The Cover Up

by Marnie Riches

  I wish I was dead. I just want it all to end.

  Tears had streamed down Lev’s face inside the purpose-built prison of that tightly fitting helmet, steaming up the visor and wetting the padding that had covered his jaw and chin. If he had collided into something doing fifty, would his head have been ripped off too, still clad in that helmet? Would instant decapitation have hurt? But in the midst of those dark thoughts, Lev had remembered his boy. Jay. If nothing else represented hope in Lev’s godforsaken life, his son did.

  Get through this. Get back to Jay. He needs you. If you give up, there’s only the witches to look after him and he deserves better than loony Gloria and shitty Tiffany.

  They had made it back to the safety of Manchester with the message duly delivered that Nigel Bancroft and his Birmingham boys should piss off back behind their city line or face a bloody war. Lev had been paid a cool thou in cash for his time and trouble. But the money meant nothing. So far, he had successfully hidden from the Fish Man’s boning knives and he’d evaded arrest for a cornucopia of criminal offences that would put him in a Category A prison with a double-digit sentence. But he couldn’t escape his conscience.

  Trudging back into the living room, he picked Jay out of the playpen and rocked the boy gently to the rhythm of the theme tune to Postman Pat. Wept hot tears over his son.

  ‘You’re daddy’s best boy, you know.’

  ‘Dad. Dad. Dad.’ With a tiny, dribbly finger, Jay carefully traced the outline of the lightning bolt shaved into Lev’s stubbled scalp, following the silvered line of an old scar. ‘Kiss.’ He smacked his little rosebud lips together – free of snotty crust now that Tiff was no longer looking after him. His green eyes shone with curiosity and love. A different boy from before.

  ‘When Jay’s a big boy, Daddy’s gonna take him somewhere hot and lovely. Like Florida! That’s it! We’ll go to Disneyland to see Mickey Mouse. Would you like that?’

  He considered his time spent in Baltimore, during which he had eked out the agonising weeks, waiting for Jay to recover sufficiently post-surgery to travel home. The brain surgeon had done that non-committal thing of thinning his lips and cocking his head to one side when Lev had asked him if Jay had been cured.

  ‘Mr Bell, I removed the tumour, which was a doozy,’ he had said. ‘But we’ll just have to see how it goes over the coming months and hopefully years. It was benign, so that’s a plus.’

  Not the conclusively happy ending he had been hoping for.

  Lev looked down at Jay’s head. Carefully unwound the bandages – minimal now, after months of healing. Eyed the livid, Frankenstein-esque scar that ran across the boy’s head. How could such a beautiful child hide such a terrible secret beneath those regrowing curls? And what if a second tumour had reappeared inside that little delicate dome, somehow hiding from all the gadgetry and the specialist’s scrutiny? Who knew? Maybe all those scans would cause something new to take root. Radiation, wasn’t it? Lev knew that shit was bad for kids.

  He started to gasp for breath again. Jay looked at him quizzically. ‘I’m all right,’ he told the boy. ‘Daddy’s just feeling a bit weird.’

  His phone pinged. A text. Could this be yet another death threat from Jonny Margulies? Lev swallowed hard, running a shaking hand over his top lip. Anticipating unwelcome words, heralding the start of his own personal end of days. But it wasn’t from Jonny.

  We need to talk. Please call. I’ve got work for you. Tariq.

  Another love letter from Tariq Khan. Was it a trap? Was it even possible that one Boddlington boss should be courting him while the other wanted him dead?

  Lev scrolled down his texts to read the last missive from Jonny. Sent only two weeks earlier.

  I won’t rest til Fish Man brings me your heart, cos you broke mine.

  ‘They’ll never forget,’ he said aloud, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘Neither of them! And Tariq’s gotta be in cahoots.’ He peered down at the phone’s display. ‘Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake!’

  There was the sound of a car pulling up. Shit, shit, shit. Right outside. And he was expecting nobody, so that definitely meant bad news. Didn’t it?

  Lev ran through all the emergency evacuation procedures he’d rehearsed in his head, time after time. Out the back door. Out the back gate. Down the cut-through onto the main road. Seek refuge under the bright lights and busy aisles of the local supermarket.

