Born Bad

by Marnie Riches

  Sheila scrutinised the girl’s face, mentally running through the staff records that Gloria had meticulously put together. Comparing the haunted girl on the CCTV screen to the photographs stapled to fact sheets. Click. She found a match with one of those trafficked girls from Benin City. She wasn’t lying. Exhaling heavily, she was only now aware she had been holding her breath.

  ‘What do you want, Efe?’ Sheila asked. ‘It’s late. I was going to bed.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘No. Call Gloria in the morning if you’ve got a problem.’

  ‘Please! You must hear what I have to say.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here. Hasn’t Gloria told you we’re closing the business?’

  The girl started to weep, clinging to the gatepost for support.

  Against her better judgement, Sheila buzzed her in.

  ‘You cannot let us go, Mrs Sheila,’ Efe said, hiccoughing. She dabbed at her puffy wet cheeks with some kitchen roll that Sheila gave to her. Sipping at a glass of milk. Doleful eyes not even taking in her surrounds. Just focusing on Sheila, then her work-worn hands. On Sheila, then the hands. ‘There are five of us living in that flat Gloria found. We are so grateful for you getting us away from those bad men in Birmingham. You saved us. You are both like aunties to us.’

  Sheila poured herself a vodka and orange. She sighed heavily. ‘I didn’t save you. I’m no angel, Efe, and I’m not your auntie. It’s business. You’re just numbers on a spreadsheet, love.’

  ‘Mrs Sheila! If we don’t work for you, what will we do? We don’t want to go home. We can’t get benefits.’

  ‘Look, it’s not my problem, is it? You’re a free woman, now. Apply for a visa,’ Sheila said, swigging the drink rather more quickly than she should. Wet hair, dripping down the back of her robe, as she willed herself not to pity this shabby, tired-looking girl in a duffle coat and old-fashioned jeans who couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

  Efe’s mouth turned down at the corners. She tugged at her hair, styled in a loose Afro, and pulled it off in one piece – a wig, much to Sheila’s surprise. Pointed to a patch of unsightly scarring on her scalp where the hair no longer grew.

  ‘You see this? This is where one of those bad men threw petrol at me and set fire to me. Then, he pushed me out of a car because I didn’t want to go with the disgusting pigs he brought to the house where we were being held prisoner.’

  Sheila winced, trying to picture the scene. Felt the long shadow of guilt dim the brightly lit kitchen and fall across her. ‘What’s that got to do with my cleaning company?’

  ‘I need that job. I need my flat. I don’t want to have to work for bad men again, giving my body to strangers just so I can eat.’

  ‘Go back to Nigeria.’ Sheila examined her nails, unable to look the girl in the eye. Wishing she’d put the wig back on.

  ‘I can’t! I can never go home. I’m ashamed. We all are. We’d be untouchable back home after the things we’ve done. We want to stay here. We want to be safe, working for you. Gloria is like family to us.’

  ‘Then I suggest you give her earache instead. Not me.’ She drained her glass and stood, making it clear that it was time the girl left.

  ‘But she is your friend.’

  ‘Gloria is a business associate. Nothing more. And that business is finished. Numbers on a spreadsheet, Efe. I’m sorry.’

  Efe pulled her wig on forcefully, glaring at Sheila. Pushing the milk away, undrunk. She wiped her eyes with a balled fist, her defiance not quite concealing the deep, deep hurt. ‘Then you must not have a beating heart inside your body, Mrs Sheila.’

  She stood and snatched up her cheap plastic handbag. Fastened the toggles on her threadbare duffle coat. ‘I will pray for you. You are a woman who only sees other human beings as commodities. That is no way to live and certainly isn’t the will of God. I feel sorry for you.’

  Guilt, anger, embarrassment reacted together inside Sheila. An explosion was inevitable. ‘Get out of my house!’ she yelled, hurling the glass from her vodka and orange against the wall. It smashed, scattering gleaming fragments of crystal over the kitchen floor.

  By the time Sheila had located the dustpan and brush in the utility room, Efe was long gone, having slammed the front door with enough force to make the glass in the vestibule reverberate. The confrontation left Sheila only with the feeling that she was nothing more than a gangster’s moll. No, worse than that. She was a materialistic, unfeeling lump of shit with no true friends, a family that kept its distance either through embarrassment or fear, no sense of community, no conscience. She was nothing. In fact, she was less than Efe. Efe, once a slave and a whore and a prisoner, was now none of those things. She was free. Whereas Sheila was all of those things but with a better manicure and more expensive clothes.

