Insider (The Glass Family)

by Owen Mullen

  ‘Now, answer me. What the fuck was more important than everyone getting rich?’

  Behind me, the door opened. His eyes darted over my shoulder to Felix and Vincent.

  And that was the moment he realised nobody was coming to save him.

  Blood trickled into his beard. He growled his tobacco laugh. ‘Why? An upstart like you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  His breath was shallow and laboured, an old man who’d run his race and lost. He bared his teeth in a final act of defiance. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. I’ll fucking tell you. Your brother understood the rules, the unwritten rules.’

  Not remotely true. Danny had trampled over everyone and everything.

  ‘He kept to his side of the river. But you, Lukie boy, you had to push it, didn’t you? Had to take what wasn’t yours.’

  ‘You’re mental. All I did was offer you a business opportunity.’

  ‘And I offered you a partnership. A partnership with Jonas Small. Should’ve bitten my arm off. Especially once I’d shown how vulnerable you were. Screwing with you was easy. A piece of piss. Hitmen, hackers and hookers have one thing in common. Pay them enough and they’ll do anything you want. London’s full of them. I said to myself, Luke’s a clever boy. He’ll see sense.’

  One thing had bothered me more than anything else, a twist I hadn’t been able to get straight in my mind: why a hooker would risk everything and go over to the other side. And now I knew. The deal of the century hadn’t been enough. She’d seen more and she’d wanted it. Greed had cost Zelda her life.

  Felix set Bridie O’Shea’s bag on the table. The East End gangster forgot the pain paralysing his arms and struggled, the veins in his neck stretched like cords under the skin. ‘I’ve been the king of London since you were in short trousers! The king! You took my crown, you bastard! You won’t have it long. Somebody’ll knock it off your head, you see if they don’t.’

  Small sucked air through his mouth like a landed fish, exhausted by the hatred that had driven him to go up against me. Felix hung the bag strap round his neck.

  Jonas liked to be ahead of the game: when the bomb exploded, he’d be the first to know.

  He hacked in his throat and spat a red bubble on the carpet. ‘That Irish whore in Kilburn gone back to her roots, has she? Should’ve rotted in prison for what she did.’ He grinned and I was reminded again of the wild animal on Aldgate Pump. ‘Fucking terrorist bitch.’

  Vinnie passed me the black box, no different from the device I used to open my garage door. But when I pressed the red button on the top, Small would cease to exist. Pinned by knives and outnumbered, he stopped struggling and accepted his fate: an old wolf knows when it’s time to leave the pack. Jonas Small was an old wolf.

  ‘One more question, Lukie boy. Call it a last request. What happened to Danny?’

  Telling him would’ve cost me nothing, except he didn’t deserve to know.

  ‘You’ll be seeing him before me, Jonas. Ask him yourself. And say hello to Lily while you’re at it, you weird fuck.’

  Our footsteps echoed in a deserted Brick Lane until we reached the car parked seventy yards further up. Felix looked across from behind the wheel and I was aware of Vincent’s eyes boring into the back of my head, willing me to end this thing, once and for all.

  I pressed the red button and turned away from the blast.

  Nothing happened.

  I pressed again. Still nothing.

  Bridie O’Shea had been a twenty-three-year-old virgin the last time she made a bomb; she’d warned me she was out of practice.

  Fortuna was still fucking with me.

  I opened the door to get out. Vinnie grabbed my arm and stopped me.

  ‘Not yet.’

  An eerie silence settled over the Lane, the air, charged with expectation and uncertainty.

  Vincent’s fingers dug into my shoulder. ‘Not yet, Luke.’

  Suddenly, the front of the restaurant exploded in a roar of fire and smoke. Glass and stones fell from the sky as the Chittagong closed for good – Jonas Small had been its final customer.

  Finnegan loosened his grip, Felix started the engine, and we pulled away from the kerb. In the rear-view mirror, the curry house burned. I waited until we were on Commercial Street before I asked. ‘How did you know?’

