Born Bad

by Marnie Riches

  Chapter 51

  Conky

  As he carried the long, gleaming black coffin from the church to the cemetery, Conky marvelled that his boss seemed taller than he remembered him in life and yet had been so light – almost inconsequentially so – at the end. Perhaps the blood loss and rapid slide into death had done that. Perhaps the body stretched and sagged when the life went out of it. Without doubt, though, his was less burdensome to carry than Jack’s coffin. Unexpected for a small stocky man, who had enjoyed good food and his fair share of the drink for all of the years that Conky had known his employer. Standing shoulder to shoulder with a stony-faced, red-eyed Frank, as the pall-bearers all shuffled from the church to the hearse, carrying their burden, Conky was left with a hollow feeling. No more Boss. After in excess of twenty years’ loyal service, he had lost his employer and a friend, of sorts, though in truth, Conky McFadden was painfully aware that he didn’t really have friends. Not proper ones. More than that, though, Conky had lost his raison d’être. It was over.

  The King was dead. It was like Genghis, finally succumbing to an arrow of the Western Xia. A noble death for a born warrior like the boss. Fitting.

  Southern Cemetery was warm and sunny on the day of Paddy O’Brien’s funeral. Hundreds had gathered from all of south Manchester and beyond to pay tribute to one of the city’s most infamous sons. At the graveside, as the coffin was lowered into the ground in some mournful episode of O’Brien-family déjà vu, Conky considered his discovery. Recollecting the contents of the revealing email that had come through from Paddy’s contact in customs, who had managed to access the flight booking system and trace not only the whereabouts of Leviticus and Gloria Bell but also who had paid for their flights. The information had not been what Conky had been anticipating. The looming spectre of a confrontation was inevitable. But it would have to wait. Now, while Sheila stood weeping openly by her husband’s graveside, legs visibly buckling, forcing her to clutch at her ashen-faced daughters for support, was neither the time nor the place.

  Turning his focus to Katrina, Conky found it odd that the apparently unassuming old nun who had been absent in the tumultuous lives of the O’Brien family for years, operating only on the fringes as someone who came and went on high days and holy days, had suddenly taken the pole position at the head of the family. There she was, standing next to the priest, staring solemnly into the hole in the ground at her brother’s coffin, as he intoned the burial rites.

  ‘In the midst of life we are in death;

  From whom can we seek help?

  From you alone, O Lord

  Who by our sins are justly angered.’

  Peering out from behind his sunglasses, he observed Katrina cock her head to the side, clasping her unadorned hands primly before her, her nun’s habit flapping in her face on the warm summer breeze. The oldest O’Brien child. Only she and Frank were left, now. Conky wondered how the future would shape up for the family without Paddy at the helm of their dynasty. His had been a mighty presence, his death rending a gaping, seemingly irreparable split in the fabric of their lives.

  As they one by one started to cast earth onto the coffin, Conky was taken aback by the hot tears that leaked from his eyes. Relieved that they were, in part, obscured by the glasses. Though he was without a job or an employer now, it would not do for half of Manchester’s criminal underworld to see him as anything but the Loss Adjuster. He looked at the faces of the guests from out of town – the Burroughs Brothers from South East London; the Taverner Gang from Liverpool. Most of the country’s major firms had turned out to pay their respects to dear departed Paddy – almost certainly hoping to snatch the lucrative territory and business interests while they were being temporarily shepherded by the hapless and bewildered Frank. Even Tariq Khan had shown up – the brass neck of the bastard – hoping to pay his respects and labour the point that Asaf Smolensky had been framed by an unknown saboteur, seeking to slander the Boddlingtons. Conveying his sincerity with a giant wreath of lilies, no doubt whispering to Frank at some opportune moment during the wake that the deal could just as easily still be on the table as off.

  As day turned to early evening and the funeral party transferred to the Hilton on Deansgate, for the most part expressing their loss in the guise of raucous laughter and drunken reminiscences, Conky sat at the table sandwiched between Frank and Sheila, morosely sipping on his single malt. Katrina drinking tea laced with whisky on the opposite side, offering distant relatives religious platitudes and tales of Paddy as a child, as if she were the only person in the room who had lost someone close to her.

