A girl in a short skirt. Typical Paddy.
At his side, Sheila dabbed her eyes, flanked by her over-privileged daughters who showed none of the chavvy, poor-girl-done-good bling of their mother. Admittedly, the passing of a young man was always something to mourn, but Gloria could harness little in the way of sympathy for anyone in that family but Frank. A lost soul, if ever there was one.
Sheila looked in her direction. Their eyes met but there was no response to Gloria’s smile. Very frosty of late since the nonsense about going to Thailand and closing the business. But then, Gloria knew the score. She was still just the black cleaner in Sheila O’Brien’s eyes. Their sisterly alliance did not run beneath the skin.
Blood’s thicker than water.
Delving into her clutch bag, peering at her phone surreptitiously, Gloria wondered that she had heard nothing from Leviticus. She had left him alone with his son in her house, apparently with half of north Manchester’s worst after him. Silly boy. He had too much of his father in him. Impetuous and weak-willed. Easily swayed by flattery, keeping company with the wrong kind. You lie with dogs, you get fleas. Hadn’t she always told him that?
Looking up to the grey heavens, she prayed silently to Jesus that things would all pan out right; that she’d be the salvation her own grandson was so badly in need of; that she’d continue to set a good example to the women in church of how poverty needn’t stand in the way of success or bagging a fine man like the pastor.
So engrossed was she in her prayer and in giving the other women’s hats marks out of ten, that Gloria barely noticed the blue flashing lights in her peripheral vision. Beyond the iron railings and low wall that separated the sprawling cemetery from the fast traffic of the main road, bright lights were blinking in a row as though a host of angels had descended to mourn the passing of Jack O’Brien.
Except Gloria was no fool. Surreptitiously, as her mind began to focus, she could see the tall sides of riot vans, their black mesh shields still up. Now, black-clad figures, bulked out with stab-vests and dressed for a day’s crowd control, filed briskly into the cemetery’s entrance. Shields, helmets, the lot. She recognised the Tactical Aid Unit of the Greater Manchester Police – hadn’t she seen them in action often enough on those occasions, when Leviticus and his ungodly little friends had got themselves worked into a tizz and had started a set-to with some rival two-bit gang from Burnage? Oh yes. Gloria Bell knew hell-fire on earth when she saw it – two giant German shepherd police dogs leading this arrow of justice straight to the evil heart of the O’Brien clan.
Stepping away from the graveside and the other oblivious funeral-goers, Gloria was suddenly aware of the whirr and hum of a helicopter. Stepping back, retreating further at speed. She had clocked a crowd of black mourners less than two hundred yards away, burying Moss Side’s dead. Keep walking backwards to the brothers and sisters of some wholesome church where people actually read the good book and knew how to praise Jesus properly. Black umbrellas, carried by the women, would provide additional cover.
By the time the police descended on the O’Briens, Gloria had an excellent vantage point from which to watch the action unfold.
‘Paddy O’Brien, you have the right to remain silent …’ As the stony-faced copper read a shocked-looking Paddy his rights, more and more police flooded onto the cemetery.
She could hear Frank wailing, ‘No! Not like this. Have a heart. It’s my boy’s funeral, for God’s sake. Are you mental, man?’ Trying to shake the strong arm of the law off as though those policemen were merely clubbers on a packed dancefloor, encroaching on his space. He allowed himself to be patted down and cuffed while the young women by the graveside took photos of the fray with their mobile phones.
Dogs, straining at the leash as Paddy O’Brien offered his hands, wearing a supercilious smile that Gloria knew was as fake as his tan. He would be dying inside, she was certain. Exchanging knowing looks with Sheila, who tugged at the sleeve of a detective with a close crop of dirty blond hair, glasses and a shabby, grubby raincoat. She was certain he had been sitting amongst the grieving family and friends in the church, this Judas. Hadn’t he been staring at one of Maureen Kaplan’s cronies?
Ignoring the askance glances she was getting from the funeral party she had just joined, Gloria monitored who among the O’Briens’ gathering was being rounded up and read their rights. She could hear Maureen Kaplan shouting.
