The Dead E-Book

Howard Linskey

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: David Blake
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 463

Beschreibung

There's only one way I'm ever getting out of this . . . Sooner or later I'm a dead man David Blake is back in Newcastle, running three cities, top boy. Life is sweet until his bent accountant is arrested for murder. The money man is nailed on for a life sentence until he puts five million pounds out of Blake's reach. Now Blake faces an agonising choice; fix the acquittal of a child killer or run out of the cash he needs to bankroll his empire. Meanwhile Serbian gangsters are slowly taking over his territory and a crazed Russian Oligarch wants to use Blake's drug supply line for his own ends. Back at home, the Police are closing in, determined to take David Blake off the streets of Newcastle forever, and Blake's girl Sarah is asking awkward questions about the death of her father that he really doesn't want to answer. As he fights for his life, David Blake slowly uncovers a shocking truth about his own past, turning over stones until he finally reveals a secret known only to The Dead.

Leseprobe

There’s only one way I’m ever getting out of this … Sooner or later I’m a dead man

David Blake is back in Newcastle, running three cities, top boy. Life is sweet until his bent accountant is arrested for murder. The money man is nailed on for a life sentence until he puts five million pounds out of Blake’s reach. Now Blake faces an agonising choice; fix the acquittal of a child killer or run out of the cash he needs to bankroll his empire.

Meanwhile, Serbian gangsters are slowly taking over his territory and a crazed Russian oligarch wants to use Blake’s drug supply line for his own ends. Back at home, the police are closing in, determined to take David Blake off the streets of Newcastle forever, and Blake’s girl Sarah is asking awkward questions about the death of her father that he really doesn’t want to answer.

Howard Linskey has worked as a barman, journalist, catering manager and marketing manager for a celebrity chef, as well as in a variety of sales and account management jobs. He has written for newspapers, magazines and websites on a number of subjects. The Drop was Howard’s debut novel, published by No Exit in 2011, followed by The Damage in 2012.

Originally from Ferryhill in CountyDurham, he now lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and daughter.

For Erin and Alison, of course

Also by Howard Linskey

The Drop

The Damage

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to my publisher Ion Mills for believing in The Dead and to the fantastic team at No Exit for all their help and support, in particular Claire Watts and Alexandra Bolton. Thanks also to Alan Forster for the great cover design and to Jem Cook for my web site.

A special thank you is owed to my editor Keshini Naidoo for her great suggestions and editorial assistance with The Dead, which is greatly appreciated.

I am lucky enough to be represented by the hardest working agents in the business. Massive thanks go to the legendary ‘Agent Phil’; Phil Patterson at Marjacq Literary Agency, for his help and friendship over the years. I would also like to thank Isabella Floris for bringing my books to Germany and Peter Hammans and Connie Loesch at Droemer Knaur. Thank you also to Luke Speed at Marjacq for his tireless work on the TV option and to David Barron and Stevie Lee, the great people at ‘Runaway Fridge’ Productions.

I would like to thank Adam Pope, Andy Davis, Nikki Hurley, Gareth Chennells, Andrew Local and Stuart Britton for their faith and friendship during the writing of this and all of my books and for believing I would get there in the end.

Finally, a huge thank you to the two people in my life who support me the most, my lovely wife Alison and amazing daughter Erin. I couldn’t have done this without you.

‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions’

William Shakespeare

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Epilogue

Copyright

1

The dead are left with nothing, except the power to destroy the lives of those they leave behind. The girl’s body lay on dry land, her head lolling over the edge of the river bank. She was face up, her eyes open and her long, dark hair dipped into the water. The steady, regular movement of the current made the strands sway gently like tendrils. Her left arm trailed behind her, the fingertips of one white, slender hand suspended there, as if she were about to dip it into the cool water. Her appearance gave the illusion there might still be life left in her, but DS Fraser knew better.

‘Are you gonna call him?’ asked DC Thomas, ‘I reckon you should…’ and when Fraser frowned at him, he added an uncertain, ‘prob’ly’.

Fraser gave the Detective Constable a withering look that managed to efficiently convey the words ‘don’t tell me how to do my job’ and Thomas retreated without another word, busying himself at the edge of the crime scene.

Fraser watched the SOCOs as they went about their business. They moved slowly and methodically, taping off the area around the girl and the route her body had taken from the main road to her resting place here by the river bank. The river ran through a small copse at the edge of a farm around fifteen miles north of Newcastle, a dip in the land too deep to be cultivated that had been left to its own devices. The bushes were overgrown here and the tall tree branches stretched forwards to meet each other as if in greeting, forming a canopy of leaves that, in parts, blocked out the moonlight.

It seemed she had been dragged from a car on the main road up above them. Whatever her killer’s initial intention, he must have panicked and simply thrown her body over the hedge and Fraser understood why. Whoever had done this probably intended to follow the girl down here to bury her or, at the very least, cover her with something, to delay the discovery of the body, but he would have felt exposed out there on the main road in the middle of the night. Any passing motorist could have clocked him and given the police a description of the vehicle, maybe even the registration number.

He must have known every second magnified his chances of being caught, so he had heaved the girl over the hedge and driven away. Judging by the flattened grass and weeds this side of the hedge, the girl’s body hit the ground hard, then gathered momentum, rolling down the hill, before finally coming to a halt when the ground levelled off at the edge of the river, where she now lay, staring mournfully up at the stars.

