Layer Cake

by J. J. Connolly

  ‘The kids are eating now and we’ll eat later. They’re up late tonight.’

  ‘This house, did you have it built?’

  ‘No I didn’t, but if I did have one built,’ says Trevor, ‘this would be it. No, it was built for a Swedish firm who come over in the eighties, built a factory nearer town. These houses were for the top executives, there’s another dozen or so dotted up and down the road.’

  ‘They’re very hard to find.’

  ‘That’s Swedes for ya. Their angle is to be at one with nature, not to be hard to find.’

  ‘What happened, the factory went bust?’

  ‘Lotta people reckon it was another government scam, tryin to get jobs brought into the area, but it didn’t work. The Swedes cleared out and left the houses for sale.’

  ‘So it worked out well for you.’

  ‘That’s one way of lookin at it.’

  He shows me round and you can tell he’s a proud man, happy to be a good provider for his kids and he’s seriously loved-up with Mandy, his childhood sweetheart. She puts the kids to bed while Trevor lays the dining table by the window.

  ‘In summer we have these doors open and we eat out on this deck. These doors all fold back so it’s like there’s no walls at all. This house is really beautiful in the summer.’

  ‘It’s very nice now.’

  ‘Not bad for an ex-con, mini-cab driver.’ He gives me a sly little wink. I know bits and pieces about Trevor.

  ‘Is that how you got started then, Trevor?’

  ‘I got out from a lumpa bird and a mate sorted me out a car buckshee and a job so I went to work drivin.’

  It ain’t the done thing to ask what the bird was for, ain’t ethical, Geno would say, but I already know the gist.

  ‘You know I was inside with Morty, not great pals or anything but our paths crossed at some point, some nick or other. I didn’t know him well but then he gave everyone a wide. He was kinda aloof if ya like. Well, as aloof as you can be in nick.’ He laughed like aloof was not the kinda word he used every day.

  ‘He told me he didn’t like the company that much,’ I say. ‘Thought most of them were riff-raff, grasses, geezers who went guilty cos they thought the law might cut them a deal, losers, mugs, junkies. He’s a bit of a snob, is Mister Mortimer.’

  We’re laughing.

  ‘I tell ya what,’ I go on, ‘if you get him on his high horse, get him goin, he can sound like some old Tory geezer. His voice changes and everything. He starts to really pro-noun-ce his words. Recidivist lowlife smugbags, stealing old ladies’ purses, where’s the morality, where’s the get-up-and-go that made this country what it is today. Let these fuckers rob someone who can afford to be robbed. Do away with Social Security, let the work-shy fuckers starve.’

  ‘He’s not really like that, is he?’

  ‘No, is he fuck. He just likes to spin people’s nuts, a black geezer talkin like that, gets ’em at it, see if they’ll bite cos he likes an argument, does Mort. I’ll tell ya what, he preferred being with Cat A cons than petty crims. It’s a pride thing I guess.’

  ‘He used to walk along the landin with a face like there was a really bad smell and he used to have a uniform–’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘The prison-issue uniform. He had it pristine, pressed to perfection, the shoes polished like a soldier. He’d walk around the gaff like looking down his nose at everyone.’

  ‘In his uniform?’

  ‘Not every day, but on Sundays and that. If he had a visit he’d really go to town but every day he’d put on a clean shirt, and underwear I guess, some blokes don’t change that stuff for weeks.’

  ‘So he’d look a dandy in the shovel.’

  ‘He had a tie sent in.’

  ‘Sent in?’

  ‘Cos they don’t give you a tie.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well they don’t, but Morty’s got one from somewhere and if he’s out and about on the wing, suited and booted, and he sees a screw with his top button undone he’d be ordering them to do it up and you know a lot of the time they’d do it. It’d be summer, a hundred and twenty degrees, fuckin boilin, and he’s got a woollen uniform and a tie on.’

  ‘Did anyone else wear a uniform?’

