Fight Back

by Anna Smith

  *

  From her bedroom window, Kerry was glad to see the Merc drive into the yard, and the rear door open. Sharon stepped her long legs out, all Ray-Ban aviator shades and perfect lush blonde hair swirling in the breeze. Kerry felt her face smile a little with the sheer admiration for this woman who she’d grown so close to recently. Their life stories couldn’t have been more different, yet here they were, calling the shots in a criminal empire, fighting a war on several fronts, and so far they were still standing. Kerry knew how valuable Danny and Jack and the trusted closest associates had been to her from the start, guiding her through storm after storm. She could not have managed this far without them. But Sharon had also played a major part in her confidence and belief in herself. Sharon was living proof that you get back up when you’ve been trampled down, and you win. And she was tougher and more ruthless than Kerry when it came to the killer instinct. When she’d called last night to say she wanted to get Tony out of Spain, Kerry didn’t hesitate to tell her to bring him to Glasgow. She’d put Tony up in the house. The Caseys would protect him, she promised. And they would.

  Kerry went downstairs to the kitchen to greet them.

  ‘Sharon,’ she smiled, ‘great to see you. And I have to say looking fabulous – considering the shit that’s flying around.’

  Sharon lowered her shades to reveal dark shadows under her eyes, and Kerry had to concede that sunglasses covered a multitude. But her eyes were clear and full of the usual fire and determination.

  ‘Don’t know about that, love,’ she said, her voice a little husky. ‘I’m bloody knackered, actually. But when the going gets tough . . .’ She smiled. ‘Well, you just pray it doesn’t get much tougher.’ She pushed back her hair with her glasses. ‘And to think that years ago when the going got tough, I just racked up my credit card. Changed bloody days, I’ll tell you.’

  Kerry smiled at her bravado.

  ‘You want coffee? We’re having dinner here later.’

  ‘Coffee? No thanks, pet. I could do with a stiff drink though.’

  Kerry turned to Tony, who was standing silent, and looking a bit shy.

  ‘Hey, Tony. Will be great to have you around the house. Come on. Let’s all go upstairs and I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.’ She ushered them to the door. ‘Don’t worry about your bags, we’ll get them brought up.’

  While Tony was settling into his new quarters, complete with a massive flat-screen TV, Kerry watched as Sharon swiftly downed a gin and tonic.

  ‘Christ. That hardly touched the sides,’ Sharon said.

  ‘Another? We’ll be having dinner shortly. I’m sure you can manage one before that.’

  ‘Very small one.’

  She sipped her second drink, moving across the room and sitting on the sofa. Kerry sat on the armchair by the fire with a glass of mineral water.

  ‘So, how are you after all the drama of the last few days?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Getting through it. And I like to think we’re winning. But the panic and stress with Marty’s boy was off the scale. Marty was broken. And now with your Tony being snatched . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Rodriguez is such a bastard. We really have to get him. We will.’

  ‘If I could get my bloody hands on him . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Kerry said. ‘But I had Jake Cahill in yesterday and sent him back to Spain. I told him to concentrate only on taking Rodriguez out.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sharon said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Kerry thought she looked a little deflated, but dismissed it as tiredness.

  ‘That’s how Jake works,’ she assured. ‘When he’s given a job, nobody knows what he’s doing, but he never fails. And he’ll get Rodriguez – that much we can be sure of.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Yeah. I can see how Jake is the man for the job, Kerry.’ She pushed out a sigh, sipped her drink. ‘But really. I want to ask you something. Something that would mean a lot to me. After our Tony.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘You know, in that very moment at the school when my gut dropped, as I realised he’d been taken, I’ll never feel terror like that again. Ever.’ She swallowed and composed herself. ‘I mean, even when Knuckles was about to have me murdered, and I sat in the back of the car that day, I felt cold fear, but nothing like the sheer terror of that moment when I thought maybe I’d never see Tony again. I’ll honestly never get over that. And when he came back, much as I was overjoyed and still am every time I look at his face, the need for revenge is eating away at me.’ She paused again, took a breath. ‘I want to be the one to take Rodriguez out.’

