The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller)

by Martin Stanley

  “We don’t have that big a stash,” I said.

  “Thirty grand each, plus our stake, is better than nowt,” my brother replied. “We could last well over a year on that chunk of change, like.”

  I snorted. “We could if you didn’t gamble your fuckin’ cash away all the time.”

  “I can control it.”

  “Yeah, right. Remember that bare knuckle fight you spunked your money on last year?”

  My brother shook his head and looked out of the window.

  “What was his name again? How much did you lay down on that glass jaw?”

  His breath fogged the glass.

  “Oh, that’s right, everything. You blew the lot on a kid who stung like a butterfly and floated like a bee.”

  “Ollie said he was fuckin’ mint.”

  “Ollie Garland hasn’t picked a winner in years, and he sure as shite hasn’t trained one up for a decade. What little common sense he had was punched out of his skull years ago.”

  My brother’s mouth tightened. “Point taken,” he said.

  “Is it?”

  He turned his glare on me. “You’ve made your fuckin’ point.”

  “I don’t think I have,” I said, shaking my head. “If you blow your money next time you’re on your own. I won’t carry you financially, not any more.”

  My brother turned the key. He revved a few times and pulled away from the curb.

  “You still wanna see Rose?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine. But don’t expect me to wait around. You find your own way home tonight.”

  7. – Owden

  “PENNY FOR ‘em, lad?” Bob Owden asked.

  Jimmy Raffin remained silent, concentrating on the winding country road, illuminated by the glare of the high beams. Bob leaned across the passenger seat, squeezed his shoulder, and said: “You still think them lads were black?”

  Jimmy glanced at him. “Until proven otherwise.”

  Dark purple rings bulged beneath his eyes and his usually chiselled face was puffy from too much caffeine and too little sleep, which was understandable due to the fact somebody had sliced up his girlfriend the week before. Bob could almost feel the tension coming off him, radiating out like heat waves.

  Jimmy was usually clearheaded about things like this, always prepared to look at both sides of the argument, so Bob put his pig-headedness down to lack of sleep and worry. “Why so unwilling to consider the alternative?” he asked.

  “Because revenge makes sense,” Jimmy said. “The alternative doesn’t.”

  “Since when did that mean owt?”

  The BMW hit the bends at high speed but clung to the wet road like it was on rails. Trees and shrubs loomed out of the darkness into the dazzle of the beams before disappearing back into the shadows of the night. In the distance, window lights sparkled like diamonds in the blackness and just beyond them, on the other side of Roseberry Topping’s gloomy jutting peak, the sky glowed red with industrial light pollution.

  “You think Hollis was bent?” Jimmy asked.

  “I know Hollis were bent, lad,” Bob said, smiling. Hollis was a crook, so it went without saying he was bent, but what Bob needed to know was just how bent he actually was? How much money had Hollis been cutting him out of over the years?

  Jimmy snorted a scornful laugh. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Facetiousness aside, yes, I think Hollis were bent. I think he were running a sideline I didn’t know about. And I think his death were about something more than just revenge.”

  “So we hold off on hitting the local black scumbags?”

  Bob’s smile faded. “Do you wanna fight with Uncle Jack?”

  “I couldn’t give a shit.”

  “Well, I could.”

  “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  Bob’s mouth went narrow and tight for a moment. “I’m afraid of no man, James, but I’m no idiot, either. If you think I’m going to risk everything over some idiotic speculation you’ve got another thing coming. You’re not thinking clearly, which is my fault for not giving you enough sleep, but you know as well as I do that hitting Uncle Jack’s lads is a mistake.”

  The aftermath of Hollis’ original killings had led to months of reprisals and almost outright gang warfare. The two murdered men were footsoldiers for ‘Uncle’ Jack Samson, a local businessman and crook. Jack denied involvement in the attempted robbery, claiming that they were acting alone, but wanted permission to kill Hollis for his part in their murders. Bob refused his request and told him that Jimmy would break Hollis’ legs instead as a warning. This didn’t go far enough for Samson, who responded by having a couple of Bob’s men kneecapped.