She’d been found by a man out walking his dog. Weren’t they always, thought Fraser? At least she hadn’t been there too long, before nature could get to work on her, breaking her body down; all those microbes, all that bacteria, the insects and the wild, gnawing animals. That was the thing about Mother Nature. She didn’t fuck about. It didn’t take long out in the open before you could become unrecognisable, even to your nearest and dearest.

Fraser could tell she’d been a pretty little thing; long dark hair, brown eyes, fresh face, full red lips. Was that why she was killed, he wondered; a jealous boyfriend who’d been dumped and couldn’t cope with the crushing realisation that someone else would eventually have her? Sexual jealousy was as strong and likely a motive as any other, in Fraser’s experience, particularly when the victim was young.

Fraser wondered if he would soon be interrogating another fucked up ex-boyfriend or if this time they had a random on their hands. Was this poor lass unlucky enough to be out, in her skimpy little skirt, with the oh-so-thin blouse, when a rapist or killer-for-kicks drove by and spotted her? Maybe the intention had been rape but the guy panicked afterwards, knowing she wasn’t going to go home and just forget all about it, so he’d made sure she could never talk. Perhaps it was the murder itself that got the killer off and sex had nothing to do with it? Shame they couldn’t just ask the victim, so they could find out whose face she’d been staring up into as she gave out her last breath.

One of the SOCOs turned on the light he’d been assembling, then he turned to DS Fraser, ‘are you going to call him?’

‘Don’t you start,’ warned Fraser, but he was already reaching for his phone.

Detective Inspector Robert Carlton had already grown weary of the black-tie do, long before his mobile phone began to vibrate silently against his chest from the inside pocket of his dinner jacket. He exhaled wearily, then reached for it. Carlton was feeling the after-effects of a heavy meal; duck and Armagnac terrine, chicken supreme with Jersey Royals and a generous portion of sticky toffee pudding for afters.

‘Carlton,’ he answered above the din in the room, caused by the chatter of two hundred police officers with copious amounts of beer and wine inside them.

‘Boss, it’s me,’ it was Fraser, that much he could make out but the rest was lost, drowned out by loud, braying laughter from the next table, a reaction to one of Superintendent Connor’s borderline racist jokes.

‘Hang on,’ Carlton commanded, ‘I can’t hear you.’

He climbed to his feet and left the room, turning sideways as he did so to squeeze between fellow diners who, as always at these functions, were packed in too tightly, so that navigating his way between tables was like tackling an obstacle course. The room was sizeable and full to the brim with ranking police officers, each one looking for a leg up and feeling obliged to shell out on tickets for a charity dinner, which cost far more than the sum of this mediocre meal’s parts. Everyone was expected to support the latest cause adopted by the Northumbria Police Force to justify its obscene annual piss up, which would go on well into the early hours. Already there were some familiar faces looking distinctly worse for wear.

Carlton was grateful to be free of the noise and stifling warmth of the dining room. He crossed the Royal Station Hotel’s lobby and went out through its main door. Only when he was on the steps outside and the cool air hit him, did he turn his attention back to the mobile phone in his hand.

‘I can hear you now,’ he told the Detective Sergeant.

‘Sorry to bother you, boss. I know you are at that black-tie do but I thought you’d want to know. It’s a young girl.’

‘What is?’

‘The reason I’m calling. We found one; on the bank of a stream, out in the sticks. She was just lying there. No attempt to even hide the body.’

This piqued Carlton’s interest. If he was ever going to make DCI he needed as many high-profile cases under his belt as he could get. He listened while Fraser gave him the facts. The girl’s approximate age, ‘somewhere between fifteen and twenty,’ it was always hard to tell with girls, particularly if they had a bit of slap on; what she was wearing, the usual clubbing uniform of short skirt and skimpy top, and the exact location of her body, a smattering of woodland with a stream running through it, a few miles north of the city. The site was about fifteen minutes’ drive from Carlton’s current location. Finally there was the suspected cause of death, which, from the abrasions on her throat and bulging, blood-shot eyes, looked like strangulation.

‘No ID?’

‘No purse or handbag, no credit cards, not even a mobile phone, just the clothes she was wearing. I wondered if you would like me to send a car… or I could just call it in?’ He meant if the DI had been drinking. Nobody could afford to have a pissed up detective at a murder scene, screwing everything up. Carlton had only had one pre-dinner pint and two small glasses of acidic white wine, which hardly counted.

‘Send a car,’ Carlton told the Detective Sergeant, ‘tell him to pick me up outside the railway station.’

Fraser had been right to call him first. While the brass were sipping their Cognacs and singing ‘God Save the Queen’ before the charity auction, Carlton would get down there and stake a claim on the case. In his experience, pretty young girls being murdered attracted more column inches in the local papers and national tabloids than just about any other case. The middle-aged or elderly could be shot, stabbed, strangled, gassed, electrocuted or run over by trains and their story would be buried in the middle of the paper, but a pretty little thing with potential was a different matter altogether. If she was educated, wanting to become a lawyer or a doctor, or just about to go off and travel the world, then her death would be seen as even more tragic and the public couldn’t get enough of it. This could be front page news, only relegated further into the newspaper if the world’s economy was about to implode again or David Beckham had a new haircut.

