‘Right, I see, but just make sure they’re broad-minded like. Don’t send them if they are not prepared to go down on each other when I tell them to.’
There was a click and she was gone.
‘Bollocks,’ said Billy out loud. It seemed there were still some things that money couldn’t buy in this town. He should have known better than to choose some poncin’ arsed agency. It didn’t leave him many options though. It was a bit of a risk ringing one of the old timers but, really, where was the harm? He used the hotel phone to call Tommy Bailey.
‘Two mucky birds, eh Billy? No problem, if you have the cash.’
‘Oh I’ve got the cash Tommy, don’t you worry about that.’
Now Billy was lying on the bed, still dressed in his new gear, looking the part, a proper Face. He was no longer Billy Warren, small time coke dealer, figure of ridicule in Bobby Mahoney’s firm, the one they took the piss out of and treated like shit all the time.
There was a gentle knock on the door then. It was Tommy Bailey’s girls and they were bang on time too. That was the other advantage of paying for birds, you didn’t end up waiting around for them for ages. Billy sat up, then took a deep breath. God he was going to enjoy this. For the first time in his life two very fit lasses were about to get stark naked and do anything and everything he asked them to, and all because he had the wedge to make it happen. It would be the kind of night his millionaire footballers were always bragging about. Well it wasn’t going to be them in the middle of a fanny sandwich this time. It was going to be Billy Warren; Player, Face, Top Boy.
Billy got up from the bed and took his time before answering the door. These girls weren’t going anywhere, after all. He took a long look at his reflection in the full-length mirrors on the wardrobe doors, pulled down his jacket and smoothed it against him, then smiled to himself. He walked towards the door and opened it, still smiling. Then, abruptly, his smile vanished.
‘Now then Billy,’ said Joe Kinane, ‘what have you been up to?’
21
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The lock-up we used for this kind of thing was an old red-brick building with a low roof, a steel door and no windows. The place was an out-building, situated yards from a former electricity sub-station that had served the rural community round here before it closed down years ago. We picked the site up for next to nothing with a view to converting it, but we delayed starting the work when house prices dropped. For the time being it served as a useful destination for men like Billy Warren. Here we could have a quiet word, knowing no one could hear a thing because it was miles from anywhere.
Kinane went to collect Billy as soon as we got the call from Tommy Bailey. Now Billy Warren stood in the empty out-building, beneath the glare of a single, bare light bulb, squinting at me and rocking nervously back and forth on his heels. When he moved the bulb cast exaggerated shadows on the floor behind him. Billy knew why he was here but he was trying to act like he was an entirely innocent party. He didn’t quite have the balls to challenge me about it though.
‘Nice suit, Billy,’ I told him.
‘Eh? Oh yeah, thanks.’ Then he mumbled, ‘been saving for it,’ and he looked down, not meeting my gaze.
Only Billy Warren would be stupid enough to go on a spending spree as soon as he pocketed the money he was given to set up a hit. If there had been an ounce of doubt about his guilt, it was removed as soon as we got word from Tommy Bailey that Billy was ordering up hookers two at a time and shipping them out to a four-star hotel.
‘Hold out your hand, Billy,’ I told him.
‘What?’
‘Your hand.’
Reluctantly, Billy Warren did as he was told. I took hold of his hand as if I was going to shake it, then, with the other hand, I slid back Billy’s sleeve. Beneath it was a gleaming Omega.
‘Save up for the watch too did you?’
‘Yeah,’ Billy’s voice was a squeak.
‘Oh I see,’ I said, ‘and there was me thinking you paid for it with all the money you got for setting up a hit on me with Jack Conroy.’
Billy’s eyes widened, ‘You what man? God no, who’s been saying that. I’d never…’
‘Jack Conroy’s been saying that. He came to see us, Billy, told us all about it. He’s not stupid enough to go against us. He knew what would happen if he did. He knew we’d find out about it and when we did, we’d kill him.’
