by RJ Dark
‘It is if it’s easy. Like, if someone had a lottery ticket.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jackie. ‘But they could just give back the money. There wouldn’t be any need for threatening to cut your fingers off. And more to the point, why would Larry Stanbeck share his ticket? Mick, I can see, possibly. That’s family, but Russian Frank? Why only take twenty per cent of eight million when you can have it all? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It can’t be a coincidence, Jackie, that the amount on the first drawing scales up to eight million.’ He stared at the drawing.
‘But Mal, if you have eight million, why mess about with all this?’ He pointed at the drawing.
‘That is a good point, Jackie.’ I sat back down, deflated. ‘I was so sure I had it.’
He spun the drawing round so he could look at it better.
‘There are a lot of coincidences in those numbers though.’ He tapped the drawing ‘ “ESL”, that could be the Eccles Silly Lads – scooter boys out of Manchester. “BPG” could be Bradford Pride Group.’
‘Aren’t they racists?’
‘There is a racist group called that, but there’s also a gay pride group with the same name. It is probably the racists though.’
‘Would they deal with a Russian?’
‘Well, he’s Ukrainian, but I’ve found people get a lot less racist when money is involved, and besides, they’re on Mick’s side of the drawing. Nasty bastards though. I can imagine them doing Benny Callaghan – vicious, sloppy, practically their MO.’ He moved his finger around the drawing. ‘It could have been anyone on Mick’s side of this.’
‘If it was laundering.’
‘If it was.’ He continued to stare at the picture, and I could see him mouthing initials as he connected them to people he knew. ‘We must be missing something.’
Now I felt utterly deflated. I’d been so sure when I was bundling Mrs Carling into her coat that I had solved it, and now it seemed like I hadn’t really found anything but a bunch of coincidences.
‘Coats,’ I said.
‘Sorry, Mal?’
‘Coats, that’s what we’re missing.’ Such a stupid idea in my head, and at the same time I was absolutely sure I was right. ‘Come on, Jackie, we need to speak to Mr Patel.’
27
‘Mal,’ said Jackie, ‘what have coats got to do with anything?’
I turned as we walked, so I was walking backward and looking at Jackie. He wasn’t smiling, not until he saw me smiling, then he was smiling too because the grin on my face was huge enough to make my cheeks ache, and Jackie’s always been easily swayed to smile.
‘I was right, Jackie, I was right about the money laundering, and I can answer all your questions about why Mick and Frank are so panicked about finding that lottery ticket.’
‘By going to Mr Patel’s shop?’
‘Yeah, but he might need a bit of persuading.’
‘I can be persuasive.’
My smile slipped a little. ‘Don’t be too persuasive.’
‘Would I?’
I didn’t answer that.
The bell rang as we walked into Mr Patel’s shop. He was serving a couple who looked to be stocking up on all the out-of-date crisps they could find. It was still going to be more expensive than buying them from a supermarket, but I liked that they were supporting local businesses. We waited by the door until they had left, then Jackie shut the door behind them and turned the sign to closed. After a moment’s thought, he also put the latch on.
‘Mr Jones,’ said Mr Patel, ‘and Mr Singh Khattar.’ His brow furrowed in confusion, ‘is it that time of the month already? It only seems like a few days since I paid my insurance.’
‘It’s not that time, Mr Patel,’ said Jackie softly. ‘Mal just wants a private word with you, that’s all.’
‘Then why have you shut the bloody door, man? I need to be open for customers – they rely on me.’
‘We need a little bit of privacy, Raj’ said Jackie.
‘I do not like it when you use my first name, Mr Singh Khattar.’ Mr Patel wouldn’t look at him. ‘It is never for anything good.’ He looked smaller, shamed.
‘It’s nothing, Mr Patel.’ I walked forward. ‘just a few questions. I need you to answer them truthfully. It’s alright.’
He looked from Jackie to me; he couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he had tried.
‘It’s about Cat Maudy’s coat.’
Mr Patel turned away, opened the locked cigarette cabinet and started tidying it up. It didn’t need tidying up.
