want to beco
me part of his organisation. In the meantime, I make phone calls to Ste, John and Brian from the callbox on the corner. The fuckers actually laugh when I tell them of my predicament. Paul and Lee turn up a few times during the day without prior warning to make sure I haven’t done a dusty on them but they avoid addressing me directly if they can help it. Twats.

  As the hours pass, Tyson and Floyd have become accustomed to me enough to stop barking their heads off every time they see me. Tyson even lets me give him a quick head ruffle at feeding time whereas Floyd appears disinterested, like I have to earn his friendship. There’s enough space at the back of the shops for them to have a run around and let off doggy steam but I’m scared to let them off their chains. However, I reckon that tired, happy dogs are better than pissed-off chained-up dogs so I fumble with the chains and begin to untangle them. At the sound and sight of this, they sit up and wag their stumps vigorously.

  Before I can even grip the chains properly, Tyson and Floyd are down the stairs and running around the yard, chasing each other, ducking each other and slobbering over what remains of a tennis ball. They even get me to join in. Tyson drops the tennis ball at my feet and looks at me. That’s me told. I spend an unexpectedly happy couple of hours playing with the dogs, throwing the ball, chasing them, letting them chase me. I even get them to follow a few commands and they are surprisingly compliant. Playtime ends when the sun starts to go down and dusk begins to cast its shadow across the ground. I call the dogs back over, grab their chains and tie them up again.

  Dusk turns into night, and sunshine gives way to rain. I tell myself I am being a stupid, soppy cunt to even consider it but before I can talk myself out of it, I untie the dogs and bring them inside. Yeah, they may get a bit stoned from the smell but I can’t leave them in the rain all night. Judging by the rapid wagging of stumps and the affectionate nuzzles against my legs, they seem relieved to be inside. It wouldn’t surprise me if that prick Paul left them outside all the time, no matter what the weather.