Conky had taken a couple of steps towards her, further into the sleek contemporary space of the living room. Sizing up the gun in her hand. Unsure whether it would be appropriate to strong-arm her into giving her weapon up if it came to it. ‘How can you be sure, Sheila? He loved you.’
‘Paddy O’Brien only loved himself and the thrill of the game.’
He visualised his boss, sliced open on the poolside. ‘So, how did you go from feeling trapped to ordering the hit? You had suitcases packed for Thailand!’
Sheila perched on a Perspex dining chair by the door to the terrace. Ran her stockinged toes through a long-tufted rug. ‘I was stringing him along, so he wouldn’t suspect. Formulating my plan and watching it come to fruition. Me and Gloria sat up late, night after night while Paddy was in the club, talking through scenarios. We decided we needed him to ditch the Thailand bullshit so I could stay in the country and keep the cleaning thing running. But we reckoned Paddy would only stay if the deal was off with the Boddlingtons and an open declaration of war was made.’
‘So, you didn’t want to kill him?’ He took another step towards her.
She ran her slender finger along the glass table top. Licked her lips with that purple tongue, putting Conky in mind of a dangerous viper he had mistaken for a harmless grass snake.
‘Gloria told me her grandson was dying. She knew Lev was desperate for cash and would probably do anything to save the boy. So first, I dangled the carrot of a hundred and fifty grand. Money he needed for the kid’s operation in the US. I told him I’d pay him if he threw a proper spanner in the works between Paddy and the Boddlingtons. Trouble was, everyone was committed to the bloody truce. They all had love in their hearts and pound signs in their eyes. But Gloria, God bless her, let slip that Lev was shagging Jonny Margulies’ daughter who had recently been dumped by Jack. It was her suggestion, the rape thing. She didn’t tell Lev to put words into Mia’s mouth. But she planted the seeds and let him come up with the idea like it was his own.’
‘But Jack’s dead,’ Conky said, registering a queasiness in his whisky-sodden gut that Sheila was responsible for her own nephew’s violent demise. ‘You wittingly caused that?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be daft! How was I to know it would escalate to that extent, for God’s sake? Mia was easy meat. She had a reputation. I thought Jonny Margulies would get pissed off enough to retaliate at our Paddy and Frank, but I didn’t think for a minute that he’d send the Fish Man to fillet my own bloody nephew.’
Conky had slapped his thighs. ‘Jesus, Sheila! How can you be so naïve? It’s not fucking Monopoly or Cluedo! This is dangerous men playing dangerous games with millions at stake and egos that put Mount Everest in the shade.’ Enough of this crap. He had advanced towards the dining table, lunging for the gun. ‘Gimme that!’ But she had darted out of her seat, pressing it into his stomach with the safety off.
‘See? That’s the kind of bullshit attitude I don’t have to take any more,’ she had yelled. ‘I killed the King. This naïve woman!’ She poked herself in the chest with her thumb so hard that Conky could hear the hollow sound of her ribcage being struck. ‘Me and Gloria on top, instead of Paddy and Frank. We may not be joined by blood but we were both pushed together by the need to steal back our freedom, money and respect from thieving men who had no right to take that shit from us in the first place. Now, kneel before your Queen!’
It was at that point that Conky had lost his footing, staggering back towards the windows to get away from the gun; to avoid hurting Sheila and in a reflexive bid to defend himself. Crashing to the floor, he had hit his head against the glass. Momentarily woozy, all he had been able to see was her small face, shrouded in a halo of light, coming from the standard lamp in the seating nook. She had clambered on top of him, pressing the gun into his cheek. Used the barrel to move his glasses onto his forehead so that their eyes met without that ever-present tinted barrier between them.
‘I’ve had enough of playing second fiddle to you bastards,’ she had said. ‘Even you, Conky. Even you. My terms, now.’
Unexpectedly, she had leaned forwards and pressed her lips to his. The sour taste of stale wine on her warm, wet tongue.
