by Paul Finch
Clearly, Laidlaw was here to discuss business with Jayne McIvar, because he then disappeared into her private office.
But more frightening than any of these characters, and more of a loose cannon generally because house-rules just didn’t apply to her – as Lucy was imminently to discover – was Jayne McIvar’s sister, Suzy, who was official Head of Security at the club. The first Lucy saw of her came half an hour after Laidlaw had been admitted to Jayne’s office, when Suzy walked quickly downstairs, crossed the vestibule, opened Jayne’s door without knocking and slammed it closed behind her.
Similarly beautiful to her sister, but in a wilder, more tigerish way, Suzy wore her orangey-red hair in long dreads bound together at the nape of her neck, and a stud through her left eyebrow. She was slightly taller than Jayne and of a heavier build, as if she worked out, but there was no mistaking her female shape, even though it was currently clad in rocker attire: a tasselled black leather jacket worn over a black T-shirt bearing a blood-and-thunder metal band logo, tight jeans with a studded black leather belt, and spike-heeled, black leather boots. Her fingernails, which, whether real or false, looked lethally long and sharp, were painted bright green. There was one curiosity: on Suzy’s left hand she wore a single, fingerless glove. After she had vanished into the office, Delilah confided in Lucy that this was to conceal a nasty scar.
Apparently, as a rumbustious kid in Longsight, Suzy McIvar had annoyed a local all-male gang by asking to join them. In retaliation, they dragged her into a derelict garage and gang-raped her. She somehow managed to tolerate all that, misguidedly thinking it a kind of initiation test. But afterwards, when one of them produced a carton of battery acid, which he intended to drizzle on her face, she fought back crazily, breaking two of their skulls with an iron bar, and raking another’s face – she had claws even then – so severely that his teeth were exposed through his cheeks. Suzy didn’t come out of the fight entirely unscathed, having at one point to fend off the acid as it was thrown. It drenched her left hand, rendering it a shrivelled talon for ever more, but at least it missed her face.
All of this tied in with the warnings given about Suzy McIvar beforehand, as did an incident several minutes later when Lucy heard muffled shouting behind the door to the office. It was a voice she hadn’t heard previously, almost certainly Suzy’s, and it was so sharp and fierce, and rose so rapidly in volume, that she could soon hear every word.
‘You think you can badmouth us whenever you fucking feel like it, Curtis! Is that what you’re saying?’
There was a mumbled response. It sounded like ‘no, no way’.
‘You think you can say what you want in this fucking town?’ Despite being clearly audible already, Suzy’s voice continued to rise, to steadily intensify. ‘You think you’ve earned that right?’
Unlike her sister, Suzy had evidently taken no elocution lessons, and still spoke – or rather shrieked – with the hard vowels and glottal consonants of inner Manchester.
As before, the response was only semi-coherent.
‘Answer the fucking question, you little shit! Do you think you own this fucking city? Tell – the – fucking – truth! Do not make things worse by lying!’
‘Course I don’t …’ Lucy heard Laidlaw stammer. ‘Suzy, come on …’
‘Course you fucking don’t! Bang fucking right! So why the fuck …’
Another customer approached the counter, seemingly oblivious to the tirade in the office, briefly distracting Lucy from her eavesdropping. When he’d departed and she had taken care of his coat, it was still going on. It was now echoingly loud in the vestibule, so it must have literally been deafening inside the office.
‘So how are you going to fix it?’ Suzy wanted to know.
Again, Laidlaw’s next response was only semi-audible.
‘Answer the fucking question! How are you going to fucking fix it?’
Laidlaw gave some meandering, long-winded response.
‘What … what did you fucking say? Are you serious? Are you taking the piss, Curtis! Because your life’s on the fucking line right now! I’m telling you.’
Lucy couldn’t help eyeing Delilah, who gave a relieved little shrug, as if to say, ‘Hey, count your blessings … that could be one of us in there.’
‘What’s to stop me killing you right now, I hear you ask?’ Suzy ranted on. ‘Well … nothing! Sweet fuck all!’