Carlton retrieved his raincoat from the hat-check girl and fished out the packet of cigs for the short walk up to the old Victorian railway station. It was a mild autumn night and he kept his coat draped over his arm as he walked, lit a cigarette and drew on it. Carlton was used to seeing bodies, many of which were in an advanced state of decay; he’d become hardened to it over the years. The bloke walking his dog had probably never seen a body in his life, unless it was a relative in a funeral home all tidied up and made to look peaceful. Murdered folk rarely looked at peace and the poor bastard probably yacked his guts up on the spot, just like Carlton had done when he saw his first floater, almost thirty years ago now. He’d been a beat bobby back then, one of the first on the scene when they fished that murdered hooker out of the Tyne. She’d been in there a while, smelled like a wound that had gone septic and, just when he thought he’d managed to force his lunch back down into his belly, something dark and slimy slid from her eye socket and he’d barfed up all over the ground in front of everybody.

Carlton didn’t have to wait long before the unmarked car pulled over next to him and he took a last drag on the cigarette, dropped it onto the ground, stubbed it out with his foot and climbed in. DI Carlton was a busy man, with little time for reflection, but the short journey north allowed him to be alone with his thoughts for once. The driver, a DC in his forties, was an unambitious fella who would only speak when spoken to and Carlton was thankful he didn’t have to engage in small talk. His thoughts drifted back to the dinner that evening and what really stuck in his mind was the amount of moaning from his fellow officers; about the job, money, the whinging wife and ungrateful kids. By comparison he reckoned he was doing alright. Financially, he was through the worst of the early mortgage years. His oldest was out of university and had eased the strain on their finances a little. John might still need the occasional hand-out but that was nothing compared to funding a university education as far afield as Bristol. It was a shame about the girlfriend though. Helen had seemed like the one. At least John thought she was. They’d been together for three years, almost their entire time in college. She’d holidayed with the family and Carlton had started to view her as a future daughter-in-law. They were all shocked when she suddenly finished with him, with little in the way of an explanation. John was devastated and his dad didn’t know what to say to him. The poor lad was in bits but he would just have to get through it on his own somehow.

At least Gemma had chosen to stay in Newcastle for her degree. The girls she was sharing with seemed nice enough and there was no heavy boyfriend on the scene to take her mind off her studies. He had hoped she might just stay at home but Gemma wanted her own independence and you had to let them go eventually. There were times, he had to admit, when they quite liked having the house to themselves again.

Little more than a quarter of an hour into their journey, the driver took a left onto a dirt road that led to a couple of farmhouses, but the car came to a halt long before them, by a dip in the land. There was a clear sky and a bright full moon, but Carlton could make out little more than the tops of the trees from here. Fraser was waiting though, to take him down to the crime scene.

‘Hope it doesn’t ruin your shoes boss,’ he said, as Carlton exited the car.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ answered Carlton as he walked over the wet grass to the edge of the dip.

DI Carlton and DS Fraser paused at the top of the hill to survey the scene below them. SOCOs were moving purposefully, illuminated by lamps on tripod frames, which shone brightly down on the body of the young girl.

DS Fraser started to walk down the hill towards the scene but DI Carlton didn’t follow. Fraser turned back to see what was causing the delay and found his boss frozen to the spot, staring intently ahead.

‘What is it sir?’ asked Fraser. Then, when no answer was forthcoming, ‘sir?’ he asked again. Glancing back, he looked into the inspector’s eyes and was startled by what he saw there. Carlton wore a look of shocked incomprehension. The DI slowly opened his mouth then, abruptly, he let out a blood-curdling yell that made everyone at the scene start and immediately turn towards the sound.

‘Gemma!’ screamed Carlton, ‘Gemma! No!’ and to Fraser’s astonishment his boss charged past him and started running flat out down the hill towards the stricken girl. Fraser remained where he stood, as DI Carlton barrelled past a shell-shocked SOCO, then seemed to launch himself at the corpse, grabbing the body and pulling it towards him to enfold it in his arms. Fraser remained rooted to the spot while he watched panicked SOCOs attempting to pull the clearly insane Detective Inspector away from the murder victim, while he in turn clasped the dead girl to his chest with one beefy arm, fending them off with the other.

It took three of them to drag Carlton away from the girl and they all ended up in the water, tumbling as they lost their balance while trying to deal with Carlton’s bulk. Even from this distance Fraser could make out the crazed and desperate look in Carlton’s eyes as he climbed to his feet and ran from the shallow water, back to the body, leaving the three other men dripping in his wake. He grabbed the girl once more and clasped her to him. The tiny body lolled like a doll in his arms.

The three other men emerged from the water together.

‘Get away from me!’ ordered Carlton, all sense and reason gone from him now, as he pulled the girl’s flimsy corpse closer to him, ‘she’s my daughter, that’s my Gemma!’ and he began to weep, as he held the girl tighter still. The other men seemed to give up then. Perhaps they realised the crime scene was already hopelessly contaminated or maybe, like Fraser, they just couldn’t bear the sound of Detective Inspector Carlton sobbing like a child, as he rocked the lifeless body of his daughter in his arms.

