The Jag slowed at the lights. An eerie tangle of shadows that was Southern Cemetery on the left, reminding Paddy of where he could so easily end up if tonight went badly. He tried to visualise swaying palms on a Thai beach to slow his heartbeat but could only think of that little Boddlington shit with the lightning flash shaved into his head, lunging at him with the knife in M1 House. Wondered if the lad would be there tonight and if he might have the opportunity to exact revenge on him in some way; Paddy’s forearm was not the only thing that had been punctured.
Moss Side flashed by in vapour trails of neon light and bong smoke. Parson’s Croft beyond it. The streets would be filled with O’Brien girls and boys, he knew, doling candy out to the starving, unwashed masses. On the other side of the Mancunian Way, the Hilton Hotel’s Beetham Tower, long-since finished, punctuated the Manchester night sky like an exclamation mark without a point. A brightly lit, uncompromising phallus, reminding Paddy that in this tough place, men ruled. Men like him. Once he had grown old enough to realise he could shed the rough skin of the dirt poor that had been the crappy legacy of that snake, his father, this fine, hard city, and all that lay south of the dividing line, had become his very own playground. He was Manchester’s number one son. He knew all of her secrets. The thought calmed him.
‘Am shitting myself, me,’ Frank said, breaking the silence. ‘And why are we meeting in a gallery of all places? I haven’t been to one of them since we was at school.’
Wired, as usual. Paddy listened to three further minutes of Frank’s musings on the lunacy of having the meet on neutral turf, rather than in his club, before slamming his hand over his brother’s mouth.
‘See, this is why you keep your gob shut when we get in there. Understand?’
Frank looked him in the eye. An appropriate amount of fear and respect, there. He nodded. Fell silent once more as Conky navigated the bright lights and double parking of Chinatown, pulling up at the back of Manchester City Art Gallery.
Inside, Maureen Kaplan stood at the top of the grand, stone staircase with her arms outstretched. She was wearing a sharp navy trouser suit, though now that she had piled on a good couple of stone in her middle years and her hair was short and expensively dyed blonde instead of those gorgeous, brassy blue-black curls she’d once sported, Paddy wondered that he had ever fucked her with such enthusiasm.
‘Patrick,’ she said, smiling the lethal, self-assured smile of a woman who held sensitive information about every crook in town. ‘Punctual as ever.’
‘Maureen. My favourite number cruncher. Rachel Riley’s got nowt on you, cocker.’ He winked.
‘Schmoozer! Come on up.’
Flanked by Frank to his left and Conky to his right, with five of Conky’s bravest taking up the rear, Paddy climbed the stairs slower than he would have liked. Tried to conceal the fact that, only half way up, he was practically asphyxiating with the effort. Praying that his dicky ticker wouldn’t burst. One step at a time. Appear statesmanlike. Don’t show weakness or grimace. He pretended to admire the pre-Raphaelite masters on the walls and the chandelier above him, though in fact, he was praying to Jesus, Mary, Joseph and whoever else would listen that he wouldn’t cark it there and then.
Blithely unaware of his brother’s suffering, Frank trotted ahead, treating Maureen to a smackeroo on the cheek and offering her the too-warm embrace of a man who had spent his youth eating mainly E. Only Conky stood by Paddy, discreetly taking him by the elbow. Nodding at the artwork and playing along with this façade that his King was merely moving at a leisurely pace through his own choosing.
‘Where are they?’ he asked Maureen, finally reaching the summit. Even more lined around her eyes than she had been last time they had met.
‘In there.’
Allowing Conky to frisk her, she gesticulated towards the large gallery up more stairs, to her right. She wore the flowery scent of a girl but gave off pure essence of fully grown praying mantis.
‘Jesus. Couldn’t you have got a venue with a sodding lift?’ Paddy whispered in her ear.
‘I always did like to hear you pant,’ Maureen said, winking.