‘I have told her not to wear that coat. It is far too hot. If she has collapsed from heat exhaustion, that is not my fault – I have told her many times. You know this, Mr Jones.’
‘She’s fine, as far as I know, Mr Patel,’ I said. ‘I’m interested in how she could afford a fur coat.’
He turned round. He was holding one hand in the other, kneading the fingers in the cast.
‘Maybe she saved up, eh? Maybe a relative gave her some money, eh? How am I to know how she gets her money? That is not my job.’
‘You do know though, don’t you?’ I said.
He was practically begging me with his eyes to stop.
‘I do not know,’ he said, and his voice was barely a whisper. Then Jackie moved. He stepped forward, grabbed Mr Patel by the front of his apron and pulled him across the desk, knocking a selection of out-of-date chocolates and snacks all over the floor.
‘Tell Mal,’ he hissed into Mr Patel’s face, ‘what he wants to know.’
Mr Patel had his eyes closed so tightly his whole face had wrinkled up. The words he spoke were so quiet I could barely hear them.
‘They will hurt me again,’ he said. ‘And next time they will hurt my wife as well.’
Jackie’s face changed then. He put Mr Patel back on his side of the counter, ever so gently lowering him. Then he brushed the front of Mr Patel’s apron and straightened it up. Stepping back to make sure it looked right.
‘Someone hurt you?’ he said.
Mr Patel, eyes still closed, nodded, and pointed at his broken arm.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this, Raj?’ Jackie asked.
‘I was scared.’ A tear escaped from his closed eyes. Jackie stood with his mouth slightly open, as if the words would not come.
‘I would have looked after you, Raj,’ he said, ‘and Nasreen, that’s what you pay me for.’
‘Youths that smash windows, Mr Singh Khattar. Foolish druggies who threaten to smash up the shop. All these things, yes, you protect me from them, and you do it very well. But this man who came’ – Mr Patel’s eyes opened wide as he relived something terrifying – ‘he was none of those things.’
‘Tell me,’ said Jackie, and he gave Mr Patel a tissue. Well, he took a packet of tissues from a display on the counter. Opened them, gave one to Mr Patel then looked at the price and dug in his pocket for the two pounds marked on them, which he placed on the counter.
‘I got an offer for a good deal. Off the back of lorry he said.’ His words came haltingly, as if he had to work up the courage to say each sentence. ‘The man turned up as I closed the shop. We went in the back to talk about the deal. When we were in the back room, he hit me. In the stomach. Then he asked me if I knew where Larry Stanbeck’s ticket was. When I said no, he hit me again. And then again, and he broke my little finger with his hands. Then he seemed happy that I was not lying. He told me if I talked to anyone about Larry Stanbeck’s ticket and Cat Maudy, he would come back and hurt me even more. Then he grabbed my forearm.’ Mr Patel lifted the arm with the cast on it. ‘He pulled me toward the door. And he smashed the door on my arm.’ The last words came as a sigh. ‘Hard enough to break it.’
Every muscle in Jackie Singh Khattar’s body was tensed, his hands bunched into fists as Mr Patel finished his story.
‘And he said, if I told anyone, he would come back and do terrible things to Nasreen.’
Jackie’s eyes narrowed.
; ‘What did he offer you a deal on?’
‘Does it matter?’ said Mr Patel.
‘It might help me find him.’
‘You do not want to find him, Mr Singh Khattar. He is a dangerous man.’
‘So am I,’ said Jackie.
Mr Patel stared at him. He wanted mercy. He wanted Jackie to go away, but Jackie was angry.
‘No one, Raj,’ Jackie said quietly, ‘fucks with my people on my patch. No one. Now, what was this deal he was offering you?’
‘Cut-price stationery,’ whispered Mr Patel.
