McMaster grinned and leaned forward. “I wanna hang around.”
I laughed without humour, shaking my head. “The floorboards, right?”
“One thing I trust is my instinct.”
“And you want our help, right?”
He shrugged. “I overheard your phone call,” he said. “Quid pro quo. I can help you tomorrow night. I help you relieve Eddie of his life, and you help me relieve him of the rest of his money.”
“If it’s there?”
McMaster gave me a toothy smile. “Fair point,” he said. “Either way, it’s a fair trade. A little bit of your time for a little bit of mine.”
“And our share of whatever’s under those floorboards?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll play, but only if we have the time,” I said. “We’ll have to get rid of the bodies when it’s over. It’ll take time to get them to Gary Feldman’s place for disposal.”
“This is a risk worth taking,” McMaster said. “It’s worth making time for.”
I stared at him. “How much did we get from the safe?”
“Thirty four.”
“On top of the hundred we’re taking outta the bag. That’s nearly forty-five gees apiece.”
“Your point being?”
“My point is that forty-five grand is a good fuckin’ take. And I’m not gonna risk all that on a hunch, even an educated one, if we don’t have the time.”
McMaster nodded, unable to hide his disappointment. He’d expected me to jump at the money. I’m not sure if he understood the reasons for my reticence but I wasn’t going to explain it to him. He’d either accept my decision and stick around on the off-chance that I would change my mind or he’d take his car, his plasma cutter and be on his way.
I don’t believe in Karma, religion, luck, or any of the other bullshit that people use as excuses for not taking responsibility for their lives, but I did believe that we were taking the kind of risks that would sooner or later get us killed. Every now and again when I blinked I saw brief flashes of Gerald Maxwell behind my eyelids, his corpse in pieces. Sometimes it was John Hollis and associates taking shotgun blasts to the head. Other times it was an imagined Emily McGarvey, cut and bleeding in her mother’s arms. The images reminded me of my mortality; that this life I was leading could be ruined or ended in the blink of an eye. Better to enjoy what I had now, than risk it all on something that might not exist. I wasn’t sure whether McMaster would understand that. To be honest, I didn’t much care.
I wanted to wipe these images away, replace them with something pleasant. A golden Thai beach, awash with pretty tanned women, on a warm, sunny afternoon, seemed like as good a place as any. It was nearly time to leave for as long as our money would last.
“I’ll understand if you wanna bail,” I said. “But I’m not saying no, just that it’ll be tight and it might not happen.”
He smiled and nodded. “Shit. If it comes down to it, I’ll go in there on my own. I’ll stick around for a while, if you don’t mind.”
I grinned back. “The more the merrier.”
I went into the kitchen and grabbed McMaster’s keys off one of the work surfaces and walked back to the living room. “If you’re hanging around I’m gonna take your car for a while.”
McMaster shrugged. “Go for it.”
My brother raised his eyes to mine. “Where you going?”
“This plan of mine needs some professional back up,” I said. “We can’t do this fuckin’ thing alone. I’m gonna go get some help.”
58. – Owden
BOB OPENED the car door and stepped into the night. The air was cool and a light breeze brushed his face. He leaned against a fence post that bordered a pasture, took a few deep breaths and tried to think.
It didn’t take much thinking for Bob to come to the conclusion that if the Hollis footage went to the press it was all over with a big, fat capital O.
The police who had helped fabricate the story (for a price) would be the first to sell him out to save their careers or avoid prison, and the inevitable shankings and rapes that lay within for disgraced members of the constabulary. The participants at Hollis’ fictional poker game would recant their stories and claim threats and intimidation to wriggle out from under possible prison sentences. There was always something amusing about watching thick-necked, broken-faced hard men come across all meek in the courtroom, unless you were on the receiving end. Then the laughter would be of a more bitter kind.