  ‘You’d have a riot if you tried. Really straight-faced he’d say to them, “Do that button up you scruffy bastard,” so they weigh him off as a nutter, not your fraggle rock, ravin loony kind but the give-him-a-squeeze, keep-him-sweet kind. It’d be like “Come, Morty, we don’t want no trouble,” cos you only have to look at him to know he can perform, it’s in the eyes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dispute it,’ I says.

  ‘I did my time quiet, couple of scrapes but nothing serious. You know what I was away for, don’t ya.’

  I do but I have to let him tell me, protocol. ‘You wanna tell me?’

  ‘I was working on the door of this club and this fight’s kicked off cos we wouldn’t let some drunks in. This geezer’s tryin to bite me ear off so I thought I’d run him into a wall but we’ve both gone through a shop window. He’s cut to pieces, big bits of glass in him, blood everywhere. I ain’t got a scratch. This guy dies cos he’s cut main arteries in his leg and his arm. He actually got out the window and ran away but collapsed round the back of some shops and died. He lost the blood faster cos his heart was pumped up from the fight. Busies followed the blood-trail to find him.’

  ‘Might have lived if he hadn’t run.’

  ‘Possibly. The law’s charged me with murder cos they’re saying that I slung him through the window. His pals are prepared to say I did. The law don’t believe it but it’s a dead easy conviction for murder, looks good on their records.’

  ‘It’s good at promotion time.’

  ‘I’m in the frame so these cunts get a better pension. But common sense prevailed. A couple of boys spoke to his mates, told ’em givin evidence was not on. The charge gets dropped to manslaughter. I shoulda sacked me brief cos he let a loada stuff go he shoulda jumped on, medical reports and that, useless he was.’

  ‘You got what?’

  ‘Five, cos I had previous, did about three, looking at life at one point. When I got out I wouldn’t spit my gum out on the street. Then I realised that if you don’t take a short cut you ain’t gonna get nowhere.’

  ‘Very true, Trevor.’

  ‘See, at that time in Liverpool there was a kinda mini-cab war going on, offices getting burnt out, people getting sent out with a big bag of change and told to ring up and send cars round to moody addresses all day long, drivers getting beatings, informing the dole if guys were scratching and working.’

  ‘Very snide.’

  ‘Petty, I would have said. I was offered a partnership by this pal of mine whose heart wasn’t really in it. He figured that thirty per cent of something was better that one hundred per of fuck all. I went to see the geezers who ran the other firms and we carved the city up. I pointed out that all this bad blood wasn’t good for business, get us all nicked. Think about it, if you can talk to one other, you can peg prices, stop undercutting and if anyone comes along, opens up, you can sort it.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘In the end we took over the other firms, started doing the very top end of the market, executive cars, limos, no one had seen one up here back then.’

  ‘So how did ya get to the dark side?’

  ‘Well, we was always runnin parcels around for various people we knew so one thing led to another and it grew and grew. You know yourself once you’re a player . . .’ He shrugged.

  Everybody wants to know ya. Things can snowball in weeks, not months, so you gotta be wide awake to keep up. I’d heard it was heavier, bloodier than that. The mini-cab wars grew into the contraband wars. Once Trevor had built up the momentum and allies to take on the other cabbies, he marched straight on into the drug trade. Those two are first cousins anyway. People got seriously ironed out and a few got posted Missing In Action. If certain people in certain bus
inesses know you’ve killed another human being, call it manslaughter or murder, making one or serving ‘um up, offing or topping, it ain’t gonna do your reputation any harm.

  I can hear Mandy coming down the stairs. Trevor puts one finger up against his lips and gives me a sly little wink. She starts to bring the food from the oven and put it on the table and at the same time wok-frying some noodles. If she put this together at short notice she’s a kinda culinary genius cos there’s a king prawn curry with coconut and lime leaves, jasmine rice, a whole fish baked with ginger and spring onion, satay chicken and beef, and a Thai salad with peanut sauce. Trevor opens a bottle of wine and puts water on the table. It looks like a feast.

  ‘Do you eat like this every night?’

  ‘Yeah, unless we’re going out to eat. Why not?’ says Mandy. ‘He,’ she nods at Trevor, ‘would eat the whole lot on his own. You gotta eat so why not eat well?’

