Angels Of The North

by Ray Banks

  "What d'you mean?"

  "It's not you, Brian. I want you to know that. She wants you to know that. But she's frightened."

  "Of her home?"

  "Of the area."

  "You what?"

  "You can understand that, can't you? After what she saw?"

  "Did she say that? Did she say she didn't want to come home?"

  "Brian—"

  "Did she say that exactly?"

  "Brian, you have to admit, your current situation—"

  "I'm in the hospital. What about it?"

  "You know what I mean. Michael and I feel—"

  "Who the fuck cares what Michael feels?"

  Crosby looked over, eyes narrowed.

  Brian glared at him. "You want something, son?"

  Crosby stepped forward. He'd opened his mouth to speak when Lynne interrupted: "Michael and I feel that your current situation isn't healthy for Danielle at the moment."

  "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  Crosby stopped behind Lynne. "It means you're jobless."

  "It speaks."

  "Hey, I'm just trying to help, mate."

  "When I want your help, mate, I'll dial 999. Now why don't you fuck off and let the grown-ups talk, eh?"

  Crosby looked at him, his face tight. He wanted to do something. Brian willed him to give it a shot, prove to the world what a big man he was, losing his temper with a battered bloke in pyjamas. The two locked stares for a moment longer, then Crosby looked away. Lynne must've kept him on a short lead.

  "He's right, Brian." She leaned forward in her chair, blocking his view of the boy. "And it really shouldn't be news to you. We talked about this."

  "I'm down the dole Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I can't help it if there's nothing on the boards."

  Crosby couldn't resist a half-smile. "They're looking for manufacturing staff at Nissan, you know. Nine grand a year."

  "The fuck asked you, eh?" Warmth spread up the side of Brian's neck. His jaw ached. Fucking Nissan. Fucking Sunderland? Might as well tell him to work in France.

  "Easy, Brian." Crosby put up one calming hand. "Remember where you are."

  "Michael." Lynne turned to him. "Could you give us a minute, please?"

  "You sure?"

  She smiled at him, one of her better ones. Brian almost believed it. Crosby came over, kissed her on the cheek. It was a gesture of ownership, but if this daft plod honestly thought his relationship was stacked that way, he was the only one.

  Brian watched him go and made sure he was long gone before he spoke again. "So what's with the police escort?"

  "Don't start."

  "You need protection?"

  "We're not talking about him, Brian."

  "We are now."

  "We're talking about Danielle."

  "And so we're talking about him too, aren't we?" He watched her, paused long enough to see her blink. "This here's the first step. I let you take temporary custody of Danny while I sort out this situation you think I'm in, and meanwhile you play happy families and gather ammunition for when we make it official."

  "I wouldn't do that. You know I wouldn't. We were just thinking about Danielle."

  "Course you were. Both of you."

  "You can't expect her to be happy going back, Brian. It's not safe."

  "She's never had any trouble."

  "Not yet."

  "She's got friends there."

  "She'll make new friends."

  He glared at her. "What're you doing?"

  "Don't."

  "This isn't you."

  "Your daughter—"

  "Yeah, the place is a bit rough at the moment. That's what happens when you take away jobs—"

  "Give it a rest, Brian."

  "What?"

  "Talking like you're one of them."

  "I am one of them."

  "They didn't pass their eleven plus. They didn't go to university. They didn't get a degree."

  "A fucking useless degree."

  She leaned forward suddenly. "Because you don't—" She caught herself. Leaned back and breathed out. "You know what? No. I'm not doing this. Not again. It's your life, you know ... you live it the way you want to, okay? I'm trying my best to take your feelings into consideration here."

  "Here's a feeling – I don't trust your toy boy."

  "You don't even know him."

  "Which is why I don't trust him."

  "You haven't made the effort."

  "Why should I?"

  "It's not fair."

  "Don't you dare talk to me about what's fair."

  Because when you fucked someone behind your husband's back, you forfeited the right to fair, and they both knew it.