Someone else spoke, presumably Jayne McIvar, as it was calmer, more controlled, only for Suzy to tear in again before Laidlaw could respond.
‘Where’re your boys when you need them?’ she wondered scornfully. ‘I’ll tell you, Curtis … sitting at home with limp dicks and sweaty faces. You know why? Because they were too fucking frightened to come here … and with good fucking reason. But that won’t keep them safe, I can promise. Once we’ve finished with you, we’ll come after them! You know why, you treacherous, smart-arsed little shitbag …? For the simple reason they’re your fucking mates. And when we’ve done them we’ll go after your family … and all their fucking families …’
There was a further mumble of additional other voices.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Suzy howled. ‘Don’t open that slimy yap of yours when Jayne’s speaking … the only reason not to fucking kill you on the spot – right here, right now – is so you can put this thing right first. So don’t get fucking smart, Curtis. You weren’t born with the brains of a fucking slug. In fact, get on your fucking knees. Now … do it now, you degenerate, scum-sucking prick!’
Lucy glanced again at Delilah, whose head was down, who would no longer meet her colleague’s gaze.
‘ON YOUR KNEES NOW!’
Lucy swallowed hard, wondering if they were about to hear a gunshot.
‘You little shit! You little bitch faggot. You think you’re the fucking man because you know a few names in Afghanistan and Morocco? You think that cuts any fucking ice with us?… What? What did you say?’
‘I’m sorry …’ Lucy heard Laidlaw’s voice clearly for the first time. He too was shouting, but in desperation, in panic-stricken terror; it was impossible to equate it with the cool dude who’d breezed his way in earlier. ‘I said I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise …’
‘You fucking let us down again, Curtis … you wise off when our people come around, and they’ll be taking your body home in a fucking bucket! Last fucking chance … you hear? I SAID DO YOU FUCKING HEAR!’
‘Yes, yes, I hear,’ he blathered.
‘I CAN’T FUCKING HEAR YOU!’
And so it went on, for another ten minutes or so, Laidlaw all but begging, Suzy issuing apocalyptic threats, until the door suddenly burst open again and the McIvars’ guest tottered out. Gone was the smooth customer, in his place a staggering, goggle-eyed scarecrow of a man, whose shirt hung wetly open on xylophone ribs, whose bleached curls hung on his brow in damp ringlets, and who blundered towards the brothel exit without seeing anything else or any other person.
Suzy McIvar appeared in the office door, and watched him go. A sheen of perspiration gleamed on her own brow, but her mouth was twisted into an angry but satisfied smile. She turned, her eyes briefly locking with Lucy’s. Lucy averted her gaze.
With a resounding bang, the heavy office door slammed closed again.
Chapter 17
‘Mr Todd, your taxi’s here, sir!’ Marissa called.
Lucy probably wouldn’t have thought anything of this, except that Mr Todd – a tall, balding chap in a purple blazer and tie, both bearing the same serpentine public school crest – who now approached the coat-check counter to reclaim his overcoat and scarf, was someone who had only deposited them there about ten minutes earlier. He said nothing of course; merely smiled at her, and then graciously departed the building.
Even then it might not have seemed curious had it not happened a couple of times already.
Lucy had been working at the brothel for three nights now, and had noticed on various occasions that some of the customers – not ma
ny, just a few – seemed to come for the company and a drink rather than the girls. They’d sit at one of the bars, chatting with the other customers, and then, after quarter of an hour or so, Marissa, dolled up to the nines herself in the evening, would call their names out and announce the arrival of their taxi.
In the light of this, it was impossible not to recollect Tammy’s cryptic warning about the so-called “SugaBabes Taxi Service”. Whether this had any relevance to that was uncertain – who knew what was going on inside Tammy’s head? – but ever since that semi-unintelligible conversation, Lucy had kept half an eye out for anything anomalous involving a taxi.
Not that she had much time to worry about it on this particular evening, because half an hour later she finally encountered members of the Crew.
No one introduced them to her officially, but that wasn’t necessary – their mugshots were plastered all over the walls back in the Ripper Chicks office. In addition, they were treated like royalty the second they entered the place, Marissa and even Jayne McIvar busy-bodying around them frenetically.