2

There is really only one way out of this world for me. In a pine box. I wish I didn’t know that but I do. I’m not stupid. You can’t walk away from a life like mine. You don’t just retire and hand it all over to someone else or sell the business on as a going concern. There are too many people with a stake in the firm and if any of them ever believed I was looking to get out, they’d make sure I was retired permanently. You see, I can stay alive only as long as the people who work for me, and all the others I pay at the end of each and every month, reckon I am contributing. The minute I cease to add value to their lives they start questioning whether I am really anything more than a drain on their resources. There’s no sentiment in this business. As long as I am bringing in a lot more than I’m taking out, they are happy. If anyone starts to suspect I’ve gone flaky they will forget everything that has gone before and they will kill me. And I wouldn’t blame them either.

So I can’t walk away, ever, and that’s my punishment. The day I pulled the trigger on my boss, Bobby Mahoney, was the day I was handed my very own life sentence. I just didn’t realise at the time that it will only ever be over for me when I’m a dead man. My flight back from Istanbul was delayed and that gave me plenty of time to think about how I ended up here. You don’t set out to be a gangster. At least I didn’t. I’m no Henry Hill and the road I travelled was long, tortuous and made up of a million little baby steps, each one a decision that eventually, years later, led me here. There wasn’t just one turning point, a single chance to turn my back on this life before I fell too deeply into it. I know that now and often wonder what my life could have been, if I’d suddenly decided to just jack it all in, long before I became Bobby Mahoney’s indispensable right hand man, a Geordie Consigliere to the north-east’s most notorious criminal, a man who held the city in the palm of his huge, gnarled hand for more than three decades.

Then, when Bobby was killed, I stepped into his shoes and found they were a perfect fit. I may not have the brute strength, fearlessness and raw fighting ability of Bobby Mahoney, but what I lacked in those departments I more than made up for with my ability to read people and work things out before they did.

I had time to contemplate my situation because I was waiting for my suitcase to make an appearance on the carousel. I’d travelled first class but it was my suitcase that was acting like the diva, insisting on keeping me waiting and I was the last one there, apart from Palmer, my head of security.

The Gallowgate Leisure Group has gone global. These days we are an offshore company that uses lawyers and bankers more than enforcers or hit men and I have to oversee all of it. I try to look the part of David Blake, Chief Operating Officer, but apart from a few expensive suits, I’m pretty much the same guy I’ve always been.

In my business, you have to keep on growing and expanding, so you can earn the money you need to pay all of the people who will keep you away from prison or out of the grave. Bobby’s era of armed robbery and protection, of gaming machines, porno movies and illegal gambling may have been a brutal and bloody place but it has nothing on the world of international drug smuggling and money laundering I’ve been forced to take us into.

But business is okay, the money is still coming in and we haven’t killed anyone in a couple of years now, which is as good a barometer of the health of our firm as any. As Kinane is fond of saying, ‘We’ve got fingers in more pies than Mister Fucking Kipling,’ and he knows because he’s one of our inner circle, our main enforcer, the man you fuck with if you fuck with me. Since the guy is huge and looks like he’s made out of breeze blocks, this acts as a pretty big deterrent.

My bag finally put in an appearance and I was relieved because I wanted to get going. We left Heathrow airport, then took the underground to Kings Cross for a train north. I got off it at York but Palmer stayed on for a meeting in Edinburgh with Fallon, a Glasgow hard case who shares the city with us, because we are a sleeping partner in his Glasgow operation. I didn’t expect to be gunned down on the mean streets of York but you can never be too careful, so I got Joe Kinane to drive down and meet me. He picked me up in his Lexus and drove me to view an old Georgian hotel I had my eye on. I wanted to buy it, renovate the place and run it as a going concern, while laundering some of our drug money through its gilded doors. Once I’d viewed the hotel, we were free to drive back north again, which gave him his chance to brief me on everything that had been going on while I was away. Thankfully it wasn’t much. Everyone prefers a quiet life and I’m no exception.

‘Amrein’s been on a couple of times,’ he informed me, ‘something about a meeting. He wants you to get back to him.’

Amrein; our fixer, the guy who oils the wheels, greases the palms and keeps us all out of trouble, in theory.

‘I know about Amrein’s meeting,’ I admitted. ‘I’m trying to avoid it. I’ll call him tomorrow.’

I spent the final miles of my journey in a relaxed frame of mind. I was looking forward to seeing Sarah and my gorgeous little girl again. I’d missed them both. We were almost back in the city, just a few miles to go. I was tired and the last thing I wanted was an incident of any kind but that’s exactly what I got. As we were speeding up the A1, a car suddenly shot out from the slip road and cut us up big style as it crossed both lanes. Kinane slammed on the brakes with a ‘Fooking Hell!’ and scowled at the driver in front.

‘Simmer down,’ I told him once I realised we weren’t actually under attack, ‘it’s just some young tosser,’ the car was small and old but it had been souped-up somehow and the boy racer who owned it had spent a lot of time adding spoilers and spray painting it black. I couldn’t even tell what make it had been before he started.

Kinane ignored me and pounded the horn with one hand while he gripped the steering wheel tightly with the other and stepped on the accelerator to give chase. I tried to reason with him, even though I knew it would be hopeless. ‘I haven’t got time for this Joe,’ I said, as he swiftly gained on the other car, ‘I don’t need the grief of bailing you out if you lamp the lad.’

Kinane forced the car level with the boy racer, undertaking, so we were right next to him on the inside lane. The window on their passenger door immediately came down and the guy riding shotgun put his arm out and gave us the finger. I doubted he would have done that if he could have seen inside our car but the darkened windows meant he had no idea who he had just insulted. I could see the bloke’s pig-ignorant face clearly. It was twisted into a violent snarl of hate, as if we were totally out of order, preventing him and his mate from doing exactly what they pleased.