  Rhythmic crunching of gravel on the driveway snapped her out of her reverie. The thrum of an engine. She was not alone.

  Chapter 10

  Lev

  Loose stones kicked up against the discreet, anonymous-looking people carrier. It bounced along the potholed road, past the girls on the street corners, who ducked and dipped like erotic waterfowl to make eye contact with the driver every time they saw a car slow down. Thigh-length boots and miniskirts. Cut-off tops, whatever the weather and whatever time of night it may be. Preening to attract a fast mate who would pay hard cash.

  ‘Look at these poor cows,’ Tariq said, gunning the vehicle towards T&J Trading. ‘Risking life and limb to make the rent. Not like our girls.’

  ‘Our girls don’t make bloody rent,’ Jonny said. ‘They pay off my colossal mortgage and fund Gorgeous Sandra’s Botox habit, thank you very much!’ Guffaws of laughter and elbows in the ribs. Obviously on top form after what had taken place at the gallery. ‘What would they do without Uncle Jonny and Auntie Tariq, keeping them off the streets?’ More laughter.

  ‘Cheeky sod.’ Tariq playfully punched his business partner. ‘Last time I looked, you were the one with well-trimmed testicles, my friend. Snip, snip.’ Miming Gorgeous Sandra, no doubt.

  But Lev was only partly paying attention to the banter. He sat on the back seat, uncomfortably sandwiched between Asaf Smolensky and a giant of a man called Nasim he had never met before until that evening – apparently Asaf’s apprentice and a second cousin of Tariq.

  He felt his pulse. It was still racing after that loon Paddy O’Brien had lunged for him, trying to squeeze the breath out of him as some sort of retribution for M1 House. The arsehole had fingers of steel. How any of them had walked out with their lives intact with all of those guns and knives drawn was nothing short of a miracle. No, he mused. Actually, it wasn’t a miracle. It was down to that accountant woman. She was the scariest bastard he had ever met. Holding a briefcase that some loser in a suit had handed to her. Reminding them that it contained damning documents and that if they didn’t put their dicks away and stop the pissing competition immediately, she would have her man, who knew a man, place a few strategic phone calls to a few strategic people in Greater Manchester Police and HMRC. That had shut the lot of them up.

  Now, Lev was trying to work out how to tap up his bosses for £150K, while they were still feeling triumphant as the new Kings of the Wild Frontier. Their coronation was all but certain, as soon as this down payment was made. Provisional supremacy to the tune of a mill in cash. Maureen Kaplan had decreed it, witnessed by her sons, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful and her son-in-law, Doc, so it had to be so. The King would be dead. Long live the Kings.

  Nearing safety, they passed the hulking silhouette of Strangeways tower to their left.

  ‘Am I going mental with post-traumatic whatsit, or did I just clock that little schmuck, Ellis James, in a Mondeo?’ Jonny asked, craning his head to see the bonnet of the black saloon that was now just out of sight.

  ‘The cop? Where?’ Asaf asked.

  ‘Parked on the corner.’

  ‘Maybe he’s cruising for a lady of the night,’ Tariq said, steering the people c
arrier into the loading bay and pulling up in front of the metal shutters. He applied the handbrake. ‘A gnome with a face like a smacked arse like him would have to pay for it.’

  ‘It’d better bloody not be Ellis,’ Jonny said, suddenly seeming decidedly less cocksure. ‘Not tonight. Not with what we’ve got to do.’ He turned to Tommo, who normally manned one of the brothels, and Tariq’s second cousin, Nasim. ‘You both stay here. Keep an eye out for that snooping bastard. Call me if he gets out of his car.’ Turned to the rest of them, wearing an expression that said he had more than just Gorgeous Sandra snipping away at his balls. ‘Come on. Let’s get inside.’

  Lev followed the others into the factory, trailing behind the tall figure of Asaf. With the machinery off and only one or two lights on, the space seemed eerie – not a place he was yet wholly familiar with as a lowly Sweeney Hall street dealer. He tried to block the mental image that flickered in his mind’s eye like an epilepsy-inducing strobe: his former colleague, Suspicious Sid, lying dead at the top of a multi-storey car park in Bury. Filleted like a side of salmon, complete with cucumber laid like scales over his flank in the way that only Asaf Smolensky, the infamous Fish Man, left his kills. Had Suspicious Sid’s count not been short several times of late, Lev would never have been promoted to a rank he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

  ‘Tariq,’ he said, patting his boss on the shoulder blade.

