than every man in that room. She too had her support in her sons and son-in-law, suited and booted on the sidelines. Everyone in the room knew they had something far more deadly than knives or guns at their disposal. They had receipts and invoices for nefarious dealings that would never be declared on a VAT or tax return. Cold, hard evidence. Enough to put everyone in the room away at Her Majesty’s leisure indefinitely.
‘Don’t worry, Mo,’ Jonny said, unfolding his arms and clasping them before him like an overweight choirboy. ‘We’re on our best behaviour. Promise. Aren’t we Tariq?’
Tariq nodded. Looked deferentially down at his stupid sneakers when Maureen scanned his face for bullshit. Smolensky and Conky stared straight ahead like robots who had had their batteries temporarily removed. The lesser players hung back out of earshot at Maureen’s behest.
‘Right, lads. Paddy and Frank are here to sell. Jonny and Tariq are here to buy.’ She turned to Paddy. ‘The floor’s yours.’
Taking a deep breath, Paddy ran through the speech he had prepared in his head at double-speed. It came out somewhat disappointingly as, ‘Ten million in cash for the south side. All drugs, all girls, all gambling, all imports and exports. All subsidiary enterprises. The whole south side. Ten mill.’
‘Apart from my club, like,’ Frank blurted. Beaming winningly. Sticking his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit, as though he were willing himself not to go disco, despite the sobriety of the situation. ‘That’s not for sale, man. Soz.’
‘Why would you think we’d pay you all that money when we’ve got successful business interests of our own?’ Tariq asked.
‘Not that it’s not a very interesting offer,’ Jonny clarified, cocking his head as though he were listening intently for what came next.
Paddy could see they were playing good cop, bad cop or some such nonsense. He had no time for it. ‘I want to retire. I don’t want my business going to some cocky dipshit from London or those Scouse twats. I’ve worked my arse off for what I’ve got. Like yous.’
‘Listen,’ Tariq said, running his hand through that hair. Stroking his short, chinstrap beard. ‘We’ve been at war for how long? Fifteen years? More? Why should we trust you?’ Perched on the edge of the display cabinet, he crossed and uncrossed his legs nonchalantly. A slight whiff of whatever shit he spoke at home coming through in his otherwise pure Oxford-educated accent. Certainly no trace of the Lower Boddlington origins in him. ‘I mean, why would we want to do business with a man who’s put thirty-two of our men in the ground since we took control of the north side?’
‘We respect you as our competition, Paddy,’ Jonny said, placing a conspiratorial hand on Tariq’s shoulder. ‘But we’ve got obligations to service the business we’ve already got. We’ve got HMRC breathing down our necks, as I’m sure you have. We’ve got that donkey from CID, Ellis James, on our case constantly. Ten million quid for twice the aggro maybe isn’t worth our while.’
Paddy could feel haggling on the horizon and he wasn’t in the mood to negotiate.
‘I don’t give a stuff about the tax man or the coppers,’ he said. ‘That comes with the territory. Men like us have to be ready for anything. And as for the bodies … well, it takes two to tango, boys, and I seem to recall you were dancing on my soldiers’ graves and all.’
Jonny shook his head. ‘Two million in cash. The cost of retraining your people to operate like ours will be massive. Crippling. The cost of the added risk—’
‘Ten mill.’ Paddy felt queasy. Blood draining away from his stomach to his brain. Stand your ground, Pad.
Suddenly, a voice behind him shattered the illusion that they were somehow speaking intimately in a sound-proof room.
Degsy: ‘He’s taking the piss, Pad. I’ll put a bullet in him if you want.’
Paddy swung around and grabbed Conky’s gun hand. Pistol-whipped Degsy so hard and so unexpectedly that he fell backwards into a painting of a big red-head with nice white tits and frizzy long hair. Degsy’s blood spattered onto the woman’s painted green dress. Paddy placed his foot on the dealer’s scrawny neck.
‘You speak when I say you can speak. Dickhead.’
Wiping his bloody nose with the sleeve of his hoody, Degsy didn’t dare answer. He merely looked up at Paddy with fearful, resentful eyes. Nodded.
‘Ten million pounds,’ Paddy said, rounding on Tariq and Jonny once again. ‘This isn’t a fucking medina, boys. This isn’t the mosque or some two-bit Jew diamond dealer’s. This is half of Manchester. I’m selling to you. Or I’m selling to out-of-towners. But the price is still ten million nicker, whoever the hell you are and whatever overheads you think you’ve got. No more murders. No more turf wars. A going concern that will more than double the riches in your wildest dreams.’
He stepped towards Jonny Margulies. Invading his space. Gut to gut. Poking him in that fleshy overhang so that Smolensky raised his machete.
‘Take it or leave it, Jonny. But if you leave it …’
Behind him, Conky put two cartridges into the shotgun.
‘… you might find yourself leaving this life for the next one sooner than you think.’
Guns pulled from every holster and breast pocket in the room. The gallery’s still air was a-whirr with the metallic sound of safeties coming off.
Paddy held his breath.
Closed his eyes.
Waited for what came next.
Sinking beneath the deep layer of foam and the silken surface of the water, Sheila mused on how comforting it was to shut the world out. Holding her breath. Counting, counting, until all she could feel was the crushing sensation in her chest and the beat of her pulse, thumping in her ears. Reminding her that she was yet living, though she felt dead inside.
The girls were grown and gone.
The flower of her youth had withered.
She was Paddy’s Queen, imprisoned in a tower of her own design, awaiting execution or a slow death. Not even Thailand would change that.
Pushing against the tall sides of the freestanding bath, she surfaced, gasping for air. Racking sobs suddenly pushing their way out of her body like skeletons tumbling from a closet she had been keeping under lock and key for decades.
‘Why?’ she shouted to the TV screen set into the unforgiving stacked-stone slate wall. It showed some plastic fantastic American actress, jabbering at her fat friend, occasioning unearned canned laughter at the end of every sentence. The TV was as good a confessor as any. ‘How has it come to this?’ She splashed her hands down violently into the foamy water, sending it scudding around her naked body. ‘Washed up just as I was about to ride the crest of my own wave. All ’cos of Paddy.