‘Get your filthy hands off me. I’m a pillar of the Manchester business community. I’m going to have you for wrongful arrest and police brutality!’ Her bleached hair was just visible beneath the widest-brimmed hat Gloria had ever seen. A power hat. Typical Maureen, trying to use accessories to make amends for her absence of a penis and God in her life.
Not so powerful now.
The policeman knocked the hat into the mound of soil at the side of the grave in an attempt to wrench Maureen’s flailing hands together for the cuffs. Gloria chuckled at the sight of the expensive-looking cream raffia confection becoming dirtied. Felt a little warmth inside her in that windy cemetery at the apparent divine justice she was witnessing.
‘Getting stuck in the eye of a needle,’ she said, taking a further step away from the scene of mayhem. Something soft beneath the heel of her shoe. A foot.
‘Hey. Why don’t you watch where you’re putting your big flippers, Grandma!’ the woman at her side said.
Hardly a woman. A girl.
At a glance, Gloria ascertained she couldn’t have been more than twenty, wearing a dress that was inappropriately short for the solemn occasion of a funeral. The girl’s hair consisted of glossy extensions that looked cheaply sewn into a receding hairline. Too much cleavage on show and clear signs of a poorly executed tattoo peeping out of the neckline just above the girl’s left breast.
Sucking her teeth, Gloria rifled through her mental Rolodex of known contacts to work out who this impertinent upstart was.
‘Shereen Turner,’ Gloria said. ‘Just you mind what you say to a church elder! Show some respect, girl.’
Gloria looked to the other women for moral support but found none forthcoming. She smiled winningly at familiar faces she recognised from the butcher’s and the hairdresser’s.
‘Sorry for your loss, Flora,’ she said to the woman she recognised as the dead boy’s mother. Puffy, bloodshot eyes and a snotty nose beneath a terrible beret that only scored four out of ten. She was small and tubby like her son. A Kingstonian who ate too much of her own soul food than was good for her. It was all coming back to her now. ‘I heard about your lad, Wesley.’
‘My son’s called Thomas.’
‘I know. Yes, you’re right. He was called Thomas. Terrible waste. Thought I’d come to say goodbye in person, me being big in the community and all. Help you celebrate the life of poor Wesley with some of my fine singing.’
She wrung her hands in a way she was sure would take the heat out of the situation. Patted her fascinator regally.
But Flora wasn’t happy. She blew her nose on a blue-white handkerchief, held her hand up to the preacher, demanding a pause in proceedings and stepped awkwardly across a corner of the grave to reach Gloria.
‘I know you, Gloria Bell,’ Flora said, staring up at her with woe etched into her haggard face. ‘You stuck-up cow.’ She poked Gloria in the chest. ‘You lived two doors down from my auntie in Sweeney Hall, didn’t you? But that doesn’t give you the green light to gate-crash your way into my son’s send-off. Nobody here invited you. Certainly not me.’ She glanced over towards the scrum of semi-celebrities, dogs and riot police that the O’Brien burial had become. ‘I know you’re with them lot. Everyone here is respectable, right? Proper respectable. My lad just got caught up with the wrong kind. Your kind!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Gloria said, feeling the blood drain away from her cheeks, leaving her shivering suddenly in her Sunday best. ‘What kind is my kind?’
‘The kind that wants locking up,’ Flora said. She placed her fingers in her mouth and
wolf whistled with such gusto that the police dogs immediately pricked up their ears and started to bark in Gloria’s general direction. ‘Over here, officers!’ Flora shouted, waving her handkerchief as though it were a white flag. ‘I’ve got a criminal for you.’
Shrinking further into the hostile bulk of congregated relatives and friends of dearly departed Wesley or Thomas or whatever his blessed name was, Gloria stumbled and turned her ankle. Started to fall, realising she had staggered back into the grave itself.
‘Jesus!’ she shouted.
The only thing that came between Gloria Bell and a broken neck that morning was a pincer-like grip on her arm as the ground fell away beneath her. Hoisted up painfully by a riot policeman who must have been at least six feet four, by the looks of it. He blocked out a diffident sun that had dared to shine through the ominous thick clouds. A bit late for flaming divine intervention, Lord, Gloria thought.