He had looked at her, aghast. Unable to wipe the lingering, cooling spittle from her lips off his mouth. A kiss that he had imagined time after time in the privacy of his own mind but had never anticipated would in reality be so unenjoyable and in such fraught circumstances. No flowers. No romance. No declarations of love. The kiss was an act of violence and domination. That was all.
‘Jesus wept, Sheila. I think you need therapy.’ He had regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them.
‘What you gonna do, Conks? You going to grass me up to the cops? Have me put in the Priory permanently? You think that wasn’t on Paddy’s mind when he sent me to a psychiatrist and convinced me I was depressed? Hoping he’d get me spaced out on happy pills like he got Frank’s missus hooked on smack. Well, as it happens, it was just anxiety from living with that bastard. Turns out, you can’t put a good woman down.’
He had shaken his head. ‘You’re mad! This is all crazy.’
‘No, Conky. I’m getting even. I realised once Paddy agreed another truce with those arseholes, Margulies and Khan … even with Jack dead, he just wasn’t going to give up on the daft plan to retire abroad. Katrina had got inside his head like a worm. And then he tried to choke the life out of me and belt me once too often. I stood at our Jack’s graveside with internal bruising from where he’d punched me. Did you know that? No! And I bet you never even thought to ask. So, I decided. He had to go. End of. With him dead, why in God’s name couldn’t I rule the O’Brien firm? I was the only one with the business acumen and the balls to take over, but Paddy made the mistake of overlooking me just because I was a woman and I wasn’t an O’Brien by blood.’
Her hair was coming loose. Conky could see fire in her eyes. Could see her as the power-hungry despot Paddy had driven her to become. Or perhaps a little of him had rubbed off on her after decades of them sharing the same bed.
‘No, Sheila. This isn’t you. You’re going to calm down, go home and sober up.’ He had closed his large hand around her small fist, trying to prise her gun free.
It was then that she had shot the glass. Disorientated by the bang to his head, Conky had tried to wriggle away from her, but foolishly moved in the wrong direction, edging himself over the empty window frame into the precarious void of the gusting Mancunian night. Dizzy. Pain throbbing between his eyes.
And then, after some preamble, she had fired those damning words right before the bullet had left the gun.
‘Say goodnight, Conky.’
He closed his eyes. There was only darkness.
Chapter 53
Lev
‘Don’t worry, Mr Bell,’ the surgeon said. A tanned white man with his scrubs already on. Mid-forties, Lev assessed, but with a lean face and muscled neck that said he worked out or played tennis or some white, rich man’s shit. ‘Your son is in the best pair of hands in the US, I assure you.’
Lev took a lingering look at his son, prepped and ready for the operating theatre. Stroked his scalp where they had shaved his beautiful blond curls. Knew it may be the last time he ever saw the boy alive. Realised they had been lucky to get this far. ‘They were adamant it was inoperable back home. Size of a tangerine, they said. What makes you so sure you can save him?’
The surgeon patted him on the shoulder. Arranged his thin lips into a sympathetic line. A confident shine to his blue, blue eyes. There was a man who got plenty of stress-free sleep. He smelled of soap and wealth instead of mildew. Lev felt dirty, exhausted and low-rent next to him.
‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure I can save him,’ the surgeon said, smiling with too many straight, perfectly white teeth in his mouth. ‘Nobody can know the future or how a patient will respond to surgery. But this is the United States, Mr Bell. You pay top dollar, you get the best. Believe me, I’ve been oper
ating on brain tumours for two decades. I’ve worked on some doozies in my time. And your son’s is a doozy and a half. I’m not going to lie to you. But I know what I’m doing and I haven’t lost a patient under the knife yet.’
‘You’d better not start a losing streak with my grandson …’ Gloria said, advancing towards him with arms folded over her ample bosom. Wearing her prim, feminine Sunday best. Sugar and spice and all things nice on the surface. But the confrontational flintiness of her hardened features and narrowed eyes revealed what truly lay beneath moisturised skin that smelled of old-lady lavender. ‘… Or I’m coming after you. Vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly. Deuteronomy 32:35.’ She was pointing angrily at the surgeon.