  "Okay." She looked around the ward. "Maybe now isn't the best time."

  "You late for something, are you?"

  "I'll come back, or – I don't know – maybe ring you when you're home?"

  "Fine." Brian looked at the three broken fingers on his left hand, now held rigid with splints. He remembered the agony when they kicked his hand away from his face, the snap like an electric shock before they ground his bones into the pavement. He remembered how much it hurt to breathe. He remembered Danielle's shoes. "You could always ask her, you know."

  Lynne was already on her feet and moving to the end of the bed. "Sorry?"

  "You could ask Danny who she wants to live with."

  "I don't think that'll be necessary."

  "No point in you having sole custody if she's going to resent you for it."

  "She's twelve."

  "So?"

  "So, she doesn't have a say in the matter."

  As Lynne clicked off across the ward, Brian realised that that he didn't have much of a say, either.

  It was that particular thought that echoed, kept him awake and staring at the shadows on the ceiling. He was stuck in here until next week at the earliest, no chance of time off for good behaviour. And he would've got angry at Lynne – or stayed angry at Lynne – if he didn't believe that he would've done exactly the same thing himself. She wasn't daft. She knew the best time to kick someone was when they were down.

  This time, though, he intended to kick back. He just had to make sure his legs were working first.

  5

  So. Here it was. No pressure. Just an opportunity to shine, right?

  Right. No problem. The future was waiting for Gav, and all he had to do was go in there and grab it with both hands.

  Fiona had been right, of course – he was a proper softarse. Gav had only come to the conclusion after a week of preparation for this meeting. He'd stood in front of the bathroom mirror and mouthed what he was going to say – wasn't going to say it out loud in case the kids heard him – while he tried to look all serious and business-like. It was a challenge. He just didn't feel it. And while he could be a softarse at home – home was about family, and any discipline came with a good dose of affection – work demanded a colder Gav, a more consistent, unemotional Gav. A hard but fair Gav. A leader of men. And if Gav didn't get his head right, and if he couldn't prove to Neil Bigelow that he was the kind of serious man who got things done, then that dream opportunity of his would turn into a nightmare quick-sharp. That bunch of idle bastards Gav called his colleagues would walk all over him, trample him into slurry, and the whole business would likely be in the shitter before the ink was dry.

  But he'd been practising, he knew exactly what he was going to say, and he was confident enough in his preparation that he approached the prefab offices with a certain stride. He pushed inside and straight through. Rosie the dispatcher – a bag of a woman with large red-framed glasses – said something, but the gravel in her voice made it unintelligible. Gav nodded an acknowledgement. The rest of the office was quiet. Too early for the day shift, too late for the night. Just the way he'd planned it. He passed the waiting area with its plastic seats and coffee machine that only worked if you kicked its left front leg at the right moment, and then through to the back office, where Bige
low was waiting for him to tap on the plastic glass. "You free, Neil?"

  "Gavin, yes, absolutely. Come on in. Pull up a pew."

  Gav closed the office door behind him and sat. Neil Bigelow hadn't met a food he didn't like, and of those foods he liked, there wasn't one he couldn't shovel in with both hands. Today it showed more than usual, not only in the weight he carried, but also in the spray of brown crumbs that littered the lapels of his suit jacket. Gav felt a flicker of resentment. This was supposed to be an important meeting. They had important things to discuss, long-term business plans. It was important to him. The least the fat bastard could've done was brush himself down first.

  "I take it you talked to your better half?"

  "She's behind us. She thinks it's a good idea."

  "That's good news."

  "Aye." Gav cleared his throat. "Yes. She's concerned about the outlay."

  "That's understandable. It's a lot of money."

  "But I told her that you'd do us a good deal."

  Bigelow smiled. "Well, let's have a look at the numbers then, shall we?" He grabbed a notepad; the logo at the top of the paper belonged to some long-bust business. His chair creaked as he scribbled. "You'll need something to take to the bank manager, won't you?"

  Bigelow pushed the pad across the desk. Gav looked at it.