‘Little tosser,’ muttered Kinane, his voice going as high as I had ever heard it.‘Joe,’ I said it quietly, by way of warning, but you don’t give Joe Kinane the finger and get away with it. If you did, there wouldn’t be much point in employing him.

Kinane moved as if he was about to wind the window down and give this bloke the shock of his young life but, as he took his eye off the road ahead, I noticed the rear end of a lorry coming up at such speed it seemed to be reversing into us.

‘Joe!’ I shouted and he slammed the anchors on and swerved to the right just in time, ‘Jesus!’ I watched the back of the lorry veer past me.

Kinane gave it no attention. He was busy steering the Lexus through the rest of the traffic, chasing the little car as it slalomed amongst the other vehicles on the road. One or two of the other drivers looked a bit panicked as we came charging through them but Kinane paid them no heed. This kind of driving was not new to him and his blood was up.

The little black car suddenly cut across two lanes again, this time from right to left and it shot off the A1, taking the slip road into the city. Kinane followed. I had no idea how we missed the car in the slow lane, as we cut between it and the turn off. ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ I demanded.

‘Chasing-these-two-little-cunts,’ Kinane emphasised each word through gritted teeth.

I grabbed the door handle and held on to it tightly as our car swerved to the right and shot across the flyover, the driver of the car that was trying to get onto the road from our left must have had several heart attacks as we flew out and cut him up but Kinane just expected the bloke to brake and get out of our way, which thankfully he did. By the time he’d wrestled with his car, realised he was still alive and composed himself enough to sound the horn at us, the noise was already a distant one.

On the straight, comparatively empty stretch of road we soon caught up with the snarling boy racers. Kinane drew alongside them. This time we were on their opposite side, so it was the driver I could see on my left. His window was down and he was shouting and swearing at us. I couldn’t really hear the words over the din of our engines but it looked a lot like he was shouting ‘Come on! Come on then!’

Kinane needed no further bidding and he slammed our car to the left. They managed to miss us but it was close. The driver must have shit himself, as he simultaneously slammed on the brakes and swerved wildly onto the side of the road. We did the same thing and Kinane stamped on his brakes until we skidded to a halt, kicking up gravel and clouds of dust in the process. As soon as both cars came to a stop, they were out of theirs and starting their angry march towards us, their biggest worry that we might drive swiftly away and rob them of their vengeance.

I wasn’t too concerned about their aggression but I was annoyed with Kinane. As far as I was concerned, he could sort this mess out on his own, ‘Fucking hell Joe, you could have killed us.’ I told him.

‘No danger of that,’ he said dismissively but he wasn’t giving me his undivided attention. Instead he was watching them in his rear view mirror, ‘come on, come on,’ he was urging them. He didn’t want them to realise who they were dealing with until it was too late.

I sighed and put my hand on the door handle and clicked it so that the door was still closed but the mechanism for opening it was half engaged. The guy who was coming for my side was a little quicker than the one heading for Kinane. I watched him in my mirror and, as he bent low to lean into the window and call me out, I clicked the door handle again and pushed against it hard. The side of the window frame caught the snarling little bastard right in the face, and he shot backwards, falling onto the waste ground at the side of the road.

Kinane opened his door and climbed out. I got out just in time to see the look on the young driver’s face as he registered Kinane’s huge presence and it was an absolute picture. Normally I would have enjoyed that moment but I was too annoyed at Kinane for putting us in this position to gain any real pleasure from it. Before the lad could turn and run, Kinane snaked out an arm and grabbed his fleecy top in one gnarled fist. ‘Come here!’ he bellowed and I reckoned the guy probably filled his pants for the second time in two minutes.

Kinane must have given the lad a couple of slaps because he started yelping like a little girl and screaming to be let go. I was preoccupied by the young thug’s mate, who was crawling to his knees. He shook his head and blinked, then put his hand to his forehead and wiped fresh blood from it. He surveyed his palm, got angry again, snarled at me and tried to get up but I’d had time to pick my spot. I sent a kick Alan Shearer would have been proud of right into his chin. His head shot back then snapped forwards again until gravity intervened and he dropped face first onto the hard ground, his chin smacking into the concrete with a sound like teeth breaking. He wouldn’t be getting back up again after that.

I turned away then and set off down the road. I knew I could walk over the Redheugh Bridge then get a cab. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of Kinane’s violent retribution. Whatever he was doing to that thug, it must have been creative, because there was an awful lot of screaming going on.

I walked on as the screams continued but slowly grew fainter. Eventually, as I knew it would, a police car could be heard heading Joe’s way. I doubted his young victim had ever been happier to hear the shrill sound of its sirens.

3

By the time I got back my little Emma was already asleep. Sarah was at the top of the stairs when I walked in and she greeted me with a big grin but immediately placed her finger to her lips, so I’d know to be quiet. Missing my daughter was another thing I’d blame Joe Kinane for.

We lived in a house on a new development on the edge of the city; one that was built and wholly owned by the firm. The street we live in has twelve properties, a mixture of houses and flats in a horseshoe shape, making a cul-de-sac. It has a gated entrance and tall fences with CCTV cameras everywhere. From the outside it looks like a normal little residential estate with our house at the centre but nobody else lives on our street, except members of the firm, or security men on a retainer, and the gate is manned twenty-four hours a day. The only genuine civilian resident is Sarah’s best mate Joanne, who lives in one of the apartments and helps Sarah with Emma. It’s probably as secure an arrangement as I could get in Newcastle.