Lev blushed. Scratched at his arms, feeling the itch spread up his neck. Jesus. Had she really just threatened the man in whose hands Jay’s life lay? He wished she would sod off to get a coffee. But then felt instantly hammered into his seat by the weight of guilt, since it had been Gloria’s machinations that had got them to Baltimore in the first place. Well. Not only her. Sheila O’Brien’s money and his mother’s appetite for murder may have made it possible. But principally, had it not been for Anjum Khan, both he and Jay would certainly have died together at the hand of a grieving, implacable Jonny Margulies.
He stroked Jay’s cool cheek, enjoying how the sunlight streaming through the Baltimore hospital’s windows caught the down on his peach-soft skin, making it shimmer like white gold, remembering how the boy had burned like an inferno in that hell-hole of a room in the factory, screaming himself rigid with pain, as the infection had raged away, untreated.
They had been there for hours, strapped to that chair, awaiting either God or Jonny Margulies. With a painfully numb arse and jabbing ache in his bladder, Lev had had no option but to urinate in his trousers. The soles of his trainers sat in a foul puddle, mingled with the dried blood spatters from those who had previously earned themselves the Boddlingtons’ own brand of purgatory and punishment.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he had muttered to Jay, stroking the boy’s head. He had finally passed out. Freaking the hell out of his father with a series of low moans, interspersed with floppy-bodied unresponsiveness and imperceptible breathing. ‘Daddy’s sorry. I screwed up, bad style. I let you down. I deserve to die. Not you.’
Kissing Jay’s hand one last time, as the Baltimore hospital orderlies came to wheel his bed down to theatre, Lev recalled how he had wept long after his tears had dried, becoming nothing more than salt slicks on his cheeks. Nothing left to give but dry, racking sobs. Waiting for Margulies’ bullet to stop their broken hearts.
When he had seen the handle of the door to the torture-hole depressed, he had been ready. Resigned to face his end with dignity and a full admission of guilt for his moral bankruptcy and the easy corruptibility that had been the undoing of his innocent child. Expecting to see the blundering figure of Margulies, overripe with vengeance and murderous intent, he had been shocked when Anjum Khan had walked in. Suited and booted like a human-rights avenger.
‘You!’ she had said, frowning at him. Focused first on the urban-tribal zig-zag carved into his scalp, then on the prone form of the baby on his lap. ‘What the hell is going on? Why are you strapped to a chair? What is this place?’ She had wrinkled her nose. The smell of piss and Jay’s soiled nappy must have been almost palpable on the air. Even Lev had still been able to smell it. Advancing briskly, she had pulled a nail file from her handbag, its blade glinting beneath the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling.
Lev had opened his mouth to speak but only a gasp and a sob had emerged. Catching his breath, he had compelled himself to whimper, ‘Please don’t hurt us.’
‘Don’t be daft. I wouldn’t touch a hair on your head!’ she had said, filing away at the fibrous duct tape.
‘My son needs a hospital. If Tariq and Jonny find out—’ Barely able to get the words out for desperation.
‘If Tariq and Jonny find out, we’re both dead,’ she had said, peering over her shoulder. She lowered her voice. ‘I’m only here because Irina finally caved and told me about this place. I wanted to see it for myself. Tariq’s secret bloody operation. He thinks he’s some kind of Pakistani Bond villain. Prick.’ She had shaken her head. Checked her watch, blinking hard. Checked over her shoulder, once again. Resumed sawing at the tape. ‘One minute I’m an advocate for trafficked and vulnerable people. Next minute, I find I’ve been sleeping with the enemy. I’m trapped in some sort of waking nightmare.’