  ‘How am I going to cope without him?’ Frank said, pulling something narcotic from a tiny pill box concealed in his suit breast pocket. Dropping it into his pint. ‘I’m the man of the family now. That’s more than weird. I’m the only one left, Conks.’

  Conky turned to him, patting his hair-piece to check it was still present and correct. ‘You’re free now, Frank. Your future’s your own. You can get the club back on track and do your music. Keep your nose clean. Reinvent yourself. Kick the dealers out, if you like.’ He clapped an arm around Frank’s shoulder. ‘But if you want my advice, my advice is not to try to step into your brother’s shoes. If ever you craved Paddy’s death … if ever you had a hand in his undoing—’

  ‘I didn’t!’ Frank’s eyes widened. Sincerity plastered all over his waxy-looking face as the ecstasy tab started to kick in.

  ‘Well, anyway.’ Conky patted him on the back and drained his drink. Poured another, rolling the amber liquid around the crystal and watching the jambes cling to the sides in straight lines. ‘Whatever shape your youthful sibling jealousies and fantasies of usurping your brother might have taken, leave that all behind now. Let it go. Get yourself some bereavement counselling. Understand what a huge effect your brother had on your life.’ He visualised a younger Paddy, sitting on the edge of his bunk in their prison cell all those years ago, rolling a cigarette and talking at speed. A force of nature, full of plans about how he was going to become a master of the universe as soon as he got out. Pull off a bank job. Get some cash to float a drugs operation. Supply the newly opened clubs on Manchester’s emerging dance scene with cheap E from the Netherlands. Fill the gap in the market, dealing pharmaceuticals in south Manchester, where the marijuana and smack coming in from North Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean was not enough to keep the kids happy. He had had a five-year plan. A ten-year plan. Like a business mogul, like Genghis, he had had the future mapped out in his head, complete with cash-flow projections, staffing structures and potential franchises. Now, he was rotting in a box, two clicks down from his nephew. Survived by people he’d always considered his inferiors. ‘Your brother became like a red giant. You know what one of those is?’ He took out a cigarette and savoured the flavour of the tip. Wishing he could light up. ‘It’s an old expanding star. A dying sun, if you like. To the naked eye, it looks bright and twinkly and harmless in the night sky. But it’s bigger than anything around it for light years. And this bastard engulfs everything that’s unfortunate enough to be orbiting it in its hell-fiery inferno. Red giants are tumours of the universe, masquerading as beauty spots.’

  ‘What are you on about, Conks?’

  ‘Your brother was a red giant. He seemed like the most impressive, stylish motherfucker there was, with his flash cars and fancy lifestyle and all those women. But he chewed up and spat out every poor bastard that ever got sucked into his orbit. We’re all that’s left, Frank.’ He took his glasses off and stared wistfully at a dejected-looking Sheila. Turned to Frank and patted his face. ‘Being the right-hand man to someone who was reluctant to trust anyone was as near as damn it to being Paddy’s friend, and I value the years I had with him. But I’m sure as hell going to try to move on now he’s gone. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m going to try my damnedest to stay out of the cemetery. Don’t waste your freedom, Francis. Make the most of being alive and kicking … if only to honour Jack’s memory. And
be there for Sheila. She needs you.’

  ‘My ears are burning,’ Sheila said, leaning in towards him and putting her hand on top of Conky’s. ‘What does Sheila need?’

  He peered down at her red varnished fingernails, stared at the glittering solitaire rock and diamond-encrusted eternity ring that graced her slender wedding finger. It was difficult to tell if she was drunk or merely tired, but there was definitely a looseness to the way she enunciated. She was on her fifth glass of red, he estimated. Her lips were a deep burgundy, her tongue was blood red and her teeth had turned that unpleasant shade of purple-grey that came from too much Shiraz. Perhaps he should wait until she had sobered up and was on her home turf, but somehow, Conky reasoned that gauging the potentially explosive subject of Leviticus and Gloria Bell was better done in a room full of witnesses.

  ‘Go and dance, Frank,’ Conky said, using the tone of voice he used in his role as Loss Adjuster. ‘It’s time Sheila and I had a little chatette.’

  The drunken smile slid from Sheila’s stained mouth. Apprehension registered in the tightness of her face. But Frank just sat steadfastly in his seat, fidgeting with a loose thread on his jacket.

  ‘Now, Frank!’

