by V E Rooney
“Oh, he’s real, alright,” he says between chuckles. More laughter and nudges. I get the distinct feeling I’m having the piss taken out of me somehow. Then Sean points at Paul. “There he is. Metal Mickey himself.”
Paul puffs his chest up, nodding his head at me. I gawp at him.
“You’re Metal Mickey? What the fuck? Did you really chop that fella up?”
“Oh, I gave him a few slices with my blade, and he fucking had it coming and all. He was taking the piss, girl. Bad for business, he was. But no, I didn’t fucking chop his dick off, girl. Didn’t chop his arms and legs off, either. What do you think I am, a fucking psycho or something? Nah, all that stuff…that was just some toe-rag bragging about it like he’d been there himself. You know how people twist things to make themselves sound like they were in on it. But you know what? I don’t mind if people wanna big me up like that. And let’s be honest, Metal Mickey is a fucking cool nickname.”
20. INDUCTION
I ask Reynolds about the reaction of Kerrigan’s crew when Reynolds arrived on their scene. She bursts into laughter.
“Did they welcome me with open arms, treat me like an equal human being? Did they fuck,” she giggles. “Did my feminine influence transform them into a group of sensitive new men eating quiche? As if! And I wasn’t expecting anything else. Liverpool isn’t a place for the faint of heart. If you can’t stand up for yourself, give as good as you get, you’ve got no chance. And you can amplify that attitude a hundred-fold in the underworld. Oh, I gave as good as I got eventually, but at first? Yeah, I won’t lie. It was rough. Sean’s crew did their best to intimidate me at first, within certain boundaries. I think for Sean, he encouraged it because he wanted to see how tough I was. Wanted to test me, to see if I had what it took to stay around, you know? For some of the lads, same thing for them. They wanted to see just why their boss had allowed this straggly little bird into their nest and so they pushed me. But I could take it. A couple of the lads made it very clear that they didn’t want birds around at all, not unless they were fucking them. But they soon shut up when they saw the kind of money I could bring in.”
What was Kerrigan like as a person?
“Sean as a man? Fair but firm. Very firm on occasions. He didn’t take any bullshit from anyone. He could smell bullshit a mile away. And you didn’t lie to Sean if you knew what was good for you. He expected total honesty and loyalty and commitment from everyone who worked for him. He would say, if we don’t have teamwork, we don’t have anything. If he rang you at 3am wanting you to do something, you hauled your arse out of bed and you did it, no questions asked. And in return for that loyalty, people got his respect and his protection. Don’t get me wrong, he paid people well. But I really don’t think that’s why most people stuck with him. They knew they were safe with Sean. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and he was top dog in that world.
“And he could fight. Lordy, could he fight. He could deck fellas twice the size of him with one flick of the hand. Yeah, he could be vicious with people when they fucked up. Ruthless – the most ruthless bastard if you tried to deceive him or cross him. Most of the time, he didn’t need to get physical with people because his reputation preceded him, you know. People knew not to fuck around with Sean. When it came to being street-smart, he was a fucking professor in it. He knew everyone, but not everyone knew him, you get me? I reckon you could say he was a cut above the usual street corner scallies. He had brains. Not the academic kind of brain, no. He had the opportunity-spotting kind of brain. And that made him different from the usual hard knocks around. I mean, he grew up as poor as I was, and he hated that even more than me. He always said to me, I don’t fear anything except debt. He hated the idea of being beholden to someone because of money. And he was determined that he wasn’t going to stay as this street corner scally doing £10 deals here and there. He wanted serious money, the kind of money that meant he didn’t have to answer to anyone. The kind of money you get by being the supplier to the street corner scallies. So that’s what he did. Fair play to the lad, because he achieved what he set out to do. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted how far he would rise.”
I broach my next question tentatively.
“And there was no personal relationship between you and he?”