  We sit and eat.

  ‘You in the same business as Trevor?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, not knowing if that means dealing drugs or cabs. Some guys tell their wives everything, some guys nothing. I’m sure Morty wouldn’t tell his Richard his name if he thought he could get away with it. We talk about London. Mandy says she’s been to London, she liked it but she wouldn’t wanna live there, too impersonal, but ain’t all big cities like that, ain’t Liverpool. London’s the Original King of Impersonal and the reason I fuckin love it. I can lose myself without trying too hard. The area I live in is very plush, with big townhouses that have been carved up into three or four luxury flats, but nobody knows their neighbours. They may nod at me in passing but then they jog on and mind their own business. There’s no cosy chats or exchanging gossip over the garden fence down our way. If I ended up brown bread, like the geezer on the local news back at the bunkhouse, all my neighbours would be out on the street, talking to the TV and papers, paying me the ultimate compliment: ‘He kept himself to himself.’

  The food is delicious, as good as anything I’ve eaten in Thailand. Trevor carries on eating until there’s not a scrap of grub, not a grain of rice or a strand of noodle, left on any of the plates. He sits back and lights a fag with a very satisfied look on his face. He’s quiet, savouring the tastes, pulling on his snout, blowing smoke-rings inside smoke-rings to amuse himself. Then suddenly he’s up and opening the back doors.

  ‘Here, I wanna show you something.’

  He flicks some switches on the wall by the door and a path gets lit up going way off into the massive wooded back garden.

  ‘Come on, bring your drink. You come as well, Mandy.’

  ‘I better stay here in case one of the little ‘uns wakes up.’

  ‘Okay, we won’t be long, babes.’

  We walk out into the cool night air onto the decking, then down five or six steps onto a lawn. It’s a bit chilly, a bit misty, but Trevor don’t seem to notice, he’s only wearing a gym vest. He beckons me across the slightly rising lawn, with tall, skinny trees on either side, and into the wood proper. There’s a gravel path, lit with lanterns that have been strung along the low branches of the trees every few yards. They sway gently on the breeze. We walk into the wood for about a hundred yards. The shadows make faces in the dark and the clouds are rushing overhead. I can hear owls in the distance and small creatures moving in the bushes. Suddenly we emerge into a clearing by a small river and in the middle there’s a mini version of the main house. It’s lit up with spot-lights that have been half buried in the surrounding turf. As I walk round the outside I can see that it’s half on the river bank and the other half is perched over the water supported by hefty wooden stilts.

  ‘The summer house,’ says Trevor, beaming.

  He leads me onto the overhanging balcony. It’s got benches and we sit down.

  ‘Very impressive, Trevor. Did the Swedes build this as well?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh yeah. They know how to live, the Swedes. There’s a sauna in there with a plunge pool, and I guess you sit out here in the nude with the family and all your neighbours, very adult, the Swedish.’

  He laughs.

  ‘So, do you have your pals round for the all-over suntan?’ I ask.

  ‘Do I fuck. Most of the people I know, I wouldn’t let them through the front door. You should feel privileged.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He points across to the other bank, about twenty feet away.

  ‘The river’s very shallow at the moment, very dry, but if it’s been raining heavy or the snow’s melting it’s white water, really fuckin powerful, gets ya going.’

  It hasn’t rained in weeks. The flow is down to a trickle. On the other bank I can see the high-water line where rocks and small branches have been thrown up by the force of a torrent. Where the river curves away outta sight, the power has eroded the bank away leaving an overhang waiting to drop.

  ‘I come down here most nights and smoke a spliff,’ he says, lighting one that appeared from nowhere. ‘Whatever the weather, I smoke a spliff, relax, look at the river, look at the stars. It kinda sorts me out, you understand?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘If it’s freezing cold and the river’s rushing, I fuckin love it. You ever done bird, brov?’

  ‘No. I’ve been lucky.’

  ‘I heard you’ve been careful. You know, the one good thing that came outta that last bitta bird was I can really fuckin appreciate all this.’ He sweeps his hand across. It’s dark out on the balcony and I can only see Trevor’s features when he pulls on the spliff, the glow lighting up his face.