The gallery was stately in its proportions, lit fully as though the place was still open to the public and this wasn’t 10pm at night. Giant, priceless oil paintings hung on the wall, reminding Paddy that the O’Brien empire was but a small footnote in local history compared to Manchester’s stake in a grand Victorian past. The parquet floor shone. The air was scented with beeswax polish. It could have been an evening to enjoy, had it been a private viewing or a charity function. But it wasn’t. And there were his nemeses at the far end of the space. All turning towards him, now. Jonny Margulies. A bald wide-boy, wearing a pink shirt that accentuated his pregnant paunch over pin-striped suit trousers. Grinning hungrily, with arms folded. He looked like he had spent the day prosecuting criminals in court, as opposed to trafficking drugs and people through north Manchester from every major hub in the world. And there was Tariq Khan. All boyish-looking, despite his forty-odd years. Silver-grey streaked through his thick thatch of otherwise black hair. Decked out in designer versions of the young man’s clothing that his underlings wore, as though his supremacy within the Boddlington organisation was beyond question or doubt. Sitting on the edge of a display cabinet, giving the impression that this was his living room and Paddy was just a visitor. But there, lurking at the back, was that little dick who had stabbed him. The one with the lightning flash.
Paddy grimaced at him. Drove himself forward, stifling the urge to seize a painting from the wall and smash it down onto the lad’s delinquent, disrespectful head.
Maureen abandoned the safety of her sons – Zac, Steven and Louis – and her son-in-law, David Goodman to quickly seize control of the posturing men.
‘Boys! Boys. Welcome.’ She beckoned them to her, encouraging them to close the gap until they were within killing distance. Turning to Paddy, she smiled confidently. ‘Paddy here has requested this meet, as you all know.’ She turned to the Boddlingtons. ‘Tariq and Jonny have agreed to parlay.’
Paddy watched with admiration as Maureen faced down the various muscle on the warring sides: Asaf Smolensky, standing like a faux-Hassidic approximation of Death in his long, black coat. Holding a shining machete in his right hand as a warning, though this was Friday night, and Paddy was sure religious Jews weren’t supposed to be hanging around like long streaks of threatening piss in galleries on a Friday night. Damned fraudster. And there, like a distorted reflection, was his very own Conky McFadden, holding a sawn-off shotgun which he’d had concealed about his person until now. Equally as demented-looking, Paddy mused, with that Just For Men clip-on quiff of his and the specs. What was it with muscle?
‘Now, I don’t need to tell you, do I,’ Maureen said. ‘… That there’ll be no bullshit while I’m arbitrating. No violence. No heated words. No sudden moves.’ She seemed taller than every man in that room. She too had her support in her sons and son-in-law, suited and booted on the sidelines. Everyone in the room knew they had something far more deadly than knives or guns at their disposal. They had receipts and invoices for nefarious dealings that would never be declared on a VAT or tax return. Cold, hard evidence. Enough to put everyone in the room away at Her Majesty’s leisure indefinitely.
‘Don’t worry, Mo,’ Jonny said, unfolding his arms and clasping them before him like an overweight choirboy. ‘We’re on our best behaviour. Promise. Aren’t we Tariq?’
Tariq nodded. Looked deferentially down at his stupid sneakers when Maureen scanned his face for bullshit. Smolensky and Conky stared straight ahead like robots who had had their batteries temporarily removed. The lesser players hung back out of earshot at Maureen’s behest.
‘Right, lads. Paddy and Frank are here to sell. Jonny and Tariq are here to buy.’ She turned to Paddy. ‘The floor’s yours.’
Taking a deep breath, Paddy ran through the speech he had prepared in his head at double-speed. It came out somewhat disappointingly as, ‘Ten
million in cash for the south side. All drugs, all girls, all gambling, all imports and exports. All subsidiary enterprises. The whole south side. Ten mill.’
‘Apart from my club, like,’ Frank blurted. Beaming winningly. Sticking his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit, as though he were willing himself not to go disco, despite the sobriety of the situation. ‘That’s not for sale, man. Soz.’
‘Why would you think we’d pay you all that money when we’ve got successful business interests of our own?’ Tariq asked.
‘Not that it’s not a very interesting offer,’ Jonny clarified, cocking his head as though he were listening intently for what came next.
Paddy could see they were playing good cop, bad cop or some such nonsense. He had no time for it. ‘I want to retire. I don’t want my business going to some cocky dipshit from London or those Scouse twats. I’ve worked my arse off for what I’ve got. Like yous.’