  Tariq swung around and treated him to a smile and a wink. ‘How’s the neck, son? Gave Pissy Pants Paddy a run for his money, didn’t you? You’ll go far.’ Normally a controlled man who seemed to consider every word before he spoke it, tonight, Tariq’s exuberance was almost tangible.

  Maybe now was the time to get him onside. ‘Can I ask—?’

  ‘Not now. We’ve got to get this cash out and over to Conky McFadden by midnight.’ He took the pistol out of the inside pocket of his reefer jacket and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. Took his jacket off. ‘You and Asaf wait here. Some things only me and Jonny can do. Know what I mean?’ Wink.

  The bosses disappeared off upstairs, presumably to where the offices were situated. Lev was left alone with the Fish Man – a situation he was far from happy with. What on earth should someone like him say to someone like Asaf Smolensky? Should he talk to him about Jay? Did Smolensky have a family? Lev couldn’t see it somehow. No wedding ring. No warmth. Very little in the way of any discernible humanity. He doubted the stresses of being a provider and fatherhood in general were the Fish Man’s chosen topics of small-talk.

  Asaf took a sandwich out of the pocket of his coat. Started to eat hungrily. It smelled meaty. Lev’s stomach growled. Since the business with Jay and the money and confronting his lost cause of a mother, he hadn’t really been eating.

  ‘What you got there?’ he asked, gazing wistfully at the snack.

  ‘Ham.’ Asaf wiped butter from his beard. Chewed noisily.

  ‘But you’re an Orthodox Jew.’

  ‘I’m Israeli,’ he said, spitting as he spoke. ‘Ex-Mossad. Know what that is?’

  Lev shook his head, still staring at the doorstep of a sandwich.

  ‘The hardest military men in the world. Like the US Marines but with bigger bollocks. I’m a highly trained operative. Don’t be fooled by the hat and the peyes.’ He flicked his ringletted sidelocks. ‘This Hassidic bullshit is just a cover. I’m hiding in plain sight. Nobody suspects a part-time fishmonger to be an executioner.’

  Suddenly, Lev didn’t find the sandwich appetising in the slightest. He kept visualising Suspicious Sid, with his insides leaking all over the concrete floor in that car park. He hadn’t seen the body personally, but he’d heard tell how gruesome the scene had been from a few of the lads dealing over in Bury and Radcliffe. How the hell had he ended up rubbing shoulders with the likes of a psychotic murderer on a daily basis? Somehow he doubted Smolensky sat as he did during a rare evening off, wondering how he could get the hell out of this life of class A crime with its high stakes of category A prison or violent death.

  ‘I’m a damned good fishmonger though.’ Asaf raised an eyebrow, chewing away contemplatively.

  When Tariq and Jonny started to bring boxes downstairs, Lev was relieved. There weren’t as many as he had anticipated.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked, wishing he could pocket some of those plastic money bags full of twenties.

  Jonny gesticulated towards Tariq’s box. ‘There’s a money counter in there. Get it out and start stacking the twenties.’

  ‘Where was all this?’ Lev asked, tugging the cash out of the stubborn plastic envelopes.

  ‘Mind your own business, son,’ Tariq said.

  Sweat beaded on Lev’s forehead as he fed sheaf after sheaf of notes into the machine. The cloying, greasy smell of cash in his nostrils. The sense that he was being tested and that every pair of eyes in the room were on him. He felt dizzy. Overwhelmed. The words were on the tip of his tongue – Can I have a loan of £150,000 for my dying son, please? – but he knew this was neither the right time nor the place to ask. Especially with the Fish Man breathing down his neck.

  Finally, Asaf belched. ‘I’m going for a slash,’ he said, tipping his homburg hat back like a confused cowboy.

  With the others on sentry duty in the loading bay, there were just Lev, Jonny and Tariq left. Now was his moment.

  ‘I know this is a bad time to ask, right,’ Lev began. ‘But I’ve got this personal … issue. I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up, like.’

  Tariq looked quizzically at him. Jonny did not tear his gaze from the whirr of the money in the machine.

  ‘Go on,’ Tariq said. ‘Spit it out.’