  Kerry looked at her, trying to comprehend the depth of her feelings.

  ‘You want to kill Rodriguez? Sure. We all do. But he’ll get his day all right. Jake will wipe him out.’

  ‘But, Kerry, the one thing I want to do more than anything in the world is to look him in the eye and tell him that he took my son, my heart and soul, and I want to see the fear in his eyes, when I kill him.’

  Kerry was a little taken aback at the intensity in Sharon’s voice, the slight flush rising in her cheeks as she went on.

  ‘I’m not an emotional wreck or anything. Not by any means. I’m not going tonto. But look. I want to do this if the opportunity is presented. That’s what I’m saying. Can I work with Jake Cahill?’

  ‘No, Sharon. Jake doesn’t work with anyone.’

  There was no easy way to say it. Kerry knew Jake wouldn’t have anyone working with him, or even knowing when or where he was doing a hit. She wouldn’t even ask him. Yet she had never seen such anger or desperation in Sharon’s demeanour.

  They sat quietly for what seemed like a long time. Then Kerry spoke.

  ‘Sharon. Listen. Please believe me when I say that I understand how angry you are, and I know you would gladly pull the trigger on Rodriguez. I felt that same sense of burning rage when I held my dying mother. It was like the heart had been ripped out of me and I didn’t think I would ever rid myself of that rage until I had taken everyone responsible out. And in the end, I did. But I gave the job to a professional, to someone who I knew and trusted and who would go about the business clinically, without emotion getting in the way. That’s Jake Cahill. He executed the men who came to Mickey’s funeral and shot the place up, but he did it cleanly. If I had done it, I’m not sure it would have been like that. And apart from anything else, I could have been killed.’ Kerry paused, hoping that her speech was getting through to Sharon. ‘I can’t take a risk like that with you. I can’t do that. You have become so crucial to our survival here and in Spain, and you’re part of our family now, and I don’t want to lose you.’ She glanced at the door. ‘And that boy in the bedroom along the hall? I mean, what would Tony do if something happened to you, Sharon? Come on. Think this through. You have to think of the future, the long game here.’

  The silence hung for a few moments, and Sharon nodded her head slowly.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying. And I have thought about nothing else. Kerry, if it hadn’t been for you and for your family, I honestly don’t know where I’d be. Apart from people taking shots at me in recent days, even with all the shit around, it’s the happiest, most vital I’ve felt in years. Even meeting Vic again – but that’s another story.’ She half smiled. ‘I’ll respect your decision. But all I’m saying is please consider that if Jake Cahill is in a situation where he can take Rodriguez out cleanly, well, maybe he could think about allowing me in. Could you even ask him? Is that ridiculous?’

  Kerry sighed. ‘Yes, it is a bit ridiculous. But okay. I’ll mention it to him. But I’m not going to push it. It’s up to him what he does and how he does it. I just want the news that Rodriguez is history. We all do.’

  The subject was closed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Frankie Martin handed the woman the wad of notes and jerked his head in the direction of the hotel bedroom door. If she was impressed that he’d paid her two hundred quid for an hour’s work, her surly expression d
idn’t show it. These Eastern European birds were like that. You never knew what they were thinking, their faces always with that glum look bordering on catatonic. For all he knew, maybe it was the hookers who were sneering at the punters, at the pathetic specimens they must encounter in a day’s work. Maybe they said nothing, because they looked down their noses at the men who felt powerful because they were paying them. Maybe secretly the women felt they had the power, because they could take the money and be free of these bastards in as long as it took them to get their rocks off. But Frankie didn’t care about that. Pound for pound, he never had a better shag than a Russian or Ukrainian bird, their legs up to their waist and a knowledge and dedication to the task that went beyond any hooker he’d ever shacked up with. The woman said nothing, stuffed the money in her handbag, then went to the door. It surprised him a little that she glanced over her shoulder for one last look as he lay there naked on the bed. She didn’t smile or say goodbye. She just left.