  The number didn't settle in his head at first; it looked too small, almost a joke. Then he saw the K at the end. He was about to ask Bigelow if the K meant a thousand, but then thought better of it. Of course it did. It had to. The number didn't make any sense otherwise. To be fair, it didn't make much sense as it was, even with the K – fifty thousand pounds was beyond anything he could afford.

  "Something wrong, Gavin?"

  Gav rubbed his bottom lip. He picked up the pen, wrote a five, four zeros, a decimal point, then another pair of zeros, before tracing a slow circle around it.

  Impossible. All the practice in front of the mirror, all the nights spent staring at the bedroom ceiling, running finances through his head, it was irrelevant in the face of a number like that.

  "You all right?" There was a tickle of laughter in Bigelow's voice. "You look a little pale."

  Gav looked up. "Do I?"

  "Lost a bit of colour, yeah." Bigelow shifted in his seat; the seat didn't like it. "So what do you think?"

  "I don't know. Didn't think you'd go that high."

  Bigelow nodded as if he understood. He pursed purple lips, linked sausage fingers together and leaned back ever so slightly in his chair. "Well, notwithstanding your expectations, that's the price on the table."

  "I understand."

  "I'm a businessman, Gavin."

  "I understand that an' all."

  "You're in a world of business now." The fingers splayed, then knitted back together again. "The aim is to make money."

  "So what's that, a starting price? Or is that it, take it or leave it?"

  Bigelow moved his head as if his neck had just started to give him gyp. He noticed the crumbs on his jacket and brushed them away. "I'm a reasonable man, Gavin."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means we can talk – absolutely we can talk – but I'll be frank with you, I'm not sure what we have to talk about. I mean, either you're serious or you're not."

  "I'm serious."

  "Then you should know that the price on that piece of paper is a bloody good deal. I haven't given anyone else that price."

  "You've had other offers?"

  Bigelow raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  Gav looked at the piece of paper. It didn't seem like a bloody good deal. It seemed like he was taking the piss. And didn't Bigelow look like he was laughing at him, just a little bit? The expression on the fat man's face made Gav want to ball up that bloody good deal of his and shove it down his throat. So Gav returned his gaze to the piece of paper that bore the logo of a bankrupt and a figure that would do the same to him.

  Bigelow shifted once more and chuckled to himself. It was a thick sound, full of phlegm. "Look, I like you, Gavin. I think you're a hell of a worker. If I didn't think that, we wouldn't be sitting here now." His smile disappeared. "But that affection I have for you, it only goes so far, do you follow?"

  Gav nodded.

  "Now I've been straight with you since the beginning, haven't I? I asked you in here the other week and I sat you down and I told you that I can't stay here behind this desk, do you remember?" Bigelow leaned over to one side, his bulk squashed against the arm of the chair, and removed a pack of Dunhills from his pocket. He slid the drawer in the gold and burgundy pack, offered it to Gav, then put a cigarette in his mouth. "I said to you, did I not, that the situation – my situation, or our situation" – he lit the cigarette, puffed once – "is change or die. That the doctor said that to me, and that I thought it fit our current business quite nicely. So the question, Gavin, isn't am I going to sell the place? That's a given. The question is, who am I going to sell it to?" He raised his eyebrows. "Hmm?"

  "I don't know, Mr Bigelow."

  Bigelow frowned. "Oh, come on, Gavin, you don't need to do that."

  "I don't know what else to say." Gav shrugged. He wasn't going to call the bastard Neil, was he? "I mean, this is your offer—"

  "You know I'd rather sell to someone like yourself. Someone who works here, someone who knows the ropes. Someone who's going to make a go of it. But I've got to be practical about this."

  "Your other offers." Gav nodded. "Right."

  "Much higher than that, too."

  "Well, I appreciate you telling us. Good of you. But if you've had other offers, and they're better than fifty thousand, then you should take one."

  "You think so?"

  "If those other offers are serious."