  Relief of sorts flooded him with warmth. Lev opened his mouth, poised to issue forth about all that had gone on with his boy; outlining how British surgeons couldn’t operate; delivering a heart-rending appeal for a sum of money that was surely a piss in the ocean for men like Tariq and Jonny.

  ‘Well, you see, it’s proper bullshit, right? My son’s been diagnosed with this—’

  A deafening clang, followed by multiple footsteps, stemmed the confessional tide. Damn it! It was Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber from the loading bay. Panting. Clearly agitated.

  ‘It’s the copper!’ Nasim half shouted, half whispered.

  ‘You sure?’ Asaf asked.

  ‘Dumpy white bloke with glasses and a buzz cut?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Tariq said. His Adam’s apple was pinging in his throat like a bagatelle ball.

  ‘Well, he’s in the loading bay, shining a torch in the car.’

  Jonny’s eyebrows knitted together. He flashed a desperate look at Tariq, who was suddenly glassy-eyed and silent. Stalked prey in the night-time.

  ‘Get the money out of here!’ Tariq finally said, tearing a black bin liner from a fresh roll and opening it up. He started to pile the cash into the sack. Motioned that Lev should follow suit. ‘Quickly.’

  Knocking on the shutters sounded impossibly loud inside the empty factory. Insistent rapping with knuckles that denoted the impatience of a confident man. Possibly with a warrant.

  ‘What we gonna do?’ Lev asked, sweeping uncounted twenties and fifties into the bin liner, seeing Jay’s operation and life disappearing along with the money.

  Jonny snatched the bulging sack from him. Stuffed another pile into a Home Bargains carrier bag until only the counting machine remained.

  ‘We’ll have to let him in. What choice do we have?’ He thrust the money into Asaf’s arms. ‘Take the gelt up to the ladies on the second floor. Lock yourself in a cubicle. Don’t come out until I say. Okay?’

  ‘Act natural,’ Tariq told Lev. ‘We were just stopping by to check everything was okay because I had a call from someone, saying the alarm had gone off. Right?’

  For a man of sub-ordinary stature, Ellis James walked with a degree of swagger. He reminded Lev of a psychopathic PE teacher who had given him a hard time at school. Had the manic look of a man who was on the hunt for something tha
t was always just out of reach.

  ‘Evening, gents,’ Ellis said. Hands thrust into his raincoat pockets.

  ‘Detective,’ Jonny said, sitting legs akimbo on a worker’s high stool. Arms folded. Owning the place, as was his right. All of the jubilation after the gallery meet had gone now. His tone was prickly, almost combative, though a wry smile remained on his face along with a sheen of sweat. ‘Funny time to come shopping for fancy goods. Can I interest you in a nice handbag for the wife? Bit of jewellery, perhaps?’

  Ellis James approached Lev and stood closer than he was comfortable with. The copper only reached collarbone height on him. But Lev could smell his breath. Sickly sweet, with a lingering hint of farts, as though he had been eating doughnuts and drinking coffee in the Mondeo. The classic stereotype of a cop on a stakeout. Lev took a step backwards.

  ‘Leviticus Bell,’ he said, staring up at the zig-zag bolt of lightning shaved into Lev’s scalp. ‘I’ve had you in my station. I remember your mugshot.’

  Play it cool, Lev. Don’t get on his wrong side. Think of Jay. If you get your collar felt by this tosser, you’re gonna be sod all use to your son. Defiant words were desperately trying to push their way out, but he held it together.

  ‘I think you must be getting me mixed up from somewhere else, mate. I sometimes do charity work for me mam’s church.’

  The cop turned to the bosses, finally, thankfully.

  ‘Bit late for a lads’ get-together, isn’t it?’

  ‘You got a warrant?’ Tariq asked.

  ‘I don’t need a warrant to make friendly enquiries.’ There was no mirth in the detective’s smile. ‘A friend of mine – Ruth Darley from HMRC – says she found some interesting paperwork in here the other day. Showing some transactions between T&J Trading and a couple of Chinese shell companies. Seems you’ve been importing fresh air from ghosts. What would you say that sounds like?’

  Tariq rounded on the uninvited guest, toying with the cuffs of his shirt. ‘This is a legitimate business, Detective James. Right? And my associates here and I came out to check on the premises because the alarm apparently was going off. If we’ve been swizzed by some dodgy company in China, that’s not our problem. We export and import goods from all over the world. Sometimes we get lumbered with a dodgy business contact. It happens.’