  Frankie lit a cigarette and lay back on the pillows, inhaling deeply, satisfied at how things were going so far. He was holed up in a Glasgow hotel at the edge of the city centre where he would be well away from any of the faces he might have bumped into in the town. Since he left Dublin two days ago, he’d been here, making sure Joe Boy and Felix had sent some bodies who they’d set up in a couple of flats along the riverside. It hadn’t taken them long before they’d sent their first message to Kerry Casey. Two bookies were firebombed last night and two of the Caseys’ men were bumped off in drive-by shootings. Frankie had been having dinner in his hotel room when he heard the scream of sirens across the city, and he looked at his watch thinking, job done. Kerry Casey would have had a sleepless night, and must by now be wondering what the hell she’d taken on. He’d relayed the news to Rodriguez who’d told him to keep it up until they were trampled into the ground. The Colombian hadn’t even flinched when he told him he had to part with two hundred grand to organise the troops over from Dublin and set them up in the city. It was all a means to an end.

  Frankie’s mobile rang and shuddered on the bedside table, and he picked it up. He automatically pulled himself up to a sitting position when he saw the name on the screen. Rodriguez. He wasn’t expecting a call from him, so whatever this was, he knew he had to be on the ball with answers.

  ‘Frankie, que tal, coño?’

  ‘I’m good, Pepe.’ Frankie found himself almost smile at the Spanish way of using the word ‘coño’ which meant ‘cunt’, as it wasn’t normally used as a term of endearment in English. But he knew Rodriguez was using it in a friendly way. ‘Que pasa?’ Frankie added, throwing in a bit of Spanish and hoping to fuck the Colombian didn’t come back to him in Spanish.

  ‘Excellent,’ Rodriguez said. ‘We must talk about a couple of things. You know this bitch, the English bitch, Sharon. The one who is Kerry Casey’s partner in Spain.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Of course you know her. She’s the woman who hit you on the head, isn’t she?’

  Frankie felt a little flush of shame rise on his neck, and he wanted to tell Rodriguez to fuck right off with his sarcasm, but he knew he couldn’t. So he didn’t reply and let the silence hang for two beats until Rodriguez spoke.

  ‘We had a problem with her yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Si. We had planned to take her out in a meeting she was having with some other of Casey’s big shots. But I’m afraid it failed.’

  Frankie thought someone might have phoned him from Spain to tell him this, but he hadn’t heard a thing about it. Another failed attempt by Rodriguez to make his mark. It was beginning to look like he wasn’t living up to his reputation – give or take a few dismembered corpses that were lying around in recent weeks. The operation in Glasgow had failed, and now this. It wasn’t looking good.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We lost two men, they lost two bodyguards. But we didn’t do well enough.’

  Frankie wondered what he was supposed to say here.

  ‘Well. What can I say, Pepe. I didn’t even know about the operation, of course. I’m over here, but maybe if you’d told me, I might have been able to organise it a bit better. After Durkin’s crowd failed in Glasgow, you can’t really be going into things like this and failing a second time. Know what I mean? It sends the wrong message. The word will be getting around that maybe we’re not that well organised, and some of these bastards who want to take us down will smell blood.’ He paused, waiting for Pepe to interrupt him, but he didn’t. ‘So all I’m saying, is maybe you could bring me in on shit like this. I’ve been around the course a few times, amigo, and I know what I’m doing. Whoever you sent on that job didn’t. Simple as that.’

  Rodriguez said nothing, and Frankie hoped he hadn’t gone too far.

  ‘Okay, we will talk about this. But also, we took this Sharon’s boy for a little while.’

  ‘You took her boy? Her son?’ Frankie was shocked. ‘Why?’ He knew how much Sharon doted on the lad.

  ‘Just to show her that we can do anything. We didn’t harm him. We just took him from school and his driver, then let them both go. We were going to kill the driver, but we decided not to. He’s a lucky man.’

  Frankie thought this was a completely pointless exercise, but he knew better than to say that. So he said nothing, waited for Rodriguez to speak.

  ‘Anyway. We will get Sharon in time. I think we have to, soon, because she is significant over here in the Casey business, and she has to be taken out.’

  ‘I see,’ Frankie said, not knowing what else to say.