  ‘Daddy might have to run somewhere very fast with you, Jay-Jay. Ready for some fun?’

  Swinging Jay onto his hip, he peered through the half-open shutters. The sunlight streaming through felt like it might burn him. The open space of the cul-de-sac felt like it might swallow him whole. The street was too empty of potential witnesses. The only thing of note in the street was the car. Its driver was peering into the living room window.

  ‘Who the hell’s this?’ Lev muttered, trying to place a familiar face.

  He observed the driver through the half-closed shutters.

  ‘Anjum Khan?!’

  He watched the Boddlington boss’s wife get out of her Audi and walk up to the front door of the house. All business in her trouser suit for this detour to the wrong side of town.

  ‘Ding dong!’ Jay said when the bell chimed.

  Lev stepped backwards into the living room, wondering what to do. Should he answer the door to the respected Dr Anjum Khan? Director of the asylum seekers’ advocacy place in Cheetham Hill, she was one of life’s good guys, for sure. This wasn’t Tariq. But it was Tariq’s wife. Was she friend or foe?

  He shushed Jay, who merely nodded and smiled coyly. The bell rang again. Lev made the decision to dive behind the sofa too late. Anjum’s sharp brown eyes were peering in at them both through the shuttered window. She knocked on the glass.

  ‘I can see you’re in there, Leviticus!’

  ‘I’m not. Go away!’ he shouted.

  ‘Let me in. I need to talk to you. It’s about Tariq. And Irina.’

  Irina. The poor, pregnant trafficked cow from Estonia or Latvia or some far-flung dump. Almost gunned down by that prize dick, Degsy, in some tit-for-tat bullshit surrounding Jack O’Brien’s murder.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he asked, holding the front door ajar.

  Anjum looked tired, verging on haggard. She pushed past him into the living room, patting Jay affectionately on the cheek. ‘I see he’s had the surgery,’ she said. ‘He looks a lot better than last time I saw the little mite.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  ‘I think “thanks” is the word you’re looking for.’ She stood uncertainly by the playpen. Hands clasped before her, then dropping to her sides. Touching her long hair, which was hanging loose over her shoulders today.

  ‘Ta. Does Tariq know where I’m living? Does he know I’m staying with my mam? Because I had no option. Jonny’s gone mental on me, and my slag of a babymother’s—’

  Anjum shook her head. ‘I’m not here on Tariq’s dirty business, Leviticus.’ She bit her lip tentatively. ‘I’m divorcing him. I’m here to ask for your help to put him away. I want to take every last one of these scumbags down. But the police need reliable, willing witnesses.’

  Was this some kind of a test of his loyalty to the Boddlingtons? He scrutinised her face for signs of shiftiness in amongst the scant crow’s feet. Sniffed the air. He smelled not bullshit, but expensive perfume. ‘You want me to grass?’

  ‘Can you think of a better way to escape this life?’

  ‘There isn’t no escaping this life.’

  Anjum took a step towards him. Another step. She reached out to stroke Jay’s chin. ‘I saw you in that hole where they torture people who don’t toe the line. I saw the desperation in your face.’ She looked deep into his eyes, and Lev felt certain that she saw his soul in terrifying, complex detail. ‘You wanted out. Your son was dying. You brought Irina to me, when you could have left her for dead or taken her back to Tariq.’ Glancing down at the boy, she smiled widely and with the warmth of a good mother. ‘I know you’
re not like them.’ She took her voice an octave up, doing that thing that women always did around cute kids. ‘Daddy wants you to grow up to be a nice man, doesn’t he? Yes.’ Nodding. ‘He doesn’t want to end up in a body bag and with you caught in the crossfire, does he?’ Shaking her head. ‘No! Daddy’s got morals.’

  ‘Who are you talking to at the cop shop?’ Lev asked, feeling her manipulative words yank at his heartstrings like the fingers of a skilled puppeteer.

  ‘Ellis James,’ she said.

  Lev gasped. ‘Oh, you’re kidding me. Everybody hates that scruffy little arsehole. You dob your old man into him and chances are you’re gonna wind up in a body bag anyhow. We all will, soon enough.’

  ‘Think about it, Lev,’ Anjum said, stroking Jay’s cheek. ‘The chance of a fresh start for you and your son. Come with me to the police. What do you say?’