The duct tape had succumbed to her efforts. Lev had manoeuvred himself stiffly from the urine-sodden seat, cradling Jay in his arms. ‘Look, he needs a doctor, fast,’ he had said, cradling the back of the boy’s head. ‘If you’re gonna call the cops, let me get the fuck out of here first.’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,’ Anjum had said. ‘But come on.’ Checking her watch yet again. ‘It’s gone five am. I have no idea what sort of hours an illegal sweatshop keeps. Let’s go before people start turning up to work. I’ll drive you to the Manchester Children’s Hospital. The further away you get from this place, the better. I have a hunch that my husband has got his finger in a few criminal pies in north Manchester.’
‘A few? Jesus! You don’t even wanna know,’ Lev had said, forcing his stiff legs to bear him out of that evil place, praying his broken heart would keep going just long enough to save his son.
He had thought all had been lost, back then. With Margulies on his tail and Jay on the brink of certain death. And yet now, here he was in the comfortable Baltimore hospital room that murder had paid for. Watching Paddy O’Brien bleed out while his getaway-driver mother and Sheila had kept lookout for Conky McFadden had been a small upfront payment to make for this. At least now, Jay had a chance. His baby had gone – wheeled off to have his head fixed under the supervision of America’s best brain surgeon. Though, what were the odds of success?
‘He’s not gonna make it, is he, Mam?’ he asked Gloria, who sat primly on a chair by the door, reading a small blue bible.
Gloria looked up. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Leviticus.’
‘But what we both did. You believe in sinners being punished, don’t you? God’s going to take him from us.’
Closing her bible, Gloria smiled. ‘God helps those who help themselves.’
‘That’s not in the bloody bible! Even I know that!’
‘Well,’ she looked down at her floral dress, pinching the fabric into pleats with a work-worn hand. ‘It should have been. Sometimes even the Lord gets it wrong.’ She winked. ‘And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Genesis 1:28. See? Paddy O’Brien and that strumpet Mia Margulies were long overdue a spot of subduing, Leviticus.’ She turned her gaze to the ceiling, wearing a beatified grin. ‘It’s all in the interpretation, son. Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?’
‘I wish I had your confidence, Mam.’
Pacing to and fro in the side room in that Baltimore hospital, wondering how Jay’s operation was progressing, Lev wished he could fast-forward into the future to see if his son lived. If he did and they returned together to the UK, Lev decided he would be only too happy to do time for Paddy O’Brien’s murder. As long as his baby was safe and could thrive. Wringing his hands, he calculated how long he might remain unmolested on US soil before Conky McFadden sent either some gun-toting gangster or the cops after him. If anyone had the investigative powers to finger him as Paddy’s murderer, it was the legendary Loss Adjuster. Would McFadden accept Sheila’s authority? Never! That old school kind remained true to the bitter end. And McFadden would feel the need to avenge his dead boss out of unshakeable loyalty.
‘Cheer up, Leviticus! For heaven’s sake,’ Gloria said, rummaging absently in her handbag. Pulling out a lipstick and vanity compact, as if she had spent the morning drinking coffee at the church. ‘This is
a new beginning, served up on a plate.’
He scowled at his mother, hugging himself tightly across the chest. ‘I don’t think stuff like that happens to men like me. Karma’s always gonna get in the way.’
‘Karma’s for hippies and blasphemers, Leviticus,’ his mother said. She closed her eyes. Lifted her face to the strip-lighting on the ceiling. Put a hand on her left bosom, smiling, as though the power of God flowed through her entire body like an electrical charge. ‘Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18–19.’ She opened her soft brown eyes – those same eyes that Lev saw when he looked in the mirror. ‘Never stop believing, Leviticus. Even a sinner like you deserves a second chance, son.’
Chapter 54
Tariq
‘What do you mean, Jonny’s AWOL?’ Anjum said, glaring at Tariq across the kitchen with only the breakfast table as a buffer for her malcontent. She packed some official-looking documents into her briefcase with such undisguised aggression that she sent the plate of her uneaten toast scudding along the table top.
Tariq leaned against the doorframe, tugging at his hair. It hadn’t been long since he’d showered but his shirt was clinging uncomfortably to his clammy skin. He counted the discrepancies out on his fingers. ‘He hasn’t been into work. He’s not answering calls or texts. I haven’t laid eyes on him in days.’
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