  Bob struck back with immediate effect, burning down a club that Samson owned. Uncle Jack had one of his men drive a pick-up truck through the front entrance of Bob’s swankiest restaurant. This led to an ever-escalating war of tit-for-tat, until people started disappearing, though more from Jack’s side than Bob’s. Finally, several high-ranking police officers and local councillors on Bob’s payroll warned him that he was going to lose his political influence and favours if it continued for much longer. He arranged a meeting with Samson, where they thrashed out their differences. Uncle Jack still wasn’t happy that John Hollis would get away with murdering his men, but realised that the longer they fought the more they both stood to lose. Jack agreed to back down as long as Bob had his construction team fix up his ruined businesses for a reduced price.

  And a long, uneasy truce had ensued.

  Until now.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Jimmy said with a long sigh. He cut the beams as another car approached and kept them off as the first streetlights of a small village came into view. For the first time he seemed to have relaxed.

  “How’s Rose?”

  Jimmy’s shoulders tightened again until his back hunched. He clenched the steering wheel. Bob looked at him closely, noticing the live-wire flex of his jaw muscles as they popped wildly beneath the skin.

  “I take it not good?”

  “We split up.”

  “Why?” Bob asked. He remembered a couple of dates with Rose Bennett when she was still McGarvey. The marriage was over in all but name when they had dated, but people made a thing of it anyway, at least until Bob told them to mind their own business or else. He’d liked Rose, even though, at thirty years his junior, she was far too young for him.

  Jimmy shrugged some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Because I broke it off.”

  “The scars?” Bob asked.

  Some maniacs had carved up the faces of Rose and her little girl just over a week ago, not long after the Stokesley Slaughterhouse tore into his life. Bob had visited her in hospital as soon as he heard but hadn’t been prepared for the bile she poured in his direction – wild accusations about Eric and Derek Stanton forcing her to watch as they sliced her daughter, shortly before stealing several grand from the house safe. Like the Stokesley Slaughterhouse, there was something about the tale that didn’t ring true.

  The Stantons were violent scum, but they weren’t psychopaths. As far as he knew they’d never hurt young children before, and avoided dealers’ families whenever possible. Their business was about financial gain not wholesale carnage, and slicing up a mother and daughter for six grand didn’t seem like their MO. They hit dealers, they hit pimps, they hit anybody with stashes that were worth the effort, that couldn’t and wouldn’t get reported to the police. This approach had served them well for several years, during which time they had stayed off the police radar. For them to change tack now made no sense. Bob was a firm believer in the adage that you shouldn’t change a winning formula, and Eric Stanton struck him as somebody with the same outlook.

  Rose had pleaded with Bob to put a hit on the brothers, but there was something about the manner of her plea that made him hold off – although that didn’t stop the story from spreading. The rumour was he was so furious he’d put a hundred grand bounty on their heads. If they�
�d sliced up a child he’d be only too happy to help them take a one-way trip into the soil, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend a hundred grand doing it, and he definitely wasn’t going to do it without knowing for certain.

  “Yes, the scars,” Jimmy said with another glance at Bob.

  There was emptiness in Jimmy that Bob hadn’t seen before. He looked like a perfect wax copy of the man he knew so well, though there was nothing behind the eyes. Something was eating away at Jimmy, something beyond what had happened to his girlfriend. Bob wanted to ask Jimmy about Rose’s accusations, thought he might benefit by talking, but now wasn’t the time. He’d leave it till later.

  He looked out of the window and let Jimmy drive him home in silence.

  8. – Stanton

  MY BROTHER dropped me off beside a thicket of pine trees and drove away. The sound of the downpour battering the branches was a continuous, deafening roar. I covered my eyes with my hand and watched until his rear-lights disappeared behind the heavy curtain of rain. Part of me hoped he would turn around and come back, but I knew this wasn’t going to happen. Cold droplets the size of marbles smashed into my face. I wiped the stream out of my eyes and pulled up my hood. It didn’t offer very much protection from the deluge, but at least I could see. Just about.