  Chapter 52

  Conky

  When the gun had fired, shattering the giant plate-glass window, Conky’s main thought was not of the wind, gusting through the hole at altitude, nor of the fact that he was now dangling backwards with his head and shoulders suspended forty-five levels above the ground with only certain death below. It was not even of the fact that his hair-piece had regrettably blown away. His main thought was that it was surprising that Sheila O’Brien owned such a stylish little handgun, complete with its own silencer. Nevertheless, this did not stop him from screaming.

  ‘Jesus, Sheila! Let me go!’ His voice was hoarse from too much whisky and the weight of the night sky pressing against his windpipe.

  Sheila straddled his lower half, mercifully still inside the Beetham Tower apartment. She dug the gun into his chest. ‘What’s the matter, Conky? Were you more comfortable when I was just Paddy’s little show-pony? Don’t you like it when the girls are on top?’

  Conky shook his head, the muscles in his neck screaming. Above him, shards of glass hung dangerously like some jagged guillotine, waiting to fall and puncture his vulnerable burgeoning gut. Around him, the Manchester skyline stretched for miles over to the brooding bulk of the Pennines, barely visible in the moonlight. The G-Mex spread out in the foreground, with its curved roof like an invertebrate, supported only by rings of cartilage, shrouded in darkness. Spinningfields to his left, all lit up where the bankers and accountants and lawyers had left the lights burning and had gone home, knowing Manchester’s wealthy denizens would foot the bill. The gothic splendour of the Town Hall and the neo-classical rotunda of the Central Library, picked out with tiny beacons of glowing gold. Manchester in its modern heyday. Conky was sure this would be the finest it had ever looked and the last thing he would ever see. Worse still, Sheila now knew he was, in fact, bald.

  But he could not bring himself to throw her off, even if his stomach muscles had been up to the job.

  ‘I didn’t know he was hitting you, Sheila. Honestly. Let me up. Let’s talk. Don’t throw your life away on me! Not like this. That bullshit’s for men. Women are better than that. You’re better than that.’

  He craned his head around to see what lay at ground level. People had started to gather. Looking upwards, though from that height, he could only imagine their questioning faces. Presumably they were wondering at the sudden shower of glass and the pair of Ray-Bans that had fallen from the night sky. The sound of a siren in the distance could well be coming for them.

  ‘Don’t you mansplain to me, Conky McFadden!’ Sheila yelled. ‘I’m not throwing my life away. I’m showing the world the stuff I’m made from. I was sick of living in Paddy O’Brien’s shadow. Well, now he’s dead!’ She held the pistol aloft, staring down the sights at Conky’s forehead. ‘Click,’ she said. ‘That’s all it would take, Conks. One click. And then, it’s just me and Gloria.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind, Sheila. Stop it! Take a deep breath. It doesn’t have to be this way.’

  ‘I admire you. Always have.’ She raised an eyebrow. Smiled archly, her hair whipping around her face in the wind. ‘Maybe I’ve always been a bit in love with you.’ The smile disappeared. ‘And I’ve always known about the hair-piece, you daft bastard. I don’t care about that! But you’re with me or you’re against me.’ Her eyes suddenly lost all focus and clarity. He had never seen such an outwardly controlled woman look so wild or so free. ‘Say goodnight, Conky.’

  She pulled the trigger. The bullet flew from the barrel, and in that instant, the arc of time slowed in Conky’s mind, gradually retracing its trajectory to the point at which Sheila had suggested coming up to the apartment she had rented for the night.

  ‘Why did you pay for flights to the US for Leviticus and Gloria Bell?’ he’d asked in the lift, when the other guests had stepped out, leaving them alone.

  Sheila had looked down at her shoes. Swaying slightly. Those deadly dark red lips pursed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she’d said, eyes slow to blink.

  ‘Oh come on. Can you just drop the pretence? I know. Okay? I know! I spoke to Barney, the customs feller at Manchester airport. He’s boning the girl on the Atlantic Airways desk. She pulled off the flight roster, the payment details, the lot.’ As they had stepped out of the lift on the forty-fifth level, there was a glimmer of mischief in Sheila’s expression that had made Conky feel less than comfortable. Even at that juncture, when his future had still been unwritten, he had chided himself for agreeing to leave the safety of the wake with all those pissed relatives and unwitting witnesses. Who knew how a grieving woman, who had apparently been engaging in deadly skulduggery like some latter-day Lady Macbeth, could react to confrontation? But he had not anticipated the bullet. Never the bullet.