Hollis Haulage would inevitably be put under the microscope and found wanting. Every dodgy transaction and shady deal, every sex worker smuggled in or fugitive smuggled out, every shipment of drugs and other contraband, would be scrutinised, analysed, and investigated. And even though the paper trail would never lead directly to Bob, it would be used against him regardless. And once one business fell beneath the weight of illegal transactions the rest of them would follow in quick succession, like dominoes.
He knew there were plenty of officers who would love to be the one to arrest him and benefit from the inevitable caffeine boost to their careers. There were plenty of prisoners who would love to have his blood on their shank. He’d crossed a lot of folks in his time. The line to take him down would stretch from here to Newcastle.
He’d have to tread carefully from now on. He’d need to think long and hard about the future and what form it took. He’d need to pursue the drugs and girls angle and see where it took him. This and Hollis Haulage was wearing him thin.
Bob got back in the car and looked at Gupta in the backseat. Still unconscious, still dripping sweat. “Let’s get him to the hospital,” he said. “Then take me home. I need to think.”
59. – Stanton
I TOOK a long winding drive using as many back roads as possible. Exile On Main Street blared out of the stereo at a volume that would make my ears ring for days. But I didn’t care, there was something therapeutic about night driving, something that helped sharpen my thoughts and further develop my plan to take down Eddie.
I pulled up outside a scruffy terraced house on a scruffy estate at the scruffier end of Loftus and locked the car. I walked towards the front door and knocked a couple of times.
It took a while but the door eventually opened and a pair of wary blue eyes looked out. They widened considerably when they recognised me and the door came open fully. A thin man greeted me with his arms open wide.
“Stanners, me lad. It’s been donkey’s,” he said, wrapping me in a strong bear hug. “How the hell you doing?”
“Like shite.”
He ushered me in, poked his head out and looked around and closed the door, giving it a shove with his shoulder to make sure it was closed. He guided me into a living room that consisted of a sofa and an armchair, a battered wooden coffee table and a cathode-ray telly that had seen its best days sometime during the last century, much like the man who owned it.
Mickey Dunn was forty-five but looked about thirty years older. His face was a mess of loose-hanging skin, which made him look like a Madame Tussaud’s waxwork that had melted under the lights, and his complexion was a fiery red, with pores so large they looked more like pockmarks. They were a testament to a life that had been lived at the bottom of a whisky bottle. His mop of bone white hair was unkempt and his clothes were even messier. But his eyes were clear and he looked sober; in fact, it looked like he’d been sober for some time.
“You look good,” I said, sitting on the sofa.
He gave me a yellow smile. “You lie well, Stanners lad, but I’ll take the compliment.”
“You look better than I feel”
“Drink, lad?”
I worried that Mickey’s newfound sobriety was about to take a turn for the worse. “Only if it’s sans alcohol,” I said.
Mickey pursed lips, letting his right hand flap at the wrist. “Sorrrrnzzz alcohol? How about just asking for a soft drink, lad?”
I shrugged. “Then I’ll have soft drink, please.”
Micke
y stomped off to the kitchen. “That’s all you’ll get here, anyhow.”
“Why’s that then?”
“On the wagon, aren’t I?”
“Since when?”
Mickey came back with two straight glasses full of cola and plonked one on the coffee table in front of my legs. He sat down in an armchair. “Coming on three months.”
“AA?”
He shook his head. “Can’t be doing with all that twelve-step God shite. My Doc said I either gave the stuff up or I looked at asking Santa or God for a new liver for Christmas. And as neither of them exist, I figured it was up to me to make the change.”
“Good for you.”
“Better late than dead, I suppose.”
“There is that.”
Mickey nodded, sipped his drink and looked at me over the top of the glass. “Much as I’d like to think this is social, I’m pretty certain it isn’t.”
“And what makes you so sure?”
“Oh, my first-hand knowledge of how your brain works. Well, that and the fact that the other day that waste of a good wank Bernie Burgess came round for some friendly words. Unfortunately he forgot most of the friendly ones on the journey over and ended up using phrases like, ‘Where are the Stantons, you fuckin’ alkie fuckin’ cunt?’”