When I reached the top of the stairs, Sarah was leaning against the door frame looking down at our daughter, who was in the kind of deep sleep only little ones can achieve. She was tucked up in her bed, arms wrapped tightly around her favourite teddy, eyes tight shut, breathing regularly into her pillow. Every time I see her like this I think there is nothing I wouldn’t do for our little girl, to protect her and walk her safely through this world.

Sarah grinned at me. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ she asked. ‘I know I’m her mother but…’

‘She is,’ I replied, ‘everybody says so.’

And they did. Everybody, even the hardened gangsters we employed in the firm came over all smiley if they had to come to the house and saw our little girl, with her big blue eyes and the golden-blonde hair she inherited from her mother. ‘She gets it from you.’

‘From both of us,’ Sarah said, ‘she’s so cute,’ she added in wonderment. Like me, Sarah couldn’t quite believe our luck. Neither of us ever thought we deserved Emma, not after the stuff we’d seen and done, but she was here with us now and though we’d only had her for two years, sometimes we honestly struggled to remember a time when she had not been in our lives.

Just when I was feeling that all was well with the world, Sarah said, ‘You know there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about my dad and Emma. I wish he could have seen her. He’d have loved her so much.’

‘He would,’ I agreed, but I wasn’t thinking about the way that big, bad Bobby Mahoney, Newcastle’s former top boy, would have balanced my little girl on his knee and played with her. Instead I was remembering how I blew Bobby’s brains out in a derelict factory and it made me feel sick to think that, along with everything else I took from him, I had robbed Bobby Mahoney of time with his granddaughter. I’d had no choice but to kill him but Sarah didn’t know it was my finger on the trigger and I was desperate to keep it that way.

My mobile rang then and Sarah winced. I grabbed it quickly but Emma didn’t stir. I walked back down the stairs as I took the call. It was Vince, a long-standing member of our crew who kept an eye on some of our pubs and clubs in the city and Privado, our lap-dancing bar. ‘Did you know Kinane’s been arrested?’ he asked me, his tone betraying his surprise, ‘for bitch-slapping a couple of knuckle draggers?’

‘Yeah,’ I said and he hesitated before continuing.

‘Oh, right. I was just wondering if you wanted us to try and get him out of there,’ he offered tentatively, ‘you know, phone the lawyer or summat?’

‘No, fuck him,’ I said, ‘he’s been a dick, let him stew.’

‘Oh right, fine, I didn’t realise. I was only saying like, sorry.’

‘It’s alright Vince, you weren’t to know. Kinane will be out in the morning but he has to learn.’

Sarah followed me down the stairs and when I’d finished talking to Vince she asked me, ‘Are you hungry? Do you want a drink?’

‘I’m hungry,’ I told her as I leaned in and kissed her. It had been two weeks since I’d seen her, ‘but unfortunately I’ve got to go out again.’ Her smile faded. ‘I’m sorry, but I promised our Danny.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘I forgot it was tonight.’

I kissed her once more and told her I’d be back in a couple of hours. When she didn’t break free from the embrace I leaned in and kissed her again and the kiss gradually became more serious. She ground herself against me and I slid my hand under her T-shirt and slowly drew it upwards till it cupped her breast. Then I told her in graphic detail what I was going to do to her when I came back later and she sighed. I slid my hand inside the cup of her bra and her nipple stiffened at my touch. She lifted her hand and let one finger trace the outline of my cock through my trousers, teasing me.

‘Hold that thought,’ she said, as she broke away from me.

I missed the start and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He looked like he was well and truly zoned out, oblivious to everything else, including my presence. Danny was out on the edge of the court and, just as I sat down, he was passed the ball by one of his team, catching it cleanly, then immediately dummied his nearest opponent, ghosted past him like he wasn’t even there and threw the ball to another team mate, before powering towards the opposing basket once more. His team looked like they were running the opposition ragged already, judging by the evidence of the electronic scoreboard, the frenzied whoops of encouragement from a sizeable home crowd in the stands and the way they casually flicked the basketball around like it was on a string that stretched between them. Their opponents seemed capable only of waving their arms forlornly as the ball flew by. It looked like the league title was going to be Danny’s team’s for the taking.

Our young’un, as I usually called him, even though he was a fair bit older than me, made his way inside until he was in a shooting position and, even above the noise of the supporters, I could hear him demanding the ball. Sure enough he got it, catching it cleanly and powering forward once more. He went past an opponent who tried to grab his arm and I watched with amusement as the guy was left trailing in Danny’s wake. I loved the look of absolute determination on Our young’un’s face as he closed in. He was bloody loving this. As soon as he found himself within shooting distance he released the ball, sending it up into the air in a long high arc towards the basket that I was only dimly aware of, because my eyes were still fixed on Danny and the opponent who had chosen that moment to go steaming into him at top speed. If you have ever seen two wheelchairs collide head on at full pelt you will know the impact is stomach churning. It’s like watching a miniature car crash. There was a loud, metallic smash that sounded like a gun going off and Our young’un’s chair was upended, just as the crowd cheered the basket he had scored. He shot forward and was flung face first onto the court and I winced and turned away. When I looked back he was already dragging himself along the court. Even from my seat I could see the fire in his eyes and knew what he was going to do. He grabbed the bloke who had careered into him by his vest and hauled him out of his chair, so he too ended up lying on the court, then Danny punched him hard on the side of the head.