  I crossed the road, jumped a fence and forced my way through twenty metres of thick shrubs and brambles until I was at the bottom of a large garden. I could just about make out the rear of Rose’s house about fifty metres away.

  Treading carefully, I walked across the neatly cut grass, trying not to slip. The ground squelched beneath me and in places small pools formed in waterlogged soil. I made my way to a paved patio and a set of imposing French doors. I figured that Rose would have beefed up security after the attack, so decided not to break in that way. Instead, I went towards the kitchen door, crouched down and worked the mortise lock. I struggled to work the picks into the right places because the rain had made them slippery to the touch. A thirty-second job became five minutes of struggle, and the cylindrical lock was even trickier; it took another ten minutes of effort before I got the door open.

  The kitchen was dark, quiet and smelled of baked goods and cinnamon. I listened for sounds of movement but heard only the persistent hiss of the rain.

  I took off my shoes and tiptoed into the lounge. The darkness made the room seem even bigger than I remembered. I crept towards the hallway, though didn’t make it very far. A loud cough halted my progress.

  Whoever coughed was in the same room.

  And they were behind me.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you?” a muffled voice said.

  9. – Owden

  JIMMY DROPPED Bob beside his front gate and drove away without saying goodnight. Under normal circumstances he would have been offended by the slight, but Jimmy looked so distracted and out of it that Bob put it down to tiredness and let it slide.

  He pulled his jacket tight and buttoned it, although it did little to protect him from the heavy rain. He pulled a key fob from his jacket pocket and pressed the button.

  The big electric gate rolled open with a loud squeak. Bob put both hands in his pockets and rushed up the tree-lined gravel driveway, wishing that it wasn’t quite so long. Sensors caught his movement and bathed the grounds with halogen glare from tall floodlights set back from the path. Bob cut through a small, dense copse of sycamore trees that shielded his property from curious eyes. He emerged onto a gritted parking lot, overlooked by a large sandstone farmhouse that had been lovingly restored and extended.

  Moving towards his front door, Bob pressed another fob that saved him from having to turn it off via a panel. A loud ping let him know that it was disarmed.

  Bob was fiddling with his keys on the doorstep when he sensed something. His free hand moved towards a holster beneath his jacket when he heard a deep, breathy voice behind him.

  “Not here for no fight,” it whispered.

  Bob turned on his heels. He was facing a tall black man with grey, tightly cropped curls and a baggy jogging sweatpants and sweatshirt combo that looked drum-skin tight on his obese frame. He jiggled unpleasantly as he came towards the doorstep.

  Bob twitched his head left and right, in the direction of the trees. His fingers brushed the gun butt and trigger guard, ready to draw at a moment’s notice.

  “Ain’t go nobody with me,” the man said. “And if I’s come here with Milo you’d already be dead, boy.”

  Bob relaxed slightly, but kept his hand near the gun.

  The man rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner, lifted his sweatshirt and displayed the undulating rolls of flab that encased his body. The sight turned Bob’s stomach; he wondered how anybody could let themselves go so badly.

  The man let his sweatshirt drop. “As you can make out, I ain’t got no gun, neither.”

  “How’d you get in, Jack?” Bob asked, looking him up and down. “You’re not exactly built for climbing seven-foot walls.”

  Jack Samson chuckled. “Came in when you went out,” he replied. “Just crept through the closing door as you and Raffin was driving away. Pretty lax security, my man. Was actually going to press the button and get you to let me in, but when you came steaming outta your place, looking fired up, I’s figured it might be best to catch you unawares once you’d simmered down.”

  Bob looked at all the security lights blazing and the hi-tech cameras and realised that he still wasn’t safe. “Thanks for the heads up. Better beef up my security.”

  “Happy to help, my man.”

  “So now we’ve got that out of the way. Why’re you here, Jack?”