  Chapter 14

  Gloria

  ‘Get fucked, you silly black bitch!’ the landlord said, barely giving her a second glance whilst he polished a pint glass badly with a greasy-looking bar towel. There was mockery in his voice and the suggestion of a chuckle.

  Generalised hurt was a rough blanket, smothering her fire and gnawing at her skin. Gloria processed the insult, taking it apart, one unpleasant thread at a time. This unwashed oik had used foul language. He’d insulted her intelligence, her ethnicity and her gender. This was the sixth time she’d been verbally abused this way in the last fortnight. Sixth. And yet, the barman’s words still stung. No immunity quite yet. Toughen up, Gloria Bell! You’ve a job to do, and that Mazda’s not going to replace itself with a nice little Audi TT.

  Gloria took a step towards the bar, pulling her shopping wagon along behind her. ‘You’re late with your payment, Glen Armstrong. This is an O’Brien pub and you enjoy O’Brien privileges. But not for free. Paddy wasn’t running a charity, and neither is Sheila.’ She treated him to a curt smile, silently saying a prayer under her breath.

  The landlord slammed the pint pot down onto the wood. Pulled a baseball bat out from behind the bar and slapped it repeatedly in the palm of his rather grubby-looking hand. An eyebrow raised, which was the only interesting feature in a blob of a face that Gloria thought resembled putty with unpleasant bits stuck to it.

  ‘Opening time’s not for two hours, so piss off out my pub,’ he said in a guttural Parsons Croft accent. He pointed the baseball bat towards her. ‘Cos if you don’t, I’m gonna smash your gappy teeth down your throat and ram this up your cunt, you uppity slag.’

  ‘Charming,’ Gloria said, drawing on the power of the Lord Jesus Christ that she felt bubbling up from deep within her. Or was it pure fury? She couldn’t be certain. ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.”’ She unzipped the top of the shopping trolley, delving inside. Never took her eyes from the landlord. ‘But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.’ She pulled out the shotgun and pointed it at the man’s head, speaking from the bottom of her diaphragm, projecting as though she were in the church pulpit. She smiled, imagining the pastor. Then remembered the pastor was a philandering hypocrite who liked young girls. The smile transformed into a scowl. She savoured the wrath that had been kindled inside her. Took two swift and sure strides to the bar. ‘For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:43-45. Give me a reason to pull the trigger, Mr Armstrong.’

  Blob-faced Glen Armstrong neither smashed her teeth in nor inserted his baseball bat into her intimate parts. He merely dropped the bat onto the floor with a clatter and held his hands up. ‘You’re bleeding tapped.’ A sheen of sweat on his suet-pie-crust of a forehead revealed the full extent of his bravado. ‘Who do you think you are? Samuel L. sodding Jackson?’

  ‘No. I’ve got bigger balls and better taste in hats than him.’ She made a show of peering along the sights at her target. ‘You owe back-pay from March. I want to see big piles of Her Majesty’s face. Now!’

  Wheeling her shopping trolley, stuffed with the shotgun, cartridges and wads of used twenty- and fifty-pound notes from that morning’s three successful collections, Gloria trotted along Parsons Croft High Road. Every part of her, from her ankles to the tips of her hair felt like it was buzzing from the adrenalin. Her stomach was in turmoil. Her heartbeat, more of a clatter – almost loud enough for the outside world to hear. Her senses were alight, and Jesus hadn’t even been responsible for the strange feeling of abject fear, mingled with euphoria.

  Glancing back over her shoulder to check that the odious landlord had not followed her out with that bat, she couldn’t help but giggle. Keep walking. Put some distance between you and that den of iniquity. Take this seriously! The eminently sensible side to Gloria was appalled by the responsibilities she had agreed to take on and the levity with which she was dealing with these bottom-feeders. But new Gloria – the born-again young woman in a middle-aged church elder’s body – simply told the old Gloria to shut the heck up and keep her fusty opinions to herself.

  ‘Praise the Lord. Hallelujah!’