All hell broke loose then. The referee, coaches and even some fans ran onto the court, meanwhile blokes in wheelchairs from both sides waded in to one another shouting insults and trading punches. Danny was right in the thick of it as usual. Somehow he managed to right his chair and drag himself back into it. Danny may have been paralysed from the waist down, but his upper body strength was amazing. He re-entered the fray just as the referee and others were trying to calm things down. Even from this distance, as the shouts and the arguments grew more heated, I could tell he was laughing.

4

‘Well, that was mature,’ I told Danny as he wheeled himself towards me, across the carpet of the leisure centre bar, the big grin still plastered all over his face, ‘red-carded or sin-binned or whatever you call it, after how many minutes? My arse had barely touched the seat and you were causing mayhem. You’re supposed to play the game, not miss most of it because you’ve given someone a twatting.’

‘I was just messing with him,’ he assured me. Only a former Para could describe a solid punch to the side of the head as ‘just messing’.

‘Oh it was nowt man,’ he continued, ‘that bloke just took the piss and he knew it, so I gave him a little slap, but it was all handbags. He’s fine with me now,’ but he could tell by the look on my face I wasn’t convinced, ‘howay man, I’ll buy him a pint.’

‘There’s no time for that,’ I told him, ‘I need to speak to you.’

While the other players congregated around the bar we chose a quiet corner away from them to sip our pints.

‘So the Turk wants to retire,’ he said, ‘I was wondering what kept you so long.’

‘There was a lot to discuss.’

‘Whoever heard of a drug dealer retiring,’ he asked me, ‘especially one who peddles the quantity of powder he shifts? They always have too much unfinished business to just sail away. You know that.’

‘Yeah,’ I admitted, and I did know that because I was also a drug dealer. It might not have been the only thing we were involved in but we did a lot of product these days and most of it came from the Turk. Remzi al Karayilan came on board a few years back when our previous suppliers, the Haan brothers, both got life. We had a rocky first year with Remzi and I hated our irregular trips to Istanbul to negotiate consignments but things settled down after that and we started to get along. That didn’t make us friends. It just meant we could do business with each other without constantly looking over our shoulders. He had the contacts in Afghanistan where they grow the poppy and wholesale the powder out to the Turk via, of all places, Iran. They’ll let Remzi ship his powder through their country, in return for a large consideration, in cash. He then collects it in Turkey and transports it in huge trucks through his country and out the other side, into the Balkan states where we take over, moving it on to Amsterdam, then finally the Eastern ports of the UK. Hull takes the lion’s share. Our consignments disappear in among hundreds of tonnes of shipping freight a year in that port alone. If you pay the right people to look the other way it is virtually impossible to get caught.

But now Remzi has had enough. He wants to quit and enjoy his old age. That’s why I’m asking my brother for advice. I keep him well out of harm’s way these days, since it is my fault he’s in that wheelchair. He stopped three bullets and came close to dying. Danny will never walk again because of me, he’s a civilian, but I still respect his opinion.

‘I’m taking over the whole thing,’ I said, ‘paying him a lump sum for the consideration, taking it all in-house.’

‘What about his contacts?’

‘We’ll take on some of his people, the ones with the know-how. They’ll keep up the contacts and we’ll ensure the money keeps on coming but, without Remzi’s cut and a few other savings I can think of, we should be considerable amounts of quids-in.’

‘Why not?’ he asked, ‘that Russian connection is the future.’

Danny was right. We’ve been pushing product into the east, opening up a cast-iron supply chain with contacts in the Russian mafia Remzi introduced me to.

‘That’s what I figured. I’ve just got to negotiate a little golden handshake and he will duck out; the lucky fucker.’

We talked through the practicalities of taking Remzi’s empire off his hands until we finally ran out of things to say about it. I was pleased Danny was so on the ball. He’d had a very tough time of it these past couple of years. It took him a long while to come to terms with the fact that he would never walk again but I reckoned a lot of his recent improvement was down to the unarmed combat known as wheelchair basketball.

‘I’ve got a day lined up at our hotel for that charity gala dinner we’ve been talking about.’ I said.

‘Great,’ but then I told him the date and his smile faded.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, ‘I thought you were mad keen to do this.’

‘I am, it’s just…’

‘What?’

‘Well, that’s my birthday like,’ he seemed a bit uncomfortable mentioning it, as if it was unmanly to care that it was your birthday at his age.

‘Yeah, well, we can have a beer on the night,’ I said, ‘at the dinner I mean.’

‘S’pose,’ he said, but I could tell he was narked because he thought I didn’t give a shit about his birthday.

‘So how have you been? Lately I mean?’ I asked for two reasons; firstly to change the subject away from his birthday but also because I was genuinely concerned about him.

‘I still have my bad days,’ he admitted, ‘but I’m a lot better than I was. You know that.’

He was right. When he first took those bullets in the spine, I was terrified he was going to die on me. As soon as I realised he would make it, I had a different problem. He kept telling me he’d have preferred to die rather than face life paralysed and I know he blamed me for it. If he hadn’t been working for the firm then he would still be walking. It was a visit I organised from two former members of the parachute regiment, who’d had their legs blown off by roadside bombs, that finally started to convince my brother his life wasn’t over. That was just the beginning though. The rest has been a daily struggle that I think he’s finally starting to win.