  Vincent pursed his lips and started to whistle. I recognised the tune Bridie had sung to me in Kavanagh’s: ‘Sean South of Garryowen’.

  Once a rebel…

  Colin Bishop had got what he deserved. So had Jonas Small. Bishop’s motivation was easy to understand: he was a greedy bastard. Small’s was the product of ego and a lust for power.

  Kings and crowns?

  What a load of bollocks.

  Epilogue

  Lbc

  The club closed on Mondays. Usually, the only people in the bar would be me and the cleaners. Not today. Brick Lane and all that had gone with it was the past; my focus was on the future. And that future was sitting in front of me.

  I’d let the dust settle, literally, before asking them to meet me at eleven o’clock. Nina hadn’t said she’d come, but she was there on the button, wearing a green V-neck jumper and faded jeans, her blonde hair tucked behind her ears, more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. I guessed I had Mark Douglas to thank. Nina needed a guy she could depend on. Maybe he was the one.

  She saw me and smiled. I smiled back.

  Charley arrived a minute later, dressed to the nines, stunning as usual. Black was back. Shirt and cords, offset by half a hundredweight of Aztec costume jewellery with a gold sun pendant in the centre.

  My last attempt to pull us together had failed. I sat down on a stool facing them and went into my pitch. ‘For the last couple of months, this family has been under threat. The strain has been tremendous. But that’s behind us. On Friday, it all changed. We changed it.’

  Nina interrupted. ‘You changed it, Luke.’

  I acknowledged the compliment and went on. ‘Our rivals, the people behind the attacks on us, have been sorted – the details aren’t important. If you’ve seen the news or read a paper, you’ll be aware a body was dragged from the Thames. What you don’t know, what nobody knows, is it was an undercover cop who’d found a way inside our organisation.’

  I had their attention. Charley leaned closer.

  Nina broke the silence. ‘Who was it?’

  I held up my hand. I’d answer their questions but not now.

  ‘That just leaves us. The three of us: the children of Daniel and Frances. Because that’s what we are. The world isn’t the same as it was a few days ago. When I explain, you’ll understand. For the moment, it’s enough to say we rule this fucking city. We rule London. It’s ours. The only people who can hurt us are in this room.’

  It was decision time – an end to nonsense and petty squabbles – and they realised it.

  ‘I have to know, once and for all, if you’re in or out.’

  There was a light in their eyes I hadn’t seen before. I walked to the bar and came back with a bottle and three glasses: three glasses – the irony didn’t escape me.

  ‘Now, do I crack this baby open or what?’

  New Scotland Yard, Curtis Green Building, the Embankment

  It was still dark when Oliver Stanford slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to wake Elise, and went downstairs to the kitchen. He stood at the kitchen window, watching the first shafts of dawn’s early light break through the trees where a stranger had stalked them from the bottom of the garden. The memory made Stanford shudder: life had become a bad dream. But, at least, the weekend hadn’t added to his problems. The murder of Colin Bishop – kneecapped and shot execution-style in the back of the head – had the fingerprints of the IRA all over it, which meant that, fortunately, the mess had landed on Counter Terrorism’s pile instead of his. Maybe Glass had involved the Irish bitch in Kilburn.

  Stanford was physically and emotionally drained; his head ached and
his eyes were puffy. No matter how tired he felt, he couldn’t sleep. Jocky Shaw’s leaving do might’ve been months ago instead of the previous weekend, the meeting in the derelict factory in Fulton Street with Luke Glass even longer.

  The gangster wanted him as close to the beating heart of Clean Sweep as he could get. Easier said. After all his talk – booze talk, admittedly – Bremner hadn’t taken Stanford’s call and he was worn out trying to convince himself the senior man had been hungover. No surprise, given the state he’d been in. Except…

  The middle-aged receptionist outside the commander’s office barely raised her head when he approached her desk. He straightened his spine and pulled himself to his full height. ‘Superintendent Stanford. Commander Bremner asked me to come and see him.’