  The silence lasted longer than he expected and Frankie wondered what the Christ was going on.

  ‘Okay. Frankie. Here is the next thing. For you, as you are over there. I want you to take charge of a shipment that is coming over to the UK. This is the best, the purest cocaine that the UK will ever have seen. It is coming from my country. It is uncut, so it will make much money for the people you make the deals with. Every person who gets his cocaine for cutting will make more than three times the money they have before – ten times more if they want to cut it more. That is why so many people are coming over to be with me, and leaving the shitty dealers they have here. Because I can provide better, no, the best cocaine in the world.’

  Frankie already knew the plan behind this, and the pure cocaine was the carrot Rodriguez had been dangling to bring everyone over to his mob. But he assumed Rodriguez would already have people organised to sort it out and distribute it when it came to the UK. This was not what he did. He wasn’t some flunkey who worked in distribution. There was an awkward silence and he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You understand, Frankie?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I know the background, but what do you want me to do here in the UK? I’m not sure what you mean?’

  ‘I want you to make sure it arrives safely and make sure it is put somewhere and stored until you can have it distributed in the coming days. You have to organise this. You have to choose the dealers. You must know these people who can pay top dollar for this. We are looking at eight tonnes of cocaine, my friend.’

  Frankie felt flustered. What the fuck was this all about? He’d been sent to Scotland to grind the Caseys into the ground, and now he was being told to follow a container of coke? Eight fuckin’ tonnes? He didn’t even know what that amount of coke looked like.

  ‘But, Pepe, are you forgetting that I am here to bring the Durkin boys onside and work with me to bring Kerry Casey and her family down in Glasgow? That is what I’m doing. We already started – two bookies were firebombed last night, and I know they are reeling from that. We are making strides here. I can do this for you.’

  ‘Of course you will do it, Frankie. That is why I chose you. Because you are capable of doing so. But this cocaine shipment. I cannot trust it to anyone lower down. This is big business and I cannot let some person do this for me who may fuck it up. If I lose this cocaine, the prospects are not go
od for me. And if they are not good for me, then they are not good for anyone who works with me. Do you understand? We have to get this right. That is why I am giving the job to you.’

  Frankie was still a bit bewildered but he knew he was being told in no uncertain terms that there was a job in front of him and he couldn’t get out of it. Not that it was anything he hadn’t done or overseen before. Bringing in shipments of cocaine and heroin was how he and Mickey had earned their spurs in the game, so he knew what to do. But not on this scale. And on principle, he still didn’t like it. He’d gone beyond distributing coke. He was a bigger player now.

  ‘Fine,’ he said eventually. ‘Just tell me where and when. I’ll sort it, Pepe. How is it coming in? Where is it coming into?’

  ‘Okay. That is good. I will call you later. But it will be I think Portsmouth or Southampton. And it is in an industrial-type container. Metal tubes.’

  Frankie was already thinking ahead, wondering where he could get this shit stashed, and who he could really trust in this new regime. And who the fuck he was going to offload this to. Because if anyone got wind there was a load of uncut coke coming into the country, some of the fuckers he dealt with would sell their own children to get a piece.

  ‘Fine. When you’re ready, you can tell me the details. Meantime, I will carry on what we are doing.’

  Rodriguez hung up without saying goodbye, and Frankie looked at the mobile and spat, ‘Dago cunt!’ then tossed it onto the bed. He walked across to the window and peered through the net screening at the afternoon traffic snaking its way along the city centre and up towards the motorway. Pictures of himself over the years came to flooding to his mind. And somewhere inside him, there was a little pang of homesickness that he could never come back here, that this city for him was dead.

  *

  Kerry picked at her fingernails as Danny and Jack sat opposite her in her study and relayed the damage from the previous night. The worst news was that they’d lost two of her men, and she felt even worse that they were people she had never even met. People who worked for her organisation, and who were cut down because of that. This was a shitty way for lives to be led, and in darker moments like this, Kerry sometimes wished she could run a million miles away from it. And she would, in time. But before she could do that she had to fight back, to use everything she had to survive and to destroy the bastards who had dragged her back into this black hole.