  She started to strut down the street as if she owned that place, realising that in some ways, she did – at least, fifteen per cent of it. Yanked her shopping trolley over the cracked, chewing-gum-spattered paving stones as if it were a wheeled Louis Vuitton trunk full of champagne; threw her head back and laughed aloud, attracting the bewildered looks of an old man who was waiting, barely sheltered by the semi-shattered glass, at the bus stop for the bus into town.

  ‘Blessings, brother!’ she shouted at the old man. ‘Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13:16.’ She stuffed a fifty-pound note into his dry, leathery hand, which was met with initial bafflement followed by the poor-man’s Hollywood smile of a double-denture grin. ‘Treat yourself to a cab.’

  Buoyed by her success, she relocated her Mazda and popped the boot. Decanted the money into the recess where her spare tyre had been. Drove on to the next job with rousing hymns sung by her favourite gospel choir, blaring from her sound-system. Yes, Gloria Bell was doing good work, collecting tithes from the faithless. Channelling the spirit of the Lord. She had never felt better.

  When she arrived at the Tanner’s Arms in Whitcroft Street, her jubilant mood remained undimmed, even when she walked through from the front of the seemingly ordinary, grotty lounge of the pub to the back, where the sound of barking, howling and men’s jeering warned her of the illegal dog fight that was underway.

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ the barman said, elbowing the landlady. He nodded towards Gloria. ‘Pulp Friction’s back.’ He stepped out from behind the bar, blatantly flouting the smoking ban with his stinking lit cigarette. ‘Where’s your beret and your kilt, love?’ Winking. Guffawing, as if Gloria hadn’t heard this in every single pub, club, restaurant, wine bar and café that fell under O’Brien jurisdiction, from the southern end of the town centre right up to Bramshott Village. Two weeks of the same gag. Where on earth had they got such an outlandish comparison from?

  ‘Ha … ha … ha,’ Gloria said, locking eyes with her ferrety verbal abuser, ensuring he knew she wasn’t intimidated by him in the slightest. She whipped the shotgun out of the trolley with the speed and deftness of an apocalyptic horseman. ‘It’s payday.’

  She peered down the barrel at his legs. Barely registering the weight of the thing as her body flooded with the glorious endorphins of the newly power-crazed, she swung the weapon over to the landlady’s head, then back to the barman’s knees. Utterly fearless because she knew that her fine Christian soul was pure and prepared for heaven and, perhaps most importantly, that she was the one with the weapon.

  Never taking her eyes from the barman, she raised her voice. Imagined she was preaching to a church hall full of repentant sinners – loud enough that the foul and pestilent dog-fanciers in the back might hear the words of James 2:26.
<
br />   ‘For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. And legs apart from the knees will put you in a wheelchair, mister, so, put the cash on the bar, and I might let you keep your kneecaps.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your face, Leviticus?’ she said, returning to their rented semi late in the afternoon to find that her son was sitting on the sofa in his pants, yet again. Dimpled chin and downturned mouth. Red-rimmed around the eyes as though he had been crying.

  ‘Her dog died. It was dead sad.’

  Her feckless son pointed to the TV, where some kind of reality-style panel show was playing out on one of the lesser channels. Gloria grimaced at the sight of a woman with badly bleached platinum blonde hair and a décolletage like the Grand Canyon. She wore flip-flops and had crispy ankles. A non-believer, without a doubt. ‘She looks like a good scrub would kill her. Where’s Jay?’

  ‘At Tiff’s.’

  ‘You’re happy for him to be around that little strumpet?’ Gloria snatched up the remote control and switched the TV off. Rearranged the magazines on the coffee table into a neat pile. Collected the spent cups, observing with some disgust that her son had not used the coasters. She hit him over the head with the remote control.

  ‘Ow! What was that for?’

  ‘Cup rings.’

  He rubbed his scalp. ‘Solicitor says I have to give her one supervised hour a week. She’s got a social worker there with her. Aw, come on, Mam! Give us back the remote. I was watching that!’

  A whine in his voice. Pleading in his weak, teary eyes. Poor quality mirrors to a soul that lacked moral fibre. Just like his father. ‘I’ve been working all day,’ she said. ‘Do you know how many board meetings I had on top of my tithe collection?’

  Lev sucked his teeth and scowled. ‘You mean robbing protection money with a shopping wagon like Mrs Brady, Old Lady on meth?’