‘Listen,’ Tariq said, running his hand through that hair. Stroking his short, chinstrap beard. ‘We’ve been at war for how long? Fifteen years? More? Why should we trust you?’ Perched on the edge of the display cabinet, he crossed and uncrossed his legs nonchalantly. A slight whiff of whatever shit he spoke at home coming through in his otherwise pure Oxford-educated accent. Certainly no trace of the Lower Boddlington origins in him. ‘I mean, why would we want to do business with a man who’s put thirty-two of our men in the ground since we took control of the north side?’
‘We respect you as our competition, Paddy,’ Jonny said, placing a conspiratorial hand on Tariq’s shoulder. ‘But we’ve got obligations to service the business we’ve already got. We’ve got HMRC breathing down our necks, as I’m sure you have. We’ve got that donkey from CID, Ellis James, on our case constantly. Ten million quid for twice the aggro maybe isn’t worth our while.’
Paddy could feel haggling on the horizon and he wasn’t in the mood to negotiate.
‘I don’t give a stuff about the tax man or the coppers,’ he said. ‘That comes with the territory. Men like us have to be ready for anything. And as for the bodies … well, it takes two to tango, boys, and I seem to recall you were dancing on my soldiers’ graves and all.’
Jonny shook his head. ‘Two million in cash. The cost of retraining your people to operate like ours will be massive. Crippling. The cost of the added risk—’
‘Ten mill.’ Paddy felt queasy. Blood draining away from his stomach to his brain. Stand your ground, Pad.
Suddenly, a voice behind him shattered the illusion that they were somehow speaking intimately in a sound-proof room.
Degsy: ‘He’s taking the piss, Pad. I’ll put a bullet in him if you want.’
Paddy swung around and grabbed Conky’s gun hand. Pistol-whipped Degsy so hard and so unexpectedly that he fell backwards into a painting of a big red-head with nice white tits and frizzy long hair. Degsy’s blood spattered onto the woman’s painted green dress. Paddy placed his foot on the dealer’s scrawny neck.
‘You speak when I say you can speak. Dickhead.’
Wiping his bloody nose with the sleeve of his hoody, Degsy didn’t dare answer. He merely looked up at Paddy with fearful, resentful eyes. Nodded.
‘Ten million pounds,’ Paddy said, rounding on Tariq and Jonny once again. ‘This isn’t a fucking medina, boys. This isn’t the mosque or some two-bit Jew diamond dealer’s. This is half of Manchester. I’m selling to you. Or I’m selling to out-of-towners. But the price is still ten million nicker, whoever the hell you are and whatever overheads you think you’ve got. No more murders. No more turf wars. A going concern that will more than double the riches in your wildest dreams.’
He stepped towards Jonny Margulies. Invading his space. Gut to gut. Poking him in that fleshy overhang so that Smolensky raised his machete.
‘Take it or leave it, Jonny. But if you leave it …’
Behind him, Conky put two cartridges into the shotgun.
‘… you might find yourself leaving this life for the next one sooner than you think.’
Guns pulled from every holster and breast pocket in the room. The gallery’s still air was a-whirr with the metallic sound of safeties coming off.
Paddy held his breath.
Closed his eyes.
Waited for what came next.
Chapter 9
Sheila
Sinking beneath the deep layer of foam and the silken surface of the water, Sheila mused on how comforting it was to shut the world out. Holding her breath. Counting, counting, until all she could feel was the crushing sensation in her chest and the beat of her pulse, thumping in her ears. Reminding her that she was yet living, though she felt dead inside.
The girls were grown and gone.
The flower of her youth had withered.
She was Paddy’s Queen, imprisoned in a tower of her own design, awaiting execution or a slow death. Not even Thailand would change that.
Pushing against the tall sides of the freestanding bath, she surfaced, gasping for air. Racking sobs suddenly pushing their way out of her body like skeletons tumbling from a closet she had been keeping under lock and key for decades.