  The woman got up, knocked on the door, went in and closed it behind her. Thirty seconds later, she was back. The smile couldn’t have been less sincere. ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent, the commander’s diary is full today.’

  ‘What about tomorrow?’

  ‘And tomorrow. If you’d like to make an appointment, I could fit you in, though it would be next month, I’m afraid.’

  The policeman’s fear took him to the stairs rather than the lift; he couldn’t be with people. He’d been a bloody fool to believe the loose-lipped bastard in the first place. There was no place for him on Clean Sweep, never had been, and the thoughts he’d fought against resurfaced.

  Was Bremner embarrassed and covering his drunken arse?

  Or was he sending a message? Telling him they knew he was dirty.

  If they did, it was over. Luke Glass would have no use for him.

  The King of Mesopotamia

  George Ritchie never looked back: what was done was done. He’d been left no choice with the guy from Liverpool. The old gangster had known Luke would understand his sister had gone over the line, and he had. The same couldn’t be said for Charley – if her and Nina put their differences aside and teamed up, he’d be in trouble.

  Jonas Small’s demise had created a vacuum in the East End. Luke had wasted no time in taking over. Felix had been promoted. Fair enough; he’d earned it, though he’d have to watch his back, because right now, in Limehouse or Whitechapel, Dalston or Waltham Forest, for sure, somebody would be planning a move of their own.

  Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.

  But soon.

  Luke had offered him the territory. A younger George would’ve jumped at the chance to run both. But then a younger Ritchie might’ve gone up against Luke Glass. And London could’ve added one more turf war to the list.

  Kavanagh’s, Kilburn High Road

  Bridie O’Shea poured herself a large whiskey. Her reflection stared back from the mirror behind the optics – nothing like how she saw herself in her head. Time was a bastard. Living was a bastard too, but it was better than the alternative.

  The service had been short. No priest, no Bible quotes, none of that. Niall wouldn’t have tolerated it. The cronies who’d hugged the end of the counter every day of the week, egging him on to tell them stories, had been there. And that was it.

  Her and half a dozen tired old tossers: not much to show for sixty-odd years on earth.

  She went through to the back room and peeled off her coat. The cards lay on the table, just as they’d been left on Friday night before the car had picked her up and driven her to Chalk Farm. When he was in his cups, which towards the end was often, Wolf had talked philosophically about the manner of death. Bridie hadn’t understood then. Now, she did.

  Colin Bishop hadn’t died well. Or quickly. The Provisionals had their own ways: torture and executions were formal affairs, like the judgment of the courts. And just as final.

  The first bullets had taken Bishop’s ankles, after that both of his knees from behind. Dark blood and fragments of bone had stuck to his trousers. If he’d survived, he would’ve been a cripple. Seeing Bishop on the floor, hearing him beg for mercy, had given Bridie O’Shea no pleasure. Nothing would bring Niall Monahan back. When they’d pulled Colin Bishop upright onto his destroyed legs, screaming in agony, she’d put the hood over his head herself, pressed the gun to the back of his skull and fired.

  In the aftermath and every minute since, Bridie was reminded of how right she’d been.

  Niall was still gone. She was still alone.

  A newspaper she’d been too sad to read lay on the chair. Images of a bombed-out restaurant in the East End told her she hadn’t lost her touch; the old skills were still there, had always been there. Waiting for the day. The lighter clicked; a cloud of smoke rose above her. She threw the whiskey over in one go and pushed the glass away, hesitated for a moment, then placed the red eight on the black nine.

  The Flask, Flask Walk, Hampstead

  Nobody recognised the guy sitting outside the pub reading the Monday edition of The Times; there was no reason why they should. Hampstead had more than its share of famous people. DCI John Carlisle wasn’t one of them. Although it was sunny, he kept his tan raincoat on. When he saw who he was meeting turn in from the high street, he didn’t wave. The man sat down and Carlisle said, ‘Quite a weekend your boy had to himself. A murdered gangster with all the hallmarks of an IRA execution thrown from a moving car in the centre of the nation’s capital is exactly the kind of optics the PM’s desperate to avoid.’