‘Fuckers!’ shouted Jackie. He almost punched the glass display case Mr Patel locked his chocolate bars behind but stopped himself. He turned to me. Walked away. Paced up and down the shop three times before coming to a stop in front of me. ‘The utter fuckers, Mal. Coming here, threatening my people. Absolute bastards.’ He turned back to Mr Patel. ‘Right, Raj, just so you know, and can feel a bit safer, the man who hurt you was called Harry. He is a Russian gangster. I beat the living shit out of Harry a couple of days ago for threatening to hurt Mal. But if I’d known he’d done this to you.’ Jackie tapped Mr Patel’s arm and Mr Patel winced in pain. ‘Sorry,’ said Jackie, ‘but if I had known what he did to you, then I would have beat the living shit back into him.’
‘Please, Mr Singh Khattar.’ Mr Patel stared at the floor. ‘Do not tell them I have said anything.’ Jackie reached across and put his hand on Mr Patel’s bicep.
‘Alright,’ he said, ‘and you don’t have to pay next month’s insurance, cos I didn’t protect you this month.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Patel.
‘Now, tell Mal what he wants to know.’
Mr Singh took a deep breath, nodded. ‘I think he may know most of it,’ he said quietly. He was still struggling to speak so I let him rest for a while and told him what I thought.
‘Cat Maudy won the lottery,’ I said.
Mr Patel nodded.
‘And Larry Stanbeck bought the ticket from her?’
Mr Patel nodded again.
‘He knew she did not want all the bother of it – the begging letters, the publicity. She did not know if she had ticked the box, see, to stop all of that. Larry said he had some business friends who would buy the ticket off her. But he needed me to say he had bought the ticket, in case the lottery people checked the CCTV or something.’ He looked up. ‘I did not know, Mr Jones, that his friends were bad people or I would not have helped. Larry always seemed so nice.’
‘He’s a Stanbeck, Mr Patel,’ I said. ‘They all have something wild in them.’
‘What about Cat Maudy?’ said Jackie. ‘Is she in danger?’
Mr Patel brightened then. A little smile on his face.
‘She is cleverer than all of us, I think. When Larry bought the ticket from her. She put all her money into a Swiss bank account. Then half of it was shared among her relatives who live all over the world. The rest was shared among various cat charities. The money is gone, and Cat Maudy is old enough that she laughs in the face of death. Or that is what she told me she did when the man visited her.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you get back to your shop. And thank you, Mr Patel.’
We left, and as we walked back Jackie was staring at me.
‘That’s why they need the ticket,’ he said. ‘They’ve already paid out the eight million.’ I nodded.
‘Larry must have been the go-between, for his dad and the Russians. That’s what his book was – nothing to do with interior design. He was money laundering. He must have seen the lottery result announced on TV, known Cat Maudy’s numbers, and got in quick to make the offer. It’s practically untraceable cash. So, they go for a quick turnaround, offer a cheap rate to every criminal enterprise they know. They build up some goodwill and pull the money together quickly, cos Cat Maudy is a sly old bird, she wouldn’t wait forever.’
‘But they lost the ticket,’ said Jackie.
‘Yep, and Maudy had spent everything they gave her – they’re not getting that back.’ I stopped walking. ‘Why didn’t they hurt her, Jackie? Even if she laughed in their faces, you’d have thought they wouldn’t just leave it.’
‘It’s unprofessional,’ said Jackie. ‘It sounds like Frank is the one doing the frightening.’
‘He didn’t really strike me as a man with an old-fashioned code of honour.’
‘Of course he isn’t,’ said Jackie. ‘He’s scum. But he’s clever scum. She’s an old lady with nothing to lose. If he hurt her, she’d call the police. So, if he wants to get answers by hurting her, then she has to die afterwards. Murdering an old lady is going to bring even more police in, and they’ll come down on it hard, and if the money is gone, it’s gone. But it would come up in a police investigation when they talked to her relatives. Besides, they might need her to vouch for Larry buying the ticket, if it ever turns up.’
‘And she lives on the Edge,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Mick’s territory. Frank was probably still tiptoeing round him at that point.’
‘So, Russian Frank and Trolley Mick have essentially lost eight million pounds of other people’s money, other bad people’s money. No wonder they want that ticket.’
‘And no wonder Mick wanted to stop fighting Frank,’ said Jackie. ‘They’re about to become the least popular criminals in Yorkshire.’
‘Can’t they put together enough of their own money to cover it? Mick’s house was full of expensive stuff.’