The first of them was near enough the scariest bloke Lucy had ever seen. Apparently his name was Mick Shallicker, or so Delilah whispered in a consciously awe-stricken voice. Lucy estimated that he stood six foot nine inches tall, in addition to which he was massively framed, and yet he moved with lithe, athletic grace; there was nothing clumsy or awkward about him. Needless to say, his face was terrifying in its own right: square-jawed, heavy browed, with sunken, apelike eyes and a broad mouth full of slabby yellow teeth. It was nicked and scarred aplenty, but not as excessively as these guys’ faces usually were. Lucy suspected this was because very few of his opponents had ever been able to throw a punch high enough. His preferred clothing appeared to be a black suit and a thick, black roll-neck sweater. There was something vaguely stylish about that, though the lump of gum he noisily chewed on put paid to any impression it might have given that he was a sophisticated guy.
This was explained when Delilah told Lucy that Shallicker was mainly muscle. Apparently, he only ever appeared as a minder to Crew underboss and – if Lucy remembered rightly – Shakedown merchant, Frank McCracken.
It was McCracken himself who was the first Crew member she actually spoke to.
Like all the others, McCracken brought her his coat, scarf and gloves. Up close, he was every bit as menacing as his reputation, but in his case because he was cruelly handsome: lean-faced, with dark, brooding eyes, diamond-cut features and that razored shock of silver-grey hair. His well-tailored, pale-grey suit had Savile Row written all over it.
Lucy avoided making eye contact as he handed his garb over, but for some reason, during the process, she caught his attention. She sensed him scrutinising her as she tore him a cloakroom ticket and pushed it across the counter.
‘We know each other from somewhere, darling?’ he wondered.
His accent was ‘Albert Finney’ Manchester: tough, raw, easily betraying its working class origins, and yet moderated slightly as though from years of mixing with the right people.
Lucy’s hapless smile was an attempt to conceal her rising anxiety. Was it possible she’d run into him on the job without realising?
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
McCracken lingered at the counter, the giant Shallicker hovering behind him, still noisily chewing. ‘I’m sure we’ve met somewhere before.’
‘I honestly don’t think so.’
‘Problem, Frank?’ Suzy McIvar asked, approaching.
McCracken shrugged. ‘Nah, no problem.’ He winked at Lucy. ‘Sorry, love … ignore me. Getting dizzy in my old age.’
Suzy McCracken gave Lucy a curious once-over, before escorting the gang-boss away.
And that appeared to be that. Up until now, Suzy McIvar hadn’t even noticed that a new staff member was present, and McCracken himself didn’t seem interested in making an issue of it. In fact, for the next couple of nights the Crew lieutenant mingled easily and comfortably with the other customers, spoke to the girls politely when they came downstairs, and generally conducted himself like the civilised man he definitely wasn’t.
Until Lucy’s sixth night working there.
It was around eleven o’clock and she was on her first break of the shift. At the rear of the cloakroom, a narrow fire-exit door connected with a small, walled yard. There was no further egress via this route. The yard had once possessed an outer gate, but that had been bricked up in recent times to provide extra security. The coat-check girls took staggered breaks, so Delilah would go out into the yard for the first hour; she kept a deckchair out there under a stoop, where she could sit and smoke and read a gossip mag by the light from the open door. Lucy didn’t smoke, but willingly went out when it was her own turn, slumped into the deckchair, nibbled a butty, sipped from a flask of coffee and tried to get her thoughts in order.
On this particular night, she’d been outside only five minutes when she heard a car screech up on the other side of the wall, a couple of doors bang open and feet come clomping across the cobbled road and up the narrow passage to the club’s entrance. More car doors opened and closed, and then there was a grunting, hissing and a subdued but prolonged swearing.
She stood up, ears suddenly straining.
More feet sounded in the entry passage, this time making their way back out to the road, but in leisurely fashion.
‘Well, well … Pixie,’ a voice said. It was Frank McCracken’s. ‘Seems you’ve been on the rob again?’