  ‘Fuck the PM. He’s a dick.’

  ‘My feelings exactly, though add an explosion into the mix and it isn’t hard to see where he’s coming from. If it looks like the Provisionals are making a comeback, all bets are off. The Good Friday Agreement’s dead in the water, and so is his career.’

  Mark Douglas couldn’t have cared less. ‘He can take his pick – terrorism or his crime figures. One of them’s fucked. Get used to it.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘The immediate problem is Glass knew he had an insider. How the fuck did that get out? Who told him?’

  Carlisle made a face and shook his head. ‘Honestly, we’ve no idea. The operation’s airtight. You could count on one hand the people in on it.’

  ‘Not good enough… sir. One of those people almost got me killed. It’s my life on the line. If I think they’re starting to suspect me, I’m coming in.’

  ‘Understood. We agreed at the start that call has to be yours. But it would be a shame, Mark. You’ve done better than we could’ve hoped in our wildest dreams. Setting you up with Celebrity Security so you could get closer and maybe get noticed was a long shot. But it was the only shot we had of breaking into the family. Head of Security for Luke Glass is a big win for our side. Who’d have thought that was even possible?’

  ‘Plain old luck. And, right place right time. But getting a result won’t be quick. Luke’s smart and very careful. He keeps me at arm’s length from what’s really going on. Not a whisper about a contact in the force. We are sure there is one, aren’t we?’

  Carlisle didn’t reply and Douglas had his answer.

  The DCI said, ‘Why weren’t you at Brick Lane?’

  ‘Luke took the people he trusts completely and that isn’t me. Not yet.’

  ‘You call him Luke. You like Glass, don’t you?’

  Douglas dismissed the question. ‘Wouldn’t matter, one way or the other. As far as who he’s working with, I’m out of the loop.’

  ‘What about the sister, Nina? Anything with her?’

  Mark Douglas hesitated before answering. ‘Too soon. I’m just in the door. If I start dropping questions into the conversation, she’ll suss me.’ He looked up and down the Walk, keen to get the conversation on something else. ‘Where’s Simon Hume? Because I don’t need anybody bumping into him in Marylebone High Street.’

  ‘Sunning himself in Gran Canaria or somewhere. Lucky sod.’

  ‘Whose face did I blow away?’

  Carlisle shrugged. ‘A John Doe nobody will notice is missing.’

  Douglas returned to the fear gnawing the pit of his stomach. ‘Whoever told Glass his organisation was compromised is Old Bill.�
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  ‘Almost certainly. But they think it’s sorted, think you got rid of the problem. That puts you in the clear.’

  ‘Only for the moment. As it stands, I’m on borrowed time. A false move and it’ll be me you’re hooking out the river. Glass was ready to shoot his sister, what would he do to me? Luke only trusts me up to a point. Beyond that… expecting me to deal with more than one enemy at a time is too much. Find out who told Glass or it’s over. I’m pulling the plug.’

  ‘Mark—’

  ‘I’m serious. Do a better job or this is over.’

  Postscript

  Luke Glass has consolidated his hold on the London underworld. LBC is fast becoming the most exclusive club in the city and his high-profile luxury property development, Glass Gate, is in the final stages of completion. All ten units have already been sold.

  Nina Glass manages Glass Houses, her real estate business. She is rarely seen at LBC.

  Charley Glass is the uncrowned queen of the gossip columns, often photographed with film stars and celebrities. A fragile truce exists between her and her sister.

  Mark Douglas remains head of security for the Glass organisation north of the Thames. He is still in a relationship with Nina Glass.

  George Ritchie has tightened security south of the river; there have been no fresh attacks.

  Superintendent Oliver Stanford is still an active duty officer with the Met. He has not been seconded to other duties.

  Jonas Small is believed to have died in the explosion in Brick Lane that destroyed the Chittagong restaurant. The bombing had the stamp of the IRA, though no one has claimed responsibility.