“Sorry about that.”
Mickey shrugged, pulled a face. “Ah, don’t be. He didn’t have much to say when I stuck a gun barrel under his chin.”
“I’m sure it was polite though?”
Mickey started laughing. “Like he’d had a personality transplant with Little Lord Fauntleroy,” he said and slapped his thigh. “And then, yesterday, if memory serves, one of my old mates tells me that Bernie and his son have been shot up by a person unknown. Badly, I might add. The son has been turned into a human colander and Bernie is as blind as Stevie Wonder’s cock. Apparently Bernie is blaming a black mugger; at least that’s who the police are looking for. In fact, by the description he gave they’re looking for the singer Barry White. And as Mr White’s been worm food for a few years now, I’m putting my smart money on a young fella not a million miles from where I’m sat right now.”
I started speaking, but he waved his hand and talked over me. “I don’t care much if it was you or not. Burgess got what he deserved, and I reckon there’s a lotta folks who’d agree with me. But I’m reckoning you two lads are up to something big and you need a man with a steady hand, correct?”
“A steady hand would be good.”
“I’m also guessing it’d be in the upper-reaches of the danger scale, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Then you better explain what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“I need a couple of snipers.”
Mickey nodded, took another sip of cola. Once upon a time, long before he worked for Alan Piper and chose the bottle as a full-time profession, Mickey had been an army sniper. He never really got to ply his trade for Queen and country, but he did do some wet work as a mercenary in Africa and during the Balkans conflict. He was on the side of the Bosnians during the Siege of Sarajevo. Despite being a merc he didn’t make any money; in lieu of cash, he left Bosnia with just the shirt on his back, a loathing of humanity, and a need for alcohol he couldn’t shake.
“For what?” he asked.
“To hit some moving targets.”
“I assume these targets are of the dangerous variety?”
“Correct.”
“Killing? Don’t sound like you, Stanners.”
“Hurt ‘em, mostly. Scare ‘em. Get ‘em running,” I said. “But if things get nasty then you may hafta stop a few heart beats.”
“You said two snipers?”
“You know anybody who can do what you do?”
Mickey smiled. “Yeah. It’ll cost you, though.”
“How much?”
“Five for me. Three for my mate.”
“Bit pricey.”
“By most wet work standards, it’s pretty cheap, actually.”
60. – Owden
BOB OPENED his eyes and looked around his darkened living room. He realised that he was stretched across the sofa with his big feet hanging off the end. His mobile phone vibrated noisily across the coffee table, bathing the living room with dirty blue light. He picked it up and stared at the screen: 4am; he’d been asleep for less than an hour.
Bob felt like he needed a lot more sleep than that. Muscles he didn’t know he possessed ached in ways he didn’t believe were possible. Fresh agony cut through his brain, like slivers of glass slicing through synapses. He squinted at the display in the hope that it would alleviate some of the pain; it didn’t, it just made things worse.
It was Barney on the line. Pimps were creatures of the night, more’s the pity. Bob almost pitched into hysterics when a random thought crossed though his mind…
I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
He was still laughing when he answered the phone. “Barn’, what can I do you for?”
“Picked up one a Eddie’s pimps an hour ago,” he said. “Been bracing the cunt for an hour without much success. Figured you might wanna come down yourself and work your magic.”
“You figured right, lad.”
“We got him over at the old warehouse on Stockton Street.”
Bob had owned the property for years, but had let it fall into disrepair intentionally. It was the perfect place for making people disappear. A lot of lives had ended there. He always had plans for the building and the surrounding land, just in case people started sniffing around it, but somehow those plans never came to fruition. It was far too important as a base of operations for him to turn it into yet another adjunct of his construction business.
“Be on my way shortly,” he said.
Bob dialled Jimmy’s number and waited for him to pick up. It went to voicemail twice before a tired voice groaned. “Bob? You know what time it is?”