  ‘Let me get you a coffee,’ he had said, as she had kicked off her stilettos, rubbing her feet.

  He had turned his back on her, leaving her staring out of the ceiling-to-floor windows at the Mancunian skyline – a poor man’s Manhattan, surrounded by green hills that kept all the damp and secrets inside. Perhaps it had been the whisky clouding his judgement, but though he had known then what Sheila’s part in this kitchen sink drama had been, he had not considered her a threat.

  As he had rifled through the slick rental’s kitchen, looking for instant coffee and a kettle, he had been taken unawares by the cold steel of the gun with its silencer pressed into the back of his neck.

  ‘Put your hands in the air and turn around slowly,’ Sheila had said, straining to reach him on her tiptoes.

  Hands aloft, he had smiled at the ludicrous situation of the doll-sized widow of his dead boss holding him at gunpoint. ‘Oh, Sheila. What are you playing at? Put the gun down, will you? There’s no need for this hostility between two old, old friends.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ There had been no trace of mirth in her face. Only a flintiness that he had never taken the time to register before but which had always been there. Clearly. ‘Move to the window.’ Such a small hand to be holding such a powerful weapon.

  Backing towards that skyline, he had felt anger surge within him. But not anger at her. It was disdain for himself – that he had ignored all the signs, thinking Frank or even Katrina had been behind Paddy’s downfall.

  ‘You did it, didn’t you?’ He had watched the self-satisfied Shiraz smile dawning on her elfin face. ‘You paid Leviticus Bell to pretend to be Asaf Smolensky and then take Paddy out. For Christ’s sake, She. Why? Was it Jack’s death? Paddy’s heart attack? Did he take his frustrations out on you in some way? Had you just had enough?’

  ‘It began long, long before that,’ she had said, the pure white summer moon reflecting in her eyes. ‘I’ve been Paddy’s punch-bag for donkey’s years. Whenever he felt like his sagging ego needed a top-up o
f air, he got it by knocking the stuffing out of me.’ She unfurled the silk scarf around her neck and revealed the green ghost of bruising.

  ‘Shit, Sheila. I had no idea.’ He wished he could reach over and caress her injuries away.

  ‘And you think I didn’t know about the little slappers he had on the side?’ The scarf drifted to the floor like a silken butterfly. ‘I knew all about them! And I didn’t dare say a single word because the grand Patrick O’Brien was nothing but a pimple-dicked bully. The final straw came after his heart attack, when he said he wanted to pack it all in and move to Thailand. I didn’t want to go, Conks. Me and Gloria’s business was booming. I was successful in my own right. I’d been planning on getting enough money together and leaving him inside twelve months. Me and Glo just needed one more cleaning contract and I would have been free. But that sanctimonious bitch Katrina talked him into emigrating. A fresh start on the other side of the world. At that stage, I didn’t quite have the money. I was trapped.’ She sighed heavily, but the gun was still pointing directly at him.

  ‘Surely you could have filed for divorce and come away a rich woman.’ He had wanted to enfold her slender frame in his arms. All those times he could have defended her but had taken his boss’ side through some misplaced sense of duty. There were amends to make on his part. He was no kind of erudite gentleman, after all. He was nothing but a balding cad with thyroid eyes, a paunch and a criminal record. A spouter of quotes about Medb of Connacht who had been, all this while, ignoring the plight of a real heroine; a thug for hire, pandering to the whim of Manchester’s second-rate answer to Genghis Khan. ‘You could have just walked away.’

  Sheila had shaken her head and wiped a rogue tear from her eye. ‘You think he would have let me? Paddy O’Brien? Ha!’ She had thrown her chin back dramatically. ‘He controlled the finances through Maureen Kaplan. All I had in my name was the money I made with Gloria. You can’t get a mortgage with cash earned from trafficked women! And without that bitch Maureen knowing all my bloody business and running back to him with tales, I couldn’t even launder it. I needed every penny and more to buy a nice house for me and the girls outright. Know how much they cost in Cheshire? I couldn’t even have afforded a solicitor! Anyway, he’d have killed me before he’d let me humiliate him in front of all his lackeys! Paddy O’Brien would never have tolerated treason. You know that!’