‘Is this woman bothering you, madam?’ the copper asked Flora.
‘She’s a thief! A dirty rotten thieving harlot,’ Flora screamed. ‘And my son isn’t called Wesley, you cowbag!’
Light-headed and feeling like she might bring up her breakfast at any minute, Gloria wished desperately she could get to her phone to call Leviticus. That boy was a liability but he was her only hope. He was the only person she could whisper her secrets to. The others were all in cuffs alongside her.
‘There’s no need to be so rough!’ she shouted, as her police escort marched her to the van, already mostly full of O’Briens. ‘Don’t put me in with them. They’re common criminals! I’m a God-fearing woman.’
She took her place alongside the others. The doors closed with a finality behind her. She was put in mind of young Wesley in his coffin or Jack O’Brien, covered in forgetful earth. Gloria imagined the pastor there, comforting her, fighting her corner with rousing, convincing words.
‘Glo!’
He might put his arm around her and she would weep onto his chest.
‘Gloria!’
Gloria looked up as the woman called her name again. Diagonally opposite, Sheila O’Brien was sitting next to a dumpy woman she had never seen before. Perhaps one of Paddy’s lot, judging by the doughy face. The familiar sight of Sheila was surprisingly welcome.
‘Why have we been arrested?’ she asked Sheila.
‘I don’t know. Something to do with tax, the detective said. I noticed Darley with him in the church, the sly bitch. HMRC has been after our Pad for years.’ Her once perfectly made-up face was streaked with black mascara, giving her the look of a dishevelled Pierrot. ‘Look, I don’t think we’re in any bother. I think we’ve both got caught up in the same net just because …’ She raised her heavily pencilled eyebrows. ‘But it’s obvious somebody’s been grassing if the plod has got enough to make arrests.’ She leaned in further, giving her a conspiratorial air. ‘So, listen, right! When we get out of here, do some digging. Ask around.’ She winked, though Gloria could guess Sheila’s true emotional state by the goosebumps on her orange tanned knees and the way her breath came short as she spoke.
Not daring to respond lest she betrayed her own distress, she merely nodded. Wanted to knock that Flora whatsherface into her son’s grave for dobbing her in. Was suddenly fearful that her sisterly-but-not-quite bond with Sheila might not extend to good legal representation being paid for by the O’Briens’ coffers, which were presumably now frozen, pending investigation.
I’m going to have to stump for this myself, Lord help me, she thought. Like I’ve not got enough to worry about with baby Jay.
When the van arrived at the police headquarters, feeling at once nauseous and exhausted, Gloria was escorted to the bustling area by the booking-in desk. There was a sea of disgruntled faces of the arrested; world-weary expressions worn by the police officers. And there amongst the ungodly masses who had been brought in for burglary and drunk and disorderly and whatever other temptations Satan had thrown in their way, Gloria spotted the last man she had expected to see. Cuffed, battered, bruised and bleeding from a head-wound.
‘Leviticus?!’
Chapter 25
Lev
‘How come you got out?’ Lev asked his mother.
Gloria tapped the side of her nose. ‘Friends in high places, and that includes the good sweet Jesus Christ, my saviour.’ She looked up to heaven. Smiled that smug smile that she knew wound him the hell up. ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Acts 16:31.’
Under normal circumstances, Lev might have fantasised about getting up and walking away from her. Maybe coming out with a smart-arsed retort. But his heart was pounding too hard; his overtaxed mind running too quickly to allow flights of fancy. Not to mention the fact that there was no escaping the visitors’ room within the police station. Not for him, at any rate.
‘Look, spare me the bullshit,’ he said. ‘I’ve got Degsy in a holding cell next door, wants to rip my head off. In fact, he nearly did right in front of Tiff in the hospital. And I’m telling you now, when they cart us off to prison on remand, I know how this will play out. I’ll end up bunking up with the arsehole and that’ll be the end of me.’
‘Whoever walks with the wise, becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm,’ she said, folding her arms and pursing her glossed lips. ‘Proverbs 13:20.’ She nodded and raised an eyebrow.