Jackie shook his head. ‘No, Mick’s worth maybe a few million, but it’s all locked up in property and investments, or hidden behind shell companies. Hard to get at quickly. Frank has maybe five or six million, but that’s not really his money. He works for bigger and far more dangerous people, and if he doesn’t sort this, he’s likely to end up having a really unpleasant board meeting with Donald.’
‘I thought Donald was his new bodyguard?’ Jackie gave me a look. ‘Okay. So, how does knowing what they were doing help us?’
‘Not sure it does really,’ he said. ‘In fact, now we know that they must be really desperate for this money, it probably makes everything worse. Frank and Mick have got a lot to lose here.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s harshed my buzz.’
‘Indeed,’ said Jackie.
We went back to my shop. On the doormat was an envelope which I ignored as post was almost always bad. I made shit tea. Jackie opened the envelope and then busied himself with pens and pencils at my desk while I racked my brains trying to think of some way I could find the missing lottery ticket. It didn’t do much good. I made us chicken sandwiches and sat at my desk.
‘What you doing?’ I said to Jackie.
‘Making a list.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What was in the envelope?’
He passed over a bit of paper. I read it as Jackie started writing.
Dear Mr Jones,
I have decided that you have one week to find the ticket, or I will
lose faith in you and have my friend ‘punch’ your ticket.
Yours sincerely,
FK
I read it again, just in case I had misread it and it was actually an invitation for tea. I hadn’t misread it and post is always bad.
‘That’s not good.’
‘No,’ said Jackie, ‘it isn’t.’
‘What’s on your list?’
He passed it over. It was very colourful.
‘I’ve noted down all the initials from the drawing in black. In blue, I’ve written my best guess at who each one is.’ He tapped the paper with the back of a pen. ‘The ones I have underlined in red are the ones I think are both unpleasant and amateur enough to torture Benny Callaghan to death.’
‘What about the ones with red stars?’
‘They’re near enough for me to visit, no more than a couple of hours’ drive.’
‘Red and blue star?’ I said.
‘Near enough to visit, and probably gave their money to Trolley Mick, cos I don’t reckon someone on the Russian
side would have gone after Benny. It has to be someone who knows Mick’s organisation.’
‘Do you think they know Mick asked us for the ticket?’
Jackie shook his head. ‘They don’t, or they would have come after you.’ Russian Frank’s letter had left me feeling quite unwell, that didn’t help. ‘They were probably torturing Benny to try and find out where their money is, or maybe to send a message to Mick.’
‘Unless Mick told them Benny was up to something and set it up,’ I said. Jackie shook his head.
‘Not his way, if he really thought Benny Callaghan was betraying him, he’d have dealt with Benny himself.’
‘If he wasn’t betraying him, why did he even want the ticket?’
Jackie shrugged.
‘Oh shit,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I’m going to have to tell Janine Stanbeck that the money isn’t hers, aren’t I?’ I really wasn’t feeling good now.
‘Good luck with that. I imagine she’ll take it well.’
I was going to swear at Jackie a bit more, but Jackie stopped me speaking by holding up a hand.
I turned. Callum Callaghan was in the doorway, stooped over, hands in the pockets of his ex-army coat. I mustn’t have shut the door properly when I came in and the bell hadn’t gone off. Callum looked rough, as if grief was eating away it his skin.
‘Callum,’ I said. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. ‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘thanks for trying, you know, going up. You did go up, right?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry we didn’t do better. You should have called the police though.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Police wouldn’t have turned up in time either, too busy with that bomb scare in town.’
‘How long have you been stood there, Callum?’ said Jackie, his voice soft and cold.
‘Just got here,’ he said.
‘Why would someone do that to your dad, Callum?’ said Jackie.
‘I guess Mick felt betrayed.’ Something dark passed over Callum’s face. ‘I wanted to see you, Jackie, actually, I was going to ask if you could sort out…’ He let the words tail off. ‘I can pay you.’
‘It wasn’t Mick,’ Jackie said. ‘We wondered if you knew who else might have a grudge against your father?’