‘I don’t know what he’s been saying, Davey, I really don’t but he’s mad. He must be puddled. I’d never get involved in anything like that. I don’t set up hits. I just deal.’
‘How much of your own product have you been using these days Billy? What were you thinking? You should have stayed just dealing. If you had you might have had a longer life.’
‘Jesus man, you don’t want to listen to Conroy. He’s never liked us, never…’
‘Who paid you to set me up? That’s the only thing I want to hear you say. Give me a name.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about Davey, honest. I swear on my mother’s life!’
‘Your mother’s dead Billy,’ and I turned to Kinane, ‘go and get the tool-box Joe.’
‘No, please, there’s no need for that,’ Billy was panicking now.
Kinane walked away towards the door.
‘Shut up Billy,’
‘I’m begging you man,’
‘Shut up,’
‘Please,’ he was sobbing now, ‘we go back years, known each other ages…’
‘Listen to me Billy,’ and when Billy Warren tried to interrupt again, ‘listen…listen…listen,’ and Billy finally fell silent, ‘I want you to calm down so you can listen to me while I tell you what’s going to happen.’
‘Okay,’ he said uncertainly.
‘Kinane is going to walk out to his car and he is going to fetch his tool-box,’ that was Kinane’s cue to leave the room and Billy started to silently shake his head, tears rolling down his face, ‘and you know what that means, don’t you?’
Billy Warren watched Kinane leave, ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘You have until the time it takes him to reach the boot of his car and walk back in here with his tools to give us a name.’
Billy looked up into my face, but he couldn’t read me, ‘will you let me go?’ he asked eventually. He was wide-eyed, desperate. ‘If I give you that name, will you let me go?’
‘No.’
Billy’s face sagged and his mouth fell open. ‘What…?’ his mouth was too dry to speak coherently.
‘It’s a simple choice Billy. When Kinane returns he’ll have his tool-box and a gun. If you give him the name, for old times’ sake,’ I assured him, ‘he’ll only use the gun.’
And before Billy Warren could find the words to reply, I turned on my heel and walked out of the room. As I closed the door behind me, I heard the single, sobbed word, ‘please.’
I leaned against the wall of the building and fumbled in a pocket for my cigarettes. I lit one, took a deep drag and looked around me. It was so quiet out here. The air was crisp and there wasn’t a sound except the wind stirring the trees and Kinane’s slow, measured footsteps as the big man walked towards his car. I watched him pop open the boot, then reach inside. He drew out the large, metal tool-box that was his signature. Everyone in our world knew about Kinane and his tool-box and feared him for it. If you are an enforcer, if you had to make men tell you things they didn’t want to tell you, sometimes you had to use brutal methods. I don’t care what the liberals say, torture works. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched hard men broken, over time – sometimes it can take days, but everybody spills in the end. They just get to the point where the only thing they want any more is for the pain to end, even if what follows is death. A man like Kinane can hardly walk around with weapons in the boot of his car. If he’s caught with knives or knuckle-dusters on him he’ll be looking at serious jail time, so why run the risk when you can get exactly the same effect with hammers, nails, chisels and hacksaws. Ever hurt yoursel
f putting up some shelves? Then you’ll understand what I mean. So Kinane doesn’t go anywhere without his tool-box. Sometimes all I have to do is mention it and we get what we need. Fear is as potent a weapon as pain, maybe more so.
This time however, it’s different. Joe is carrying. I asked him to. I watched him take the Glock out of a holdall in the boot of his car. Then he walked slowly back with the gun in one hand and the tool-box in the other. He carried the Glock openly. Who was going to see it out here? As he walked past me his face was a dispassionate mask. I wondered what he was thinking and what he was going to say to Billy Warren. We had both known Billy for years, but none of that mattered now. We all knew he had stepped way over the line.