“Aye.”
“I’m fuckin’ shattered, man. I need some sleep.”
“Considering the very thin ice you’re standing on, I’d wake up sharpish. Come pick me up. We got somewhere we gotta be.”
He heard the sound of a car horn half an hour later. Jimmy was waiting for him outside the gate. Bob got in the passenger seat, threw a holdall in the back seat, and watched the gate close. Then he turned to the hitman and said: “You still feeling tired, lad.”
Jimmy didn’t look at him. He put his foot down on the the accelerator, saying. “Coffee and speed, Bob. Coffee and speed.”
When they arrived, the area was still dark. There were streetlights on most of the corners, but the majority had been smashed, allowing the girls working the pavements to get in cars without bringing too much attention to themselves. Jimmy parked on a patch of grass up West Street. The silhouette of the old town hall clock tower loomed in the distance, dark against the amber hued sky. Further to the left, the Transporter Bridge dominated the skyline like the humpbacked skeleton of a giant Jurassic beast.
Bob turned his head and looked around, more out of habit than worry. The girls who were supposed to be working this patch had been cleared away. They knew better than to argue with Barney about where they could and couldn’t work, so moved to quieter, darker corners to ply their trade. He patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “Wait in the car.”
Jimmy nodded and sniffed. “How long you gonna be?”
“As long as it takes.”
Bob exited the vehicle and turned towards the warehouse. It was a large, low brick structure with a pitched slate roof. At the front of the building was a substantial enclosure surrounded on all sides by a tall grey fence topped with razor wire. Bob walked around to a large gate at the front and knocked.
A short, stocky, pallid man with a shaved head opened the gate and peeked out. “Boss.”
“Jonny. He talking yet?”
Jonny Marsan waved him in. He was wearing one-piece grey overalls that were stained with fresh blood and a grey t-shirt that was also as spattered as an abstract canv
as. Closing the gate, he shook his head and slammed the bolts into place. “‘Fraid not,” he said. “He’s a tough fucker, too.”
“How tough?”
“Tough enough to not care much about his kneecaps.”
They walked through a courtyard piled high with discarded office furniture, filing cabinets and battered old skips filled with random detritus. Cutting around the obstacles, they made their way to the large front entrance. Light blazed out of the open door.
Bob nudged Jonny. “Did you break them?”
“With baseball bats. Then we made a further mess with clawhammers.”
Nodding his head, Bob pulled an impressed face. “And he didn’t talk, even after that?”
“Like I said, boss, he’s one tough fucker.”
They walked through the entrance, turned left at reception, cutting through a corridor, and turned right into a small room about ten square feet. The place was decorated from floor to ceiling with black plastic sheets and bin liners that had been gaffer taped in place, so there were no gaps. The sheet that covered the floor had a high sheen that made it look like black ink. In the centre of the room, bound to a heavy metal chair with ropes and zip ties, was a black man, naked except for a pair of piss-soaked boxer shorts. His face was relatively untouched, with only a few minor bruises on the cheeks, but his legs were a mess. The shins were at weird angles and occasionally jagged shards of bone had sheared through the flesh, but the knees looked like an explosion in a slaughterhouse, and it was hard to tell where the bones ended and the flesh began. He’d never walk on these legs again, that was for certain.
Barney rested against one of the walls, staring at their captive while smoking a cigarette. His overalls were just as blood-spattered as Jonny’s and his face was also spotted with gore. He turned his head towards Bob. “We got oursells a tough nut here, boss.”
The man looked at Bob, then at Jonny and managed to smile through the pain. “Yo’, white boy,” he said. “See you brought your granddad to help with the man’s work.”
Bob tried to grin, but the gag about his age made it difficult to hold in place. Bubbling anger and disappointment over the man’s lack of fear made it impossible for him to take the easy, matey approach to questioning. Instead, he decided to go in hard and fast.
The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Page 22