Lucy knew she couldn’t let this pass. On one hand, common sense bade her go back into the club and close the fire door behind her, but the hell with that. Thus far she’d gleaned nothing of value from her time at SugaBabes; whether this thing would turn out to be relevant to the case or not, she had to start poking her nose around.
Trying to climb the wall and look down the other side would only attract attention. But there was an older section of brickwork to the right of the point where the gate had once been. Numerous chinks had appeared there where grouting had rotted and bricks had dislodged. She placed her eye at one such and was just able to see the unfolding scene beyond.
Two heavies had climbed from a dark green BMW, and, between them, were restraining a short, thin man with a mop of black curly hair, wearing blue tracksuit pants and a baggy pink sweater, both of which were already stained with blood. He had a youthful face, but even from this restricted angle he struck Lucy as one of those who maybe wasn’t quite as young as he appeared. On this occasion, of course, that face was already half-pulverised, its nose broken sideways, gore glutting the nostrils and dripping down over the twisted mouth. This ugly sight didn’t faze McCracken, who ambled across the road with hands tucked into the pockets of his suit trousers, Mick Shallicker in tow.
‘What stone was he under, Nicko?’ McCracken asked one of the beaten man’s captors.
‘Lying in bed with his bird,’ came a grunted reply. ‘Like he had nowt to worry about.’
McCracken shook his head. ‘Never saw the bigger picture, our Pixie, did he?’
‘Please,’ the man called Pixie whimpered, fresh blood bubbling from his nose.
‘How long you been out, Pixie?’ McCracken asked.
‘I’ve not … I’ve not done nothing, Mr McCracken …’
‘I didn’t ask you that, I asked you how long you’ve been out.’
‘Year … year and a half.’
‘A year and a half, and already you’re at it again.’
‘I said I haven’t …’
‘I heard you the first time, you little twat. But it’s a lie, isn’t it?’ There was no anger in McCracken’s voice. He spoke matter-of-factly; only half-interestedly, as if this whole thing had become a tedious routine. ‘Everyone knows it’s a fucking lie. You and your team have been at it again. This year alone … two big townhouses down in Wilmslow. Plus a farmhouse out in Delamere Forest … way out there in the lovely Cheshire countryside. Every time the same thing. Three blokes wearing ski masks, one pis
tol each. Occupants battered and tied up. If they aren’t forthcoming about the safe and other valuables, one of the burglars gets to work on their toes with a set of pliers. Doesn’t usually take long after that, does it, Pixie? Properties get ransacked. High-quality merchandise only. Always a decent haul.’
‘It … wasn’t me,’ Pixie stammered. ‘I’m keeping my nose clean these days.’
‘That’s the last lie you’ll tell me, you little turd, if you know what’s good for you.’
Pixie hung his head, coughing, hawking up blood.
‘All together, these three breaks have netted you … how much?’ McCracken asked.
‘Mr McCracken … please!’
‘According to the newspapers, it’s at least three hundred grand’s worth.’
‘But it’s … it’s not cash,’ Pixie stuttered. ‘So we can’t divi it up that easy.’
‘So … what?’ McCracken feigned astonishment. ‘We don’t get paid?’ He chuckled. ‘Is that seriously what you’re trying to tell us, Pix?’
‘It takes time. There’s stuff to fence, you know?’
‘Ah, so … you actually were going to pay what you owe, just at some point in the future?’
‘Yeah, yeah, sure … same arrangement as always.’
‘Except … you didn’t tell us you were back in the game.’
‘There wasn’t time, Mr McCracken.’
‘But there was time to lie in bed with that skanky bird of yours.’
‘Look … I can get the money in a couple of weeks. Soon as we’ve unloaded enough stuff. The jewellery alone should fetch a hundred grand.’
‘Trouble is, Pix … it’s two hundred.’
Pixie’s eyes widened in his blood-spattered face. ‘That’s two thirds …’
McCracken nodded, chuckled again. ‘And that’s not the end of it, either.’
He signalled to one of the heavies, who came around from the other side of the BMW with a string and brown paper parcel. Cheerfully, McCracken unwrapped it, shaking out what looked like a transparent plastic raincoat, and a pair of transparent plastic gloves.