‘Fucking hell,’ Lev said. ‘Who wound you up this morning? You’re like a walking bloody bible.’
‘I’m a believer and a law-abiding citizen, Leviticus. I was wrongfully arrested. You, on the other hand … I notice they’ve applied for an extension on your detention. You and those other hoodlums.’
‘Spare me, yeah?’ He looked over her diamante-studded shoulder to the copper that was watching them both intently. Lowered his voice. ‘Look. I got special permission for this visit, so don’t waste time. What’s going on with Jay?’
She sat back in her hard plastic chair and shrugged. ‘You tell me. You were the one who wanted to dump him at the hospital, hoping that slattern, your ex and those do-gooding social workers would absolve you of your paternal responsibility.’
He threw his hands in the air. ‘See? This is why I wanted him away from you. You don’t give a shit, do you? Never did.’
Gloria leaned back in and sucked her teeth. ‘If you must know, your son’s with her. I’ve been popping in to check she’s doing her job properly when I can. Social services are keeping an eye on her too. You know, even with his illness, that child of yours is preferable to both his parents. You were a very unlovable boy, Leviticus. I wanted better for us both when that beast, your father, walked out on me. But no. All my efforts at pulling us up, you threw back in my face by hanging out with those scumbags. You were a disappointment then, and you’re a disappointment now.’
‘Stop trying to bait me for once,’ he said, slapping his hands on his knees. ‘Focus, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Blasphemy!’ A sharp intake of breath from St Gloria. She rose, clutching her handbag to her belly. ‘I’m off, if you’re going to be so unpleasant.’
Between gritted teeth, Lev apologised. Lowered his voice. ‘Look. I need your help. You’ve got Sheila O’Brien fighting your corner with her posh solicitors. But I’ve got no one looking out for me. I can’t get nothing but crappy legal aid because my bosses have been banged up. This place is bursting at the seams with every player in Manchester. Somebody somewhere has grassed on a grand scale and it’s possible I’m gonna go down for a stretch. But that’s the least of my worries. Every minute I spend in here, my son’s dying. Your grandson. He’s not going to last more than a couple more weeks with that damned thing in his head. We need to get out the country, Mam. And I can’t do that till I’ve got my hands on cash I’m owed.’
He had coughed up the word ‘Mam’ with difficulty, like a piece of gristle, lodged painfully in his throat.
In answer, Gloria merely closed her eyes, as though he and Jay were not really her problem. �
��I have nothing to do with this unholy mess.’ Her eyelids opened fractionally to reveal calculating eyes. ‘But who do you think the grass is?’ she asked. ‘Anyone on your side?’ Wide-eyed then. ‘It’s not you, is it?’ Feigned horror.
‘Very funny. I need a solicitor. A decent one. And I need to get Jay back off Tiff. She’s an accident waiting to happen. A bloody car crash of a mother and my boy deserves better. I wasn’t thinking straight when I took him to the hospital. I was just worried Smolensky was coming after me. But the Fish Man is banged up in here too, apparently, so now’s the time for me to make a break for Baltimore.’ He ended the sentence in nothing more than a whisper, suddenly remembering that the copper would be earwigging every single word. Tried to conceal by staring at Gloria’s earring that he had a theory about who had done the grassing.
‘Out with it, Leviticus. Who grassed? Tell me, or I won’t help you.’
Shit. She had always been so much sharper than him. His dad’s brains had always been dangling between his legs. Lev had definitely inherited those, he realised, else he wouldn’t be the one with the laces missing from his trainers.
The copper suddenly stepped forwards. ‘That’s your lot, son,’ he said, looking at the clock on the wall of the dismal room.
‘Tell me, or no solicitor,’ Gloria said, glancing at her watch. Pulling her coat from the back of her chair.
Lev felt the blood draining from his cheeks. A cold sweat breaking out between his shoulder blades. No freedom. No Jay. Gloria couldn’t be relied on to step up and save the day or her own grandson because there was nothing in it for her. Knowing what the consequences would be if he opened his mouth, he realised he didn’t really have a choice.
Born Bad Page 17