  Bigelow smiled. "Why wouldn't they be serious?"

  "Because the business isn't even worth the fifty grand."

  The smile twisted. "All due respect, Gavin—"

  "All due respect yourself, but you're asking me because you know I'm going to do something with the place. Nobody else is, are they? They're going to be looking to strip and sell. And the way I totted it up, even leaning on the top end, the fleet and the office aren't even going to make twenty-five. And you want to throw in redundancies on top of that ..." Gav shook his head. He wanted to look away, but forced himself to stare right at Bigelow. "Doesn't make sense."

  "It doesn't have to."

  Still playing placid, and that was when Gav realised that, for Bigelow, this was the fun part of the family game. Except Neil wasn't one of the Pilgrim Street Bigelows, not really. He might have sported the surname, but Gav suddenly got the feeling that he was dealing with the runt of the Bigelow litter. This Bigelow wasn't a roller like his brothers and he never would be, which was why he was stuck with a heart condition and an underperforming cab business. This Bigelow was back office, junior admin, had no real ambition beyond stuffing his face and living an easy one. And even if his ambition did tease him with bigger and better things, Gav doubted that he had either the talent or the tenacity to do anything about it.

  The sad thing was that Bigelow didn't even know it. But Gav did. "So is that it, or are you open to negotiation?"

  "There's no harm in talking." Bigelow looked at his watch. "You're not on shift yet, are you?"

  "No."

  "Okay, then why don't you enlighten me? What's your idea of a fair price?"

  "Something I can get a loan on."

  "Remortgage?"

  "Yes."

  "What's the house worth?"

  "Not much."

  "Local authority, is it?"

  "Council, yes. Right to buy."

  "So you wouldn't get a hundred per cent on it anyway."

  "I wasn't going to do that."

  "What were you going to do?"

  Gav paused. He swallowed an excess of spit. "I was thinking ten grand, all in."

  Bigelow laughed. Stopped to stare at Gav, then laughed again, harder this time. He leaned forward and ri
pped the top sheet from the pad, balled it, swivelled in his chair and binned the ball. Then he turned back to Gav, shaking his head in apparent, but too dramatic to be genuine, disbelief. "Ten grand, eh?"

  "That's right." Gav remained still.

  "Ten grand ... Got to say, Gavin, I admire your nerve."

  "Thank you."

  "I know you'll do a great job running the place, too. But ten grand? Ten grand isn't a deal."

  "It is to me."

  "No, of course it is." More laughter, another shake of the head.

  "And it's more than what the fleet and office are worth."

  "Ah, see, and that's where you've gone wrong, Gavin." Bigelow waved a hand. "It's okay. It's an elementary mistake. You're looking at individual assets when you should be looking at the business as a whole. Now when you're talking about the fleet, you need to—"

  "How long have I worked here, Mr Bigelow?"

  Bigelow's mouth hung open. He closed it. He didn't know.

  "I'll tell you: fifteen years."

  "Really?"

  "Long time, isn't it? And in all that time, I've never earned even close to the kind of money you've been talking about. You know that. You paid us. So you know I couldn't afford that price, so what is it?"

  "Now, Gavin, I told you, that was a fair price."

  "It was an insult, that's what it was. It was a fifty grand smack in the face. It was you telling us that you didn't think I was worth your time, so you thought you'd have a laugh at my expense."

  Bigelow held up a hand. "Come on, Gavin, that's not true. You don't have to take it personally—"

  "I always take it personally when someone's taking the piss."

  "I'm not ... Really, listen to me, Gavin—"

  "If you're honestly showing us fifty grand because you've got a similar offer from someone else, then you take that other offer, because they're a mug. Me, I'll run the place until the handover, but you're the one who's going to have to tell the lads to look for another job."

  Bigelow watched him. He moved his lips in and out against his steepled fingers. No longer smiling, no longer joking.

  "But you're not going to do that, are you? Because you don't have another offer. My ten's the only one you've got. It's the only offer you're going to get an' all."