Reynolds giggles again. “Oh, fuck no! We were so not each other’s type! I was just this scally teenager when I first him and he was a decade older than me. No, it was strictly a working relationship. Don’t shit on your own doorstep. We both had that mindset. Don’t complicate things unnecessarily. And it worked. I think we complimented each other in different ways. You know, you’ve got the brawn, I’ve got the brains, let’s make lots of money,” Reynolds says, singing the lyric of the Pet Shop Boys song. “Oh, the other lads took the piss every now and then, hinting that something was going on, but no. It was never like that. He saw me as potential. Another business opportunity to capitalise on. Yeah, over time, we became good mates. I think he could talk to me in a way that he couldn’t talk to the other lads, know what I mean? When it was just me and him, he didn’t have to do the hard man fronting thing, you know? But in front of the lads? I didn’t get any special treatment. I was just one of the lads. And that suited me.”
***
When Sean has finished giving me the gangster spiel, Sean and his heavies escort me and my boys outside the farm, leaving a couple of heavies behind so they can do a full inventory. The chill of the night air slaps me in the face as I am bundled out of the heat of the farm and into the back seat of Sean’s car, pinned in on either side by two heavies. Sean gets into the passenger seat while another heavy takes the wheel. Sean looks behind me to check that my boys are safely bundled into a second car behind us. His eyes move to mine for a moment, and then Sean nods at the driver and we move off, snaking our way out of the maze of roads that criss-cross the industrial estate.
Even though it’s only a two-minute drive from the industrial estate to Kirkby town centre, it’s the longest car journey of my life. Apart from the gentle hum of the engine, and the sound of my own heart throbbing with fear and adrenaline, we travel in silence. I see from the clock on the dashboard that it’s just after 1am. Time may as well have stopped for me. I am paralysed and powerless.
The car turns onto County Road, heading towards Kirkby townie. Overhead, street lamps flicker and throw passing blurs of orange halos through the blacked-out windows of the car. There are just a few cars travelling the other way, houses and flats lie in darkness, and the pavements are empty except for a couple of night-shift workers walking up to the industrial estate. No one will ever know what happened to me. I can see the headlines in the Echo tomorrow:
GIRL’S BODY FOUND IN WASTELAND/RIVER/SKIP/BURNED-OUT CAR.
Delete as appropriate as befits my fate.
Sean’s car pulls into the large car park by the Co-op in the townie, quickly followed by the second car. The boys and I are hauled out and pushed together. We exchange glances. Ste gives a half-hearted shrug. No mate, I’m fucked if I know what’s going on either. Sean slides out of the passenger seat and squints as he surveys the scene. Chip wrappers, polystyrene cartons and empty lager bottles move gently across the tarmac in the night breeze.
“Always been a shit-tip round here,” he says to no one in particular. Then he turns to me. “Your place.”
Of course. I set off in the direction of my flat with everyone else tailing behind me. It’s only a few minutes’ walk from the car park and even though I’m sneaking sideways looks at darkened alleys and passageways between the shops, already imagining possible escape routes, I know that I will not run away. They already know where I live. Let the lamb lead the way to its own slaughter.
Inside my flat. Sean’s heavies herd me and the boys into the lounge and we are jammed up together on the couch like a bunch of schoolkids who have been hauled into the headmaster’s office for a bollocking. No one says anything. David is at one end of the couch, his pants are wet with piss and his eyes a
re pinned to the floor, petrified to make eye contact with anyone in the room. Brian is sat next to him, huffing and puffing but not moving. Ste is sitting next to me, tight-lipped, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, and John is sat on the arm of the other end of the couch, his head resting on one hand while the other arm is flopped over his lap, like all the strength has drained out of him.
Two of Sean’s heavies are standing by the doorway into the lounge, arms crossed, smirking at us. The other heavies are ripping the place apart, looking for hidden stashes of weed and cash. They won’t find any of that here and I’m not about to tell them where they can find it. Fuck them. Even if I die tonight, I’m keeping something back for my own sense of control.
