working for you. Gloria is like family to us.’
‘Then I suggest you give her earache instead. Not me.’ She drained her glass and stood, making it clear that it was time the girl left.
‘But she is your friend.’
‘Gloria is a business associate. Nothing more. And that business is finished. Numbers on a spreadsheet, Efe. I’m sorry.’
Efe pulled her wig on forcefully, glaring at Sheila. Pushing the milk away, undrunk. She wiped her eyes with a balled fist, her defiance not quite concealing the deep, deep hurt. ‘Then you must not have a beating heart inside your body, Mrs Sheila.’
She stood and snatched up her cheap plastic handbag. Fastened the toggles on her threadbare duffle coat. ‘I will pray for you. You are a woman who only sees other human beings as commodities. That is no way to live and certainly isn’t the will of God. I feel sorry for you.’
Guilt, anger, embarrassment reacted together inside Sheila. An explosion was inevitable. ‘Get out of my house!’ she yelled, hurling the glass from her vodka and orange against the wall. It smashed, scattering gleaming fragments of crystal over the kitchen floor.
By the time Sheila had located the dustpan and brush in the utility room, Efe was long gone, having slammed the front door with enough force to make the glass in the vestibