Born Bad

by Marnie Riches

  ‘And who do you think pays the Fish Man, you bloody fool?’ Jonny asked, kicking him in the back of his right knee so that his legs, already trembling and barely able to carry his weight, gave way. ‘I didn’t get to the top of this game by being a pushover.’

  Lev stumbled against a large cardboard box with Chinese script on the side. It tipped to a forty-five-degree angle, spilling what appeared to be deflated blow-up sex dolls onto the floor. Jay thumped him in the face with an angry little balled fist, as if reminding him he needed to be strong for the both of them.

  ‘Can’t you get him to shut up?’ Jonny snapped.

  Lev didn’t answer. He merely turned around and treated his boss to a look of pure disgust.

  ‘Don’t moralise at me, boy,’ Jonny said, urging him towards the hole. There was that lethal hard edge to his voice that Lev had heard before, when one of the workers had been caught stealing or one of his colleagues had been ‘punished’ for having sticky fingers. ‘You’re nothing but a two-bit pusher, Leviticus. Doling out my coke and smack to the underbelly of Sweeney Hall. You collect my immoral earnings from my brothels, staffed by illegal, underaged girls. I don’t see you turning down your wages. You normally carry a gun, paid for by me, which you wave in people’s faces when they don’t do my bidding. You are every bit as tainted as me, you hypocrite.’

  ‘I’m just earning a wage,’ Lev said, feeling resentment gnaw away at him on the inside.

  ‘Alright, smart arse. You keep telling yourself that.’

  The door to the hole was open already. A foetid, airtight room once the security door was shut. Soundproof. No windows. Only a hard chair to sit on, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and the bloodstains on the floor – a macabre visitors’ book of sorts, signed by those who had been guests in the hole before – as the only form of distraction from thoughts of dying.

  ‘Sit,’ Jonny said.

  Lev turned to him, holding a purple-faced Jay. ‘How can you do this? Years of loyal service I’ve given you. I’m a Boddlington through and through. How can you do this to my son? He’s an innocent baby.’

  Jonny raised his hand and brought the gun down hard on Lev’s cheekbone, knocking his head back. Fiery stinging told him the skin had split. A tickling sensation as the blood trickled from his jaw bone onto his jeans.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about having sympathy for your child,’ Jonny said, slamming the door behind him. ‘What happened to Mia? Why did you kill her?’

  ‘I didn’t! Honest! You’ve got to believe me.’

  ‘Liar!’ Jonny bellowed. ‘Tariq said he saw you and that mad bitch your mother, sitting in a car outside my house on the morning of Mia’s murder.’

  Lev shook his head. Formulating an alibi. ‘I dropped round to see her. That’s all. I loved Mia. We were going out, but she wanted to keep us a secret. She was scared of what you’d say if you found out she was going with someone like me.’

  The fist that flew into his left kidney winded him, but Lev was merely glad he had been spared another pistol-whipping. Jay was curled into foetal position, whimpering now.

  ‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ Jonny said. ‘You killed her. I don’t believe in bloody coincidences. The police said the bullets in her skull matched the sort used in the gun you were given. Hollow point imports from the States.’

  ‘Do me a favour, Jonny. No disrespect, like, but every dealer in town uses the same sort of hardware. Half of us use the same supplier, for God’s sake! It’s not like there’s a bullet shop on every street corner.’

  ‘You’re lying! You broke into my house and blew my daughter’s head off.’

  ‘No. I swear on my baby’s life, I didn’t. Ask your missus. She copped me legging it from Mia’s room down the fire escape not so long ago. I’m telling you, Jonny. I swung by to see how she was after all the rape business with Jack O’Brien. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. I’d been so busy working for you and Tariq on the raid. Our Jay was ill and my ex OD’d. Then we all got banged up, didn’t we? Mia asked me to bob round, so I did. I’m heartbroken that she’s gone, Jonny. I’d do anything to get her back. But you’ve got to believe me when I tell you I had nothing to do with it. Wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all there was to it. Whoever topped her went in after I left. I could only have been there twenty minutes. My money’s on Paddy O’Brien. Maybe even Frank, as revenge for Jack.’ He was certain that he could see Jonny’s taut facial expression start to relax just a little. Softer around the eyes. ‘Think about it. You must think that too, else why did you send the Fish Man to M1 House?’

  Scratching his nose with the gun, Jonny’s nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed. ‘Sandra did mention a boy had been in Mia’s room.’

  ‘See?’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain why you took the Slovakian girl to Anjum Khan’s refuge or whatever cock and balls do-gooding business she’s got going there. You should have brought her straight back here. It’s not your place to hand my trafficked girls over to the authorities. By rights, I should kill you just for that.’

  Stroking Jay’s curls, Lev bought himself seconds by inhaling his son’s scent deeply and kissing his hot skin. He was burning up. Starting to go limp. That didn’t bode well. And his skin had become blotchy. Keep strong, Lev. Convince him. Get Jay back to that hospital before it’s too late. Don’t let the kid down like Gloria let you down.

  ‘She was pregnant and showing, Jonny. I’ve got a baby of my own. I couldn’t watch it happening, man. Not after Degsy and Maggie gunned down Tommo and Kai. I wanted to get her to safety. I’m sorry if you thought I was overstepping the mark, but it didn’t sit right with me to leave her in the middle of a blood bath. She’s only a kid. My bad, right? If you have to kill me for doing what I thought was the right thing, then go ahead. I’ve got nothing left anyhow, because the woman I love – your daughter – has gone and my boy’s not gonna make it. He’s got meningitis or some shit and a brain tumour the size of an orange in his little head. Go on, Jonny. Shoot me. But get my boy back to A&E, so I can at least say I tried.’ He bit his lip. Locked eyes with his anguished boss. ‘Isn’t that what every father wants? To die knowing he tried for his kids?’

  Jonny clicked the safety off the gun. Took aim at Lev’s head. Ragged breaths in-out, in-out through his nostrils. He took a step back, legs astride now. Scowling as though voices were at war inside his head.

  ‘Rot in hell,’ he said.

  Chapter 42

  Frank

  ‘Pass me the gun oil,’ Conky said, grinning up at the bright light of the screen, where the action was unfolding. He held his hand out expectantly. Frank reached over to the coffee table and obliged. ‘Ah, I love this bit. Wait for it! It’s the best. Here we go … Ow!’

  On screen, Marvin had just taken an accidental bullet to the face in the back of a car, listening to Samuel L. Jackson getting irate at John Travolta about blasphemy and stained upholstery.

  Conky roared with laughter, rocking in the home cinema armchair. ‘That black bugger cracks me up. I love the way he talks. Don’t you?’ Turning to Frank with bug-eyes full of mirth, clearly expecting a response. ‘And Tarantino’s a genius. Am I right? He just nails it! One day, Degsy will pull a stunt like that and shoot some fecker’s head off by accident. He’s a liability, so he is. You couldn’t watch that prick with a bag of fucking eyeballs. But this …? The storyline. The dialogue. The soundtrack. Genius.’ Rubbing ferociously at his gun part in some sort of masturbatory exercise, the moves to which only a gangster could truly master. Across his lap, he wore a tea towel to protect his smart trousers from the mess, presumably.

  Stiff arse.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ Frank said, wishing he could switch the film off and put on some anodyne music channel. Better some idiot rapper and naked, writhing chicks in hotpants than this aide-memoire to the shittiness of his own life. How he wanted to forget just for a few minutes, while Sheila prepared dinner upstairs, that they were all under siege and that his progeny lay rotting in a c
asket. ‘Me and Jack always reckoned Pulp Fiction had the best soundtrack.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind giving that Uma Thurman one. She’s got a face like a rubber duck, but what a body. Did you see her in Kill Bill?’

  Frank had no answer to give. He was all out of light-hearted words. Only mental images of the dead youngsters on his dancefloor and the ‘Police line – do not cross’ tape that had sealed his beloved club shut to a shocked, bereft public who needed desperately to dance their blues away.

  Outside, darkness had fallen. The mood had been sombre once the builders had left. Everything installed to perfection inside one working day, thanks to Paddy’s ability to pay four times the going rate, leaving them all incarcerated in splendid isolation. In the film’s quieter moments, the tension was palpable.

  Conky screwed a brass-bristled brush onto the end of a long, shining rod and rammed it down into the barrel of his shotgun. ‘You’re not really enjoying this, are you?’ he asked.

  Frank took a drag from his cigarette and swigged from his beer bottle. ‘My mind’s elsewhere, if I’m honest.’

  Reassembling the shotgun with the deft hands of a skilled marksman, Conky hoisted the weapon high on his shoulder and aimed it at Frank’s head.

  ‘I think you and I need to have a little chat, Francis,’ he said, smiling like a hyena sizing up an easy meal.

  ‘Woah, put your gun away, Dirty Harry. I think Sheila’s already making your day with chilli con carne,’ Frank said, making a poor stab at laughter. He could hear its hollow ring like an alarm-bell, calling time on this poor facsimile of happy bromance chit-chat.

  The smile slid from Conky’s face. He set the shotgun back onto the coffee table, lifted the towel from his lap and laid it carefully across the arm of his chair. Stood and diligently brushed any cleaning debris from his trousers, before grabbing Frank swiftly by the collar and hoisting him out of his chair.

  Frank managed a solitary shocked squeak in response, walking in thin air like a marionette as his body tried to satisfy his flight impulse – only to be thwarted by the crane-like traction of the man-mountain that was Conky McFadden.

  ‘Woah, mate! What are you doing? Put me down!’

  ‘Now I’ve got your attention,’ Conky said, dropping him back into his seat. He turned the sound on the giant TV up, wielding the gun yet again, this time poking the newly cleansed barrel into his Adam’s apple.

  Realising the volume had been turned up so that Sheila would not be able to overhear this confrontation above the fanciful sound of Hollywood gunfire, Frank felt his bladder beg for release. Willed himself to hang onto the pee, lest Conky see how weak he was. ‘You’re being uncool, man. Put the bleeding gun down and talk to me like a normal human being. You’re not Loss Adjusting tonight. Remember whose brother I am.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m mindful of, Francis,’ Conky said, closing one of his bulbous eyes; staring at Frank with the other. ‘You’re Paddy O’Brien’s brother – my boss. And the boss might be upstairs, sleeping off his migraine, but I’m still on duty, even while I’m watching the lovely Marcellus getting medieval on some hillbilly’s arse and John Travolta putting in the only decent performance he’s given since he was Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.’

  ‘I saw that film at the pictures,’ Frank said, smiling weakly. ‘Paddy bunked off school and took me.’

  ‘Your brother is a challenging character, Francis. It must be trying to play second fiddle all the time to a man who is so driven to succeed at all costs.’

  Frank blinked hard. Said nothing.

  Conky moved his face closer. His breath smelled of bitter coffee with the medicinal high-notes of throat sweets. ‘Which is why I’d understand if you were trying to sabotage him. If my son had died because of my brother’s criminal proclivities, I might also light a fire under his enemies in the hope of getting rid of him.’ He dug the gun a little further into Frank’s neck. ‘You can tell me, Frank. We’ve known each other for decades. There’s much about you I like, and I hope that you regard me as a trustworthy servant to the family.’

  Nodding with cautious, small movements, Frank whispered, ‘Yeah. Very trustworthy.’

  ‘Which is why it’s only right that I ask you if you have anything to do with the situation we find ourselves in now. Do you have anything you’d like to tell me, Francis? About Mia Margulies and the general unrest that’s come about in the face of an intended cease fire that everyone bought into, with the mighty Maureen Kaplan arbitrating. Because in my experience, if a cease fire fails, it’s because someone, somewhere is engaging in acts of sabotage. And now, it seems pretty bloody ironic that one of the Boddlingtons has lost a daughter where you lost a son.’

  Though his pulse raced and his breath came short, Frank was transfixed by Conky’s protruding eyes and the swelling in his throat. He had the look of a man who was pregnant with other people’s secrets. But this wasn’t a friend of old talking. War had brought the combatant out in him. Conky, the man, had been bodysnatched by the Loss Adjuster, the machine, and Frank knew better than to let that psycho arsehole anywhere near the contents of his mind.

  ‘It’s coincidence, Conks. That’s all. Everything’s gone tits up, man. It’s like the whole of Manchester’s got a cactus rammed up its jacksy. Nobody knows if it’s safe to sit down. Even Paddy hasn’t got any control over any of it and he started this buyout retirement bullshit.’ Feeling like the only way to get this crazed Alpha to back down was to reassert his dominance as an O’Brien, Frank grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and pushed it gently but firmly aside. Holding his breath for an agonising split second to see how Conky would react. There were days when he wanted nothing more than to die, but at the hand of his brother’s henchman was not the peaceful end he would choose. ‘So, when you’re poking that gun in my gullet, just remember that I’m not the only one this war is affecting and I’m not the only one who’s heartily pissed off with everything. But I am the poor bastard who’s suffered the worst in all of this. I’ve lost my child and my livelihood. I’m not saying it’s my fault or Paddy’s fault. I blame the game, me. And I blame those two Boddlington twats and that lanky streak of piss, the Fish Man. So, the last thing I need right now, Conky mate, is a cross-examination from you. Alright?’

  Studying his face for at least sixty deeply uncomfortable seconds – so long that Frank started to see recognisable shapes in the open pores on his prominent nose – Conky presently backed off and put the weapon carefully, reverently onto the coffee table next to the gun oil and cleaning accessories.

  ‘I’m sorry if you felt my line of enquiry was offensive or even slanderous,’ Conky said. ‘But you must realise you’re currently the most likely suspect for having ordered the murder of Mia Margulies! And given that has stoked up a shit-storm for your brother where previously there was calm, you must appreciate that I have to ask you potentially difficult questions. I can’t make exceptions for you because you’re his brother, Francis. Paddy expects that impartiality from me.’ Conky sat back down and turned the volume on the enormous screen to a more comfortable level. He spread the towel over his lap once again. Started to methodically take apart a handgun, placing the parts side by side as though they were shiny offerings to the God of Gang Warfare. ‘Christ, I could do with some tortilla chips. Sheila said she’d bring some down, so she did. My stomach’s growling like an old man’s prostate.’

  Frank wiped the sweat from his top lip and swigged the dregs from his beer bottle. Stared at his companion in disbelief. ‘You’re sorry if I felt … what? You accuse me of having some girl topped – and I don’t care who the hell her dad is – and all you can say is, “You’re sorry if I felt …” You’re not even apologising, are you? Jesus, Conks. You’re nothing but an oversized Action Man and our Paddy’s yanking your string.’ He pointed to his eyes with the neck of the beer bottle. ‘You’ve even got the eagle eyes.’ Shook his head and tutted. ‘I’m sick of it, me. You can all work it up your arses, the lot of yous. If Jonny Marguli
es and Tariq Khan want to come and blow my knackers off, let them come. I’ve had it, me. I’m going home to watch Channel Dave and wait for death in a less stressful environment. The vibes are all wrong in here, man.’

  Conky stood abruptly, dropping the towel and the handgun pieces to the plush carpeted floor. ‘You can’t go. We all have to stay here because of the threat. Paddy’s orders. It’s a safe house now.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I’d be safer in a nest of vipers, mate. Paddy knows where he can stick his orders.’

  Pursued by an insistent Conky, as he pulled on his jacket and made his way swiftly to the kitchen. Expected to see Sheila, frying meat at the hob or busy washing some vegetables in the sink. The chandelier over the island burned brightly, but the kitchen was empty and silent, but for the chunner of talk show chatter on the small TV that was recessed into the wall. A pan containing delicious-smelling chilli beef simmered on the hob, but a chopping board containing vegetables and a knife said she hadn’t yet finished her preparation and couldn’t have gone far.

  ‘Where’s She?’ Frank asked, turning to Conky with a quizzical frown.

  ‘Toilet, maybe?’

  Frank stood in the hall by the downstairs toilet. Shouted, ‘I’m going now, Sheila. Ta-ra.’

  No answer.

  He shrugged. ‘Tell her I’m sorry I’m missing dinner. Or maybe I should say, “I’m sorry if she feels I’m missing dinner.”’

  ‘No need to be a prick,’ Conky said, folding his arms.

  ‘Every bloody need.’

  Time to go. Crossing the hallway beneath the chandelier that hung over the galleried landing, Frank passed the keypad on the wall in the hall. But there, he noticed a light flashing red on the new security system. Stopped dead in his tracks to read the label above it. ‘Shit. There’s been a breach upstairs.’

  Chapter 43

  Sheila

  ‘Where’s my coffee?’ Paddy shouted from the breakfasting area. ‘Come on, She. I’m gasping.’ He clutched dramatically at his throat.