Kinane didn’t look at me as he went by and walked on into the room. He closed the door behind him. I took another long draw on my cigarette and waited. It was cold, but I wasn’t thinking about that right now. I waited some more. I smoked my cigarette right down to the filter and then I lit another. I waited so long, in fact, that I was starting to wonder if my instincts were wrong on this one but then, finally and so suddenly, there was a muffled explosion from within the lock-up. It was the sound of the Glock going off in a confined space. It was louder than I would have expected but there was still no danger of anyone hearing it from the road. It was the sound of Billy Warren dying, but his passing was so quiet the birds didn’t even bother to leave the trees.
22
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We walked to the car without saying a word. We fastened our seatbelts and both waited for the other to speak. In the end I asked, ‘What name did he give you?’
Kinane shook his head, ‘Peter Dean.’
‘Shit. Didn’t he know anyone higher up the chain?’
‘No,’ Kinane said, ‘he would have told me.’
I didn’t doubt that. We’d gone round in a circle. All we had were the names of two cut-outs. Both dead. One died before we could get to him and the other knew nothing.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Kinane.
‘Me?’ I didn’t know what my next move was. I just felt indescribably weary of it all. ‘I’m going home,’ I told him.
The heat was oppressive, and I wanted to get out of it and into the house. I wanted a cold drink with ice in it and the air con on full. I didn’t want to move for a while. I figured I’d surprise Sarah, so I opened the door quietly and walked into the house, closing it gently behind me. I couldn’t hear anything but I sensed I wasn’t alone and the guards had told me she was in the compound. I climbed the stairs. She didn’t hear me. I knew if she had she would have come running.
I opened the door to our bedroom without knocking, looked in and saw her. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I demanded.
Sarah was angry with me, spitting the words out. ‘You can be a bastard sometimes, do you know that? So fucking cold.’
This hurt me a little, because it is not the first time a woman has said that to me. My ex, Laura, used to accuse me of being cold but I defy any man not to be when he has seen all the things I have. Other people’s problems can seem trivial by comparison. So, when I answered Sarah, my voice was calm and I tried to explain my anger to her in a rational way. I wanted her to understand why I reacted the way I did when I walked into the bedroom and saw what she was doing.
‘I might be cold,’ I explained to her, ‘but I have to be. I have to be cold, calm and clever, because that’s what keeps us alive. I can’t afford to make any mistakes. You of all people should know this. After what you went through, after what we both went through, I thought you would understand that.’ She lowered her head, not exactly shamefaced by my words but she was listening at least. ‘Everything I do is geared around keeping you safe so we can lead this life we have together. Neither one of us can ever let down our guard, you know that,’ I reasoned, ‘at least I thought you did.’
‘I do,’ she protested, ‘it’s just…I get so lonely stuck here on my own.’
‘Stuck here?’ I was stunned. The place was a palace compared to the shit holes most people Sarah’s age lived in, ‘Your mate Joanne lives in a one-bedroom flat. You live in a fucking compound with a pool and your own private beach!’
‘Yes!’ she shouted back at me, ‘I know! And I can never leave it! It’s got to be the most beautiful bloody prison in the whole frigging world!’
‘Is that how you see all this? Like it’s some sort of prison? Tell me you are kidding me?’
‘It’s alright for you,’ she said, ‘you get to go out, you get to fly back home for your meetings, you see old friends and hang out with them, you go out on the town, don’t tell me you don’t. I haven’t been back there since Dad died. You won’t let me go. You won’t even let me shop in the markets round here.’
‘Yes I will.’
‘Not unless I take Jagrit and his mates with me, and that’s not the same,’ she argued. ‘Do you know what it feels like looking at stuff, knowing there’s a bodyguard walking a few yards in front of you and another two behind you? I feel trapped.’
‘The alternative is a lot worse love, believe me.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’ We didn’t argue very often, but when we did we quickly reached a stage where we were completely at odds with each other’s opinions.