  ‘It may sound like old hippy bollocks but if you’ve never had your liberty taken away, can’t do things you take for granted, you can never really understand freedom.’

  ‘But some geezers go back time and time again.’

  ‘Cos they don’t know any different, or they’re looking for the last big prize, but waking up in there and seeing the same old faces, day in, day out, it depresses the shit outta me to even think about it.’

  He seems to have got well stoned really quick. The puff smells seriously pungent, mega-strong, but he ain’t exactly gonna be smoking chicken-shit and henna.

  ‘And that’s what you think about down here?’ I say.

  ‘And other things, plans for the future.’ He takes a long draw on the spliff, holds it down. We’re silent for a few seconds, listening to the river trickle by.

  ‘Do you know what “Cosa Nostra” means?’ he says.

  ‘It’s the Mafia, ain’t it?’

  ‘Sure. But the term “Cosa Nostra”. Do you know what it actually means?’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head.

  ‘It means “This thing of ours”, yeah? You get it?’

  I ain’t sure what I’m meant to say here. I obviously ain’t had enough spliff. Trevor can see I look mystified.

  ‘See, what I’m gettin at is the idea of being in something, this thing of ours, with people, geezers you respect, sticking together, working for something you all believe in, trusting one another to be straight with each other. It can only pay benefits.’

  ‘But the reality of all that is it’s fucked.’

  ‘Now, maybe, but at the start it was a noble idea. I’ve read all those books about the Mafia and . . .’

  Trevor’s talking but I ain’t listening. A little alarm bell’s ringing in my head. It’s always a bad sign if guys have read too many books about the Mafia. To read all that shit you’d begin to think it was quite noble and heroic. Guys who have got too far into that tip have ended up causing themselves and people working with them a whole lotta grief. They wanna start pulling strokes in broad daylight. They seem to forget it’s called crime. When those old-school Mafioso guys were up to their tricks, the fuckin world was a different place. They were as strong as a government, they selected presidents of the United States, ran whole cities, ran the police, ran judges, ran sports, ran the unions, and after that what’s left to run?

  ‘ . . . You know what I mean, brother?’ says Trevor, gr
abbing my arm.

  ‘Sure, sure. You’re right, brother.’

  I’m clueless.

  ‘I knew you’d understand. Talk to some people about this sorta shit and you lose ’em straight away cos they’re just lowlifes. What I’m talking about is trusted guys, sensible guys coming together to do their work, to give the public what they want. Nobody forces this on anyone.’ He holds the spliff up. ‘We just supply a demand that’s there and it works a whole lot better if you can trust a few people.’

  ‘Who have the same aim.’

  ‘Now you got it.’

  ‘But this is a messy business. These are different times from when those geezers did what they did. I’ve read some of those books and some of those guys had a lotta class but a lot of them was just fuckwits, lordin it up, livin large until–’

  ‘Listen, what I’m saying is don’t ever lie to me or my boys, okay? We’ll have a Cosa Nostra.’

  ‘An understanding?’

  ‘Yep,’ he says.

  I hope he ain’t on about those fuckin pills. I better change the subject.

  ‘But Trevor, people get greedy, people get ironed right out, people don’t know when enough’s enough. We have chosen a dangerous way to make our living. These are dangerous times for everyone, even straight-goers are gettin mashed up in their own homes.’

  ‘There’s a lot of loonies about, it’s true.’

  ‘I saw on telly before I came over here, some poor fucker, mindin his business, he gets totally ironed out, in his own gaff.’

  ‘What happened? I didn’t see it,’ says Trevor, relighting his spliff.

  ‘Quiet guy, lived on a boat, someone held him captive, tortured him and then offed him.’

  ‘On a boat, in a boatyard?’ There was a bit of concern.

  ‘Yeah, about ten miles up the coast. The cozzer was right ups–’

  ‘Did they give the guy’s name. He wasn’t Dutch, was he?’ He was hoping he wasn’t.

  ‘He was, as it goes.’