  A big white and gold smile parted his lips. “To assuage any foolish notions you might have that it’s my boys that hit John Hollis the other week. The Stokesley Slaughterhouse was some fucked up shit, and if I was you I’s be looking for revenge. Just wanna make sure you ain’t looking in the wrong place.”

  “You saying them lads – BeatDown and KeLo – weren’t yours?”

  “No. I’s saying that this shit’s got nothing to do with me.”

  Bob took another look towards the trees and unlocked the door. He held it open for Jack.

  “Then I guess you’d better come in.”

  10. – Stanton

  “GO ON; tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you,” the muffled voice said again. I knew it was Rose – her voice stifled by stitches and surgical gauze.

  I heard a soft snick and low light threw the room into sharp relief. Dark shadows cut across the floor and my silhouette stretched in the direction of the hallway door. Lifting my hands slowly, I turned towards her.

  Rose sat in an armchair near the fireplace. On a small table beside her was a shaded lamp. She had the on-off button in her right hand and her thumb brushed along it, as though she was pondering whether to press it again. In her left was a cocked and loaded revolver. Her hand was shaking and her finger tightened against the trigger. The frown that knitted her brows together told me everything I needed to know about her mood. She was angry and ready to kill. I decided not to make any sudden moves.

  Surgical gauze and tape swaddled the lower half of her face. Blood had seeped through the dressings and dried to a darkening crust. Fresh purple rings bulged beneath the dark sockets of her eyes, and the skin around her cheekbones hung loosely.

  It was hard to believe that just two weeks earlier Rose Bennett had been breathtakingly beautiful. But Eddie Miles had ruined that beauty the moment he carved a Glasgow Grin into her face. She blamed me for this. I knew that if I didn’t start talking fast I’d be on the receiving end of a bullet.

  “Because Bob Owden wouldn’t be able to kill me later,” I said.

  Rose snorted. “If it didn’t hurt so much I’d laugh.”

  “At least you’ve retained your sense of humour.”

  “It’s about the only thing I have left.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Not about you,” I said. “You got
what you deserved. But I wish to Christ your daughter hadn’t …” I let the sentence drift into silence, because I didn’t really know what to say.

  Lifting her hand from the light switch, Rose pointed at the bloody bandages. “I deserved this, did I?”

  “You don’t fuck over your partners.”

  “And you think this is a valid price to pay?”

  “Valid has nowt to do with it. We’re both criminals, sweetheart. We gave up validity a long fuckin’ time ago in exchange for stealing and killing.”

  “Fuck you,” she replied like a surly teenager.

  “Don’t get all high and mighty on me. You brain damaged a girl with a stiletto because you didn’t like her, and you were gonna have me and my brother killed because of plain old fuckin’ greed. You’re the same breed of pond-life as me, you just live in a fancier pool is all.”

  Rose’s brows creased. Webs of stress lines formed around her eyes. She began to shake. Her finger went tight around the trigger. She was fighting the urge to shoot me there and then. That gave me a chance to get her onside.

  “Me and my brother might be cunts, but we’ve never fucked over our partners. When G-Max stole your money from us, we coulda kept our mouths shut. But I told you about it and I told you we’d get the money back. And despite all the hoops we jumped through for you, despite the fact that people died for that money, you were gonna cut me and my brother out of our share – you and your boyfriend, Raffin.”

  “Ex-boyfriend.” she said.

  “Ex?”

  Rose tugged at the gauze. “Who wants a dolly bird that looks like the Joker?”

  I waved my hand at the sofa. “Can I sit down?”

  “Why?”

  “So we can talk. Properly.”

  “Not really much to say.”

  I shrugged. “Dunno about that. Most people’d wonder why you’re sitting in the dark with a gun in your hand.”

  “Try waking up in the middle of the night and see three masked men looking down at you. Try getting dragged out of bed and man-handled downstairs. Try getting smacked around whilst they ask you for a safe combination. Then try being forced to suck their cocks and swallow their loads. And while you’re still gagging on that little lot, try getting a brand new smile cut into your face.”