‘Why?’ she shouted to the TV screen set into the unforgiving stacked-stone slate wall. It showed some plastic fantastic American actress, jabbering at her fat friend, occasioning unearned canned laughter at the end of every sentence. The TV was as good a confessor as any. ‘How has it come to this?’ She splashed her hands down violently into the foamy water, sending it scudding around her naked body. ‘Washed up just as I was about to ride the crest of my own wave. All ’cos of Paddy. That domineering, bad-breathed, dicky-tickered wanker, with his shitty flaky scalp and his skidmarks in his undies and his hairy back and his psycho bullying bullshit and his bitch mistresses with their fake tits.’ Years of solemn therapy sessions at the Priory, in which she had talked around the problem to a sympathetic man in a Spartan room, were now proved redundant. For her ears only, in that empty bathroom, the truth she had been holding inside about the root of all her unhappiness was finally outside. ‘Paddy, you bastard! I hate you. I fucking hate you.’ She slammed her palms down onto her knees with a splash. ‘But I love you and I’m scared and I don’t know how to be alone. Please don’t let him die tonight, God.’
Visualising her husband, standing in the gallery, clinching the deal of a lifetime with the Boddlington bosses … Perhaps the Boddlingtons would bring a suitcase full of cash like you saw on the films. She didn’t know how deals that size worked – her cleaning deals were all dodgy invoices and almost bona fide transactions to slightly shady offshore accounts or cash, no questions asked. But she knew that if the sell-out went ahead, they would be rich enough never to have to think about money again. Off to Thailand, flying first class. Trapped forever, hidden away from what few friends and family Paddy allowed her to have.
And what if the deal failed and he was killed tonight? What then? Patrick O’Brien was all she had known from being a girl, becoming her father figure long before her own father had disowned her. She visualised his gravestone.
Here lies Patrick O’Brien, survived by his ungrateful wife and doting daughters.
Freedom at last.
She shook the thought away. What a prize cow she was!
Sobbing in the bath until the bubbles had all burst, her fingertips and toes had become wrinkled and the water had grown cold. Shivering. Teeth-clacking. She turned on the hot tap, shoving her purple toes under the gushing warm water, wondering how it was she could feel so many conflicting emotions at once.
‘I’ve made my bed,’ she finally told the television, feeling guilt start to pull her under again. The water level was rising fast … ‘Loyalty keeps this family together. I need to keep us together.’
She slid down the bath until even her buoyant breasts were covered. Her hair swished around her like weed on the bottom of a pond. Water seeped up to her chin and into her ears. Over her nose. Under. Contemplating if she should stay there forever, choosing a watery way out of thi
s life and these wifely obligations.
But then, in amongst the thunder of the hot water, now so dangerously near the rim of the bath, she heard another insistent sound. A chime from far away. Was she drowning? Was this destiny calling from the other side?
The bell.
She emerged abruptly from the bath, spilling water all over the floor. The chime was insistent – somebody was at the gates, pressing and pressing on that button. Who the hell was it at this time of night?
Conky had a fob for the gates. Paddy had a key for the door. They weren’t due back until 11pm at the earliest, unless it had all gone very badly wrong, of course …
Ignoring the mess, she skidded across the bathroom, grabbing her robe from the heated towel rail. Hastened down the oak staircase, stepping gingerly with wet feet on the bare, polished treads. The intercom and CCTV screen were close to the front door in the glazed, double-height vestibule. She was vulnerable here, at night with the chandeliers blazing. Anyone lurking in the dark out there would be able to see her. Her heart was pounding, all thoughts of a watery end gone now. Visualising instead where Paddy had the shotguns and live ammo stashed, in case the Boddlington gang had turned up thinking they could claim O’Brien Towers as spoils of war.
A woman was on the screen. Or was it a girl? A small figure with a pinched, frightened-looking face. Difficult to see as the night-time footage wasn’t helped by being black and white. She looked familiar to Sheila. Was this a trap? Was she a dealer, pushed up to the camera by some gun-toting monster because she looked less threatening at a glance?
Chiming, chiming – the visitor was insistent. Sheila could have just walked away. Turned off the lights and retreated to the bedroom. But her battered conscience said she should answer this girl’s plea.
‘What do you want?’ she barked down the intercom.
‘Mrs Sheila, it’s Efe!’ The girl had a heavy Nigerian accent. ‘I work for you. Please. I need to speak to you.’
Born Bad Page 6