The taller of Sean’s lounge-guarding heavies looks at me. He’s got that steroid bulk about him, and the standard issue crewcut framing a heavy-chinned face that reminds me of Desperate Dan without the stubble. “Fucking shithouse in here, girl. Don’t you ever do any fucking cleaning?” he says, delighted by his own wit. The other heavy, a smaller, tubbier bullet-headed bastard, joins in. “You’ll never get yourself a fella like this, love. Smarten yourself up a bit, put some lippy on. Maybe even I’d fuck you then.”
I look him in the eyes. “You? Oh, I think I can do a lot better than you. I’d rather sit on your mum’s face.” Oh look, he’s stopped smiling now. That’s his fucking eye wiped. Ste digs me in the side with his elbow, hissing at me. “Ali, shut the fuck up.” Before the smaller heavy can respond to me, we hear Sean in the hallway approaching the lounge, speaking to someone on his mobile. He comes into the lounge and scans the place, frowning. Then he sits down in the armchair and faces us.
“I don’t think I need to tell you just how much shit you’re in. Ordinarily, girl, anyone with the sheer fucking brass neck of you wouldn’t be breathing by now. You do realise that, don’t you?” he says, nodding at me.
I take a deep breath. Maybe he’s not going to kill me, but as certain as night follows day, he’s got something planned, and whichever way I look at it, it looks like shit for me.
“Look. I just do weed. That’s all I’ve ever done. I wasn’t trying to step on anyone’s toes with this, I wasn’t moving in on your patch, I wasn’t trying to take business away from you. We’re just a bunch of kids growing a bit of weed and selling it to pay the bills,” I say in my best plaintive voice.
He cackles and looks back at his heavies. “Get a load of this one, eh? Thinks we’re fucking social workers.” The heavies start smirking again. He turns back to me. He stands up and starts pacing slowly around the room, stopping occasionally to run his finger on top of the mantelpiece or the telly, like he’s actually measuring the cleanliness of the place.
“Doesn’t matter what you were trying to do, girl. Or why you did it. It matters that you did it. And that affects me, whether you realise it or not,” he says, pulling another ciggie out. Then he stops in front of me and bends down, his eyes level with mine. There’s a faint whiff of tobacco coming from his mouth, and that lingering trace of aftershave. I will never forget that combined smell for as long as I live.
“Don’t think for one fucking minute that I’m taken in by your poor little street urchin shite,” he hisses at me. He draws himself upright and perches on the armchair again, sparking up the ciggie. “You’ve been running a professional operation here. And you’ve been doing it a long time and you’ve made a lot of money. Not that you’d know that, looking at this place.”
The heavies start smirking again. “Told her, mate, lazy bitch needs to get the hoover out,” says the small one. Sean whips around to face him and stares at him. I fucking swear, the heavy has just visibly shrunk two inches. His smirk vanishes and Sean turns around again.
“Thing is, girl,” he says, “if you think I’m just gonna give you a slap on the wrist and leave you to it, you know that’s not gonna happen. Don’t think you’re not gonna get punished for this. You owe me. Big time.”
I can hear Ste, John, Brian and David breathing heavily now. We have all seen and heard too much when it comes to the kind of punishment gangsters have dished out to people over the years. Mentally I’m already bracing myself for a beating, for a broken nose or a smashed kneecap. And if any of these fuckers try to rape me? I’ll die killing them, I know that much.
Sean stares at me. “Well? You’ve got nothing to say to that?”
“You’ve got my farm, you’ve got my stock, what more do you want?” I say with more irritation and volume than I realise. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter any more what I want, does it? So, you know what? Take the lot. You can have it. I’ll walk away. I’m finished with this. That should cover whatever it is I owe you.”
Sean raises his eyebrows at me. “That doesn’t even come close to what you owe me, girl.”
He drops his ciggie on the floor and slowly grinds it into my carpet. With that gesture of contempt, he’s telling me that I belong to him now.
An hour later. Sean and his heavies have departed my flat and to everyone’s surprise, we are left uninjured. Physically, that is. Mentally, we’re shell-shocked. We’re all pacing up and down and around the flat like a bunch of monkeys on speed, accusations flying about.