‘I’ve settled for where I am and who I am,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d have the use of my legs back in a second,’ and he clicked his fingers to illustrate his point, ‘but, I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m probably a better person these days than I was before… you know… all this.’

‘You are slightly less of a cunt than you were,’ I conceded.

‘Thanks. Anyway, life is reasonably sweet,’ then he added a little self-consciously, ‘I’ve been seeing a bit of that Linda.’

I couldn’t place her for a moment, ‘Linda that works the bar at the Cauldron?’

‘Fuck no,’ he laughed, ‘she looks like Andy Murray in drag.’

I laughed, ‘actually, you’re right, she does a bit.’

‘Then credit me with some taste. No, I’m talking about Linda who dances for us at Cachet.’

‘That Linda? Fuck me Our young’un, how did you manage that?’

‘Used me charm bro, used me charm,’ he said smugly and I was pleased for him.

‘I would have bet against you landing her if you’d used Rohypnol but, well done. What is she though? Nineteen?’

‘No,’ he scoffed, ‘she’s twenty-four.’

‘I wondered why you kept her on. You usually retire them at twenty. So only half your age then? Reckon it’ll last?’

‘Don’t know, don’t care, life’s too short to worry about that shite isn’t it? How many relationships do you know that last forever. Look at you and that Laura bird.’

‘You have a point.’ Was there actually a time when I had considered me and my mad ex Laura to be a permanent item? If there was, it was a lifetime ago.

‘Anyway, we’re just enjoying ourselves and we can still do stuff, you know sexually and that. I don’t mind you asking.’

‘Asking? I wasn’t asking and I won’t be. Whatever you and her get up to in the wee small hours has got fuck all to do with me.’

‘I’m only saying that I can still do stuff. I know some of the lads think I can’t but I can and…’

I put my fingers in my ears at that point and started chanting, ‘La, la, la, la, la, I’m not fucking listening, la, la, la, la.’

Trouble with Our young’un is he is almost impossible to embarrass, so he just rose to the bait, ‘she’s got a load of toys and she does all sorts of stuff with them. Did I ever tell you how she does this thing with her finger…’

‘Oh Christ no, I’ve gone blind, shut up man before I puke. Have another pint for fuck’s sake.’

He laughed, ‘You’re just a prude, that’s your trouble. No, I’m heading off after this one.’

‘Bloody hell. You’re a changed man Danny. It must be that young lass of yours.’

‘It isn’t just that,’ he informed me ruefully, ‘hangovers aren’t much fun when you’re hauling yourself around in one of these things. Were you planning on stopping like? I wouldn’t have thought this was your sort of place.’

‘No, it’s okay. I’ve got to be off too.’

‘Back home to wor lass?’

‘Not just yet.’

‘She hasn’t seen you for a fortnight.’

‘I know,’ I admitted, ‘but I need a word with Sharp. I’ll head home after that.’

His face became a grimace, ‘oh god.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not still…’ and he didn’t finish but he gave me a look like I was some new species of idiot he’d only just discovered.

‘What?’ I repeated.

‘You know what,’ he informed me, ‘and you know my view an’ all, so I don’t know why you are bothering to tell me.’

‘I know your view but I thought it might have altered since we last spoke.’

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘it hasn’t. I can’t see what good could come of it.’

‘Well, as always, Our young’un, I respect your opinion.’

‘Aye and, as always, you’ll fuckin’ well ignore it,’ he told me as I drained the last dregs of my pint.

I was up on the roof of the Cauldron staring out at the night sky and I was here to meet Sharp. Down below me, the city was bustling along, lights gleaming from every window. Detective Inspector Sharp was my main man in Northumbria Constabulary. We had a few on the payroll but Sharp was our best-paid operative and his expertise and information had helped dig me out of more than one hole before now. He liked to meet me here because the building was right on the edge of Chinatown and he could access it through the big Chinese restaurant next door. He would simply flash his warrant card at the waiters then come up the fire escape.

He was looking stressed when he arrived but I didn’t have time to ask after his well-being and I was keen to get home to Sarah. Sharp was the best I had at finding people but, surprisingly for him, he’d drawn a blank this time.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said when he’d concluded his explanations, or were they just excuses?

‘I thought finding people was your speciality?’

‘It was,’ he protested, ‘it is,’ and he shrugged, ‘but you might have more luck with some of the old crew.’

‘Why me?’

‘Hey, I’m not being lazy. They just don’t like talking to coppers, you know how those old villains are, always think they are gonna be fitted up for something they haven’t done.’

‘Whatever could have given them that idea?’

‘Aye well, that was then, this is now. In the seventies if you were banged up for something you didn’t do, it probably meant you’d gotten away with a lot of stuff that you did.’

‘So you’ve not found out anything?’

‘Only what we know already; your father left town suddenly one day, a couple of years before you were born. There was some sort of job down south, by all accounts, and he never returned home but he kept in touch with your ma for years afterwards. There’s people who’ve corroborated this. She used to go off and see him and always assumed the family would get back together in the end. Then one day, as the story goes, the calls and the letters from your father stopped and he disappeared for good.’

‘I was about two years old when that happened.’