‘I do understand,’ and I did. At least I was trying to. Sarah was still a young woman. She had been used to going out with her friends and doing whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, but all that had changed suddenly and forever, and there was no going back now, not for either of us. Sarah had no idea what would happen to her if my enemies ever worked out where she was. If she knew what some of them would do to her, just to get at me, then she would never leave the compound again. ‘But I don’t know what the alternative is, Sarah. You are Bobby Mahoney’s daughter and my girlfriend, which means your card is marked. You get the privileges that come with that, but you can’t live the life you lived before because there are people out there who will come after you, to hurt me,’ I concluded. ‘We have talked about this before.’
She couldn’t argue with that because it was true. Instead she just said, ‘Did you really have to smash my laptop?’
I looked over at the wreckage of Sarah’s laptop, which exploded pretty spectacularly shortly after I ripped it out of her hands and hurled it against the far wall of our bedroom. There were sharp, black plastic shards on the carpet and the screen had become entirely detached from the keyboard. There was a massive crack right across it and a big gouge in the plaster where the corner of the laptop had impacted with the wall. I surveyed the wreckage and realised I had been more angry than I cared to recall. In retrospect, my fury must have been pretty frightening.
‘I’m sorry,’ I admitted, ‘but it’s just…I mean…what were you thinking?’
‘It was only a Facebook page,’ she pleaded, ‘and I wasn’t even using my real name. I’m on there as Sarah Phoney and I only used it to connect with some old Uni mates and a couple of friends from back home. Joanne was practically the only one who bothered to message me. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal to you.’
‘Because there are bad people out there who employ clever IT guys who are constantly looking for weaknesses in my organisation, something they can use to bring me down. So you having a Facebook page is the cyber equivalent of going out for the day and leaving the back door wide open. That’s why it’s such a big deal to me.’
She looked up at me, ‘I’m sorry. I am. I just…I’m so lonely.’ I didn’t know what to say. I thought I’d created a paradise for us and it turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. Worse than that though, I didn’t have the faintest clue how to fix it.
I went to her then. I sat on the bed next to Sarah and put my arms around her. She pressed her face against my chest and held on to me tightly.
‘It’s alright,’ I assured her, ‘I know, and I’m sorry too. You know I’ll get you another laptop, just no Facebook page this time. eh?’ She half-laughed a
nd half-cried at that.
‘And if you just give me a little more time I’ll figure this out for us,’ I reassured her. ‘You know I can do that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’ She was lying but, just now, I needed to hear the lie.
That night I phoned Sharp, ‘I’ve got another job for you,’ I told him.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘what is it now?’
I had a week in Hua Hin with Sarah. We spent a lot of time walking on the beach and talking, mostly about the future. We avoided dwelling on the past, for obvious reasons, and the present was too complex to sort out with just a few words.
I took calls from Sharp, Palmer and Kinane, but none of them had come up with anything new. Billy Warren and Peter Dean were dead and it seemed we’d hit a brick wall. I kept churning it all over in my mind, but I just couldn’t piece it together. There were some obvious possibilities; Alan Gladwell wanted to meet to talk peace and cooperation but he could just as easily be trying to kill me at the same time; neither the man nor his family could be trusted. Then there was the Turk, whose shipment had been mysteriously delayed again while I was out of the country, despite the fact that he was sitting on one million Euros of my money. With me gone, he wouldn’t have to give it back, and men have been killed for a lot less than that. Kinane kept telling me Braddock wanted to take me out, and you could sense Braddock wanted to be Top Boy just by looking at him. Killing me would be the quickest route to the top, whether he was up to the job or not. Then there was Amrein, our fixer, the man I had scared, threatened and humiliated. I knew Amrein wouldn’t grieve for me. In fact I was sure he wanted me dead after what I did to him, but did he have the balls to take me on a second time? I truthfully didn’t know.
Gladwell, Amrein, Braddock and the Turk. Four of them, and they were only the most obvious candidates. I hadn’t even included members of my own crew, not to mention the crime families in every other city in the country. How many people had I blocked or frustrated with my business dealings, how many had I insulted, snubbed or annoyed along the way? If I wrote a list of people who wanted me dead it would probably have filled more than a page.
The Damage (David Blake 2) Page 15