Ste is particularly worked up about John and what he considers his sloppy way of doing business. “You fucking useless twat. You’re telling me you never clocked on that you were being followed? Are you fucking brain-dead or what?” he spits at John.
John has got his palms up in a not-me-guv gesture. “How the fuck was I supposed to know I was getting followed, dickhead? We’re not exactly in the fucking first division when it comes to dealing, are we?”
“Did I or did I not tell you that we don’t sell on the south side?” I shout at John. “Did I or did I not tell you that? Because this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”
“The lad never told me he was from Toxteth, he came up here, didn’t he?” John cries. “How the fuck was I supposed to know he’d fucked off Sean’s dealer? You know what? Don’t be pinning the blame for this on me, Ali, I’m not having that.”
He’s right, I can’t make him the whipping boy. I asked him to sell and he sold. It’s me who has landed us in this steaming pile of shit.
David is still sat on the couch, his head in his hands. “I’m fucked. We’re fucked. The whole thing is fucked.”
“Shut the fuck up, Tiny Tears,” I say in disgust. “Christ, you’d think it was the busies doing you over the way you’re carrying on. Remember your bollocks, yeah? We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
Ste turns to look at me. There is a glint of anger in his eyes. “Alive at what cost, though, Ali?”
What are our options? It’s hard to frame them in the blur of confusion right now. Telling Sean to go fuck himself so I can carry on as before? As if. No chance. I’d probably be dead before I even got the sentence out. Run away? Go into hiding? Well, it’s possible in theory. For me, anyway. It would be very easy for me to gather up my few belongings, retrieve a few hidden wads of cash and disappear into the night, never to be seen in Liverpool again.
But I don’t have the same kind of ties and connections that the boys do. They’re the ones with the close families, the brothers and sisters, the nieces and nephews, the deep attachment to the familiar and to home. I’ve never had that. How could I ask them to come with me? To give up everything that they know and start again, somewhere new? I bat away that ridiculous idea. It’s an uncomfortable realisation for me in that moment – I don’t want to do this alone.
The only viable option? The one that Sean has given us? Stay, and repay the debt that we owe him. For taking business, customers and money away from him.
As part of the process of repaying my debt to Sean – a figure which has not been determined as yet – he has, in his magnificent benevolence, very kindly decided not to break my legs nor those of the boys, nor exact the kind of fatal physical punishment which would usually be meted out to cocky upstarts who have taken market share away from
established dealers. Instead, the boys and I are to be subsumed into his wider organisation. Sean has decided, in his infinite wisdom, that it would be a shame to let my particular talents go to waste and that it would be more beneficial if I pay him a percentage of my profits, leaving me with very little profit at all. He has ostensibly assumed oversight of my business and I am now an employee of his.
He tells me this as he surveys my pokey little flat, slowly prowling around the lounge like a tiger sizing up its prey. I agree to his terms. On this I have no choice if I want to carry on living, preferably without the assistance of a wheelchair or a life support machine. Outwardly I acquiesce to him as he lists his demands. Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. Whatever you say. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. Inwardly I seethe and burn, I curse him and his fucking organisation and his steroid-pumped gorillas down to the ground, all the way down to hell.
I am used to being in control and doing things my way, whenever I want to do them. I answered to no one, only my own conscience. Fortunately, up until this point, my conscience was happy for me to do whatever I wanted. It’s the arrogance and unshaken optimism of youth, combined with my own self-belief and cunning, which now taunts me. Did you really think you could get away with this with no consequences? Did you really think you would be left untouched, unencumbered? What the fuck were you thinking, Ali? My conscience is now troubled by the fact that I have exposed the boys to all of this. They too will get forced into Sean’s grip and they don’t get a choice about that either. My debt is their debt too.
Fortunately for David, he has a valid excuse to turn this wonderful opportunity down. A couple of days later, he turns up at my flat. David fishes out a folded letter from his coat pocket. “It only came through this morning,” he says, handing the letter to me. I study the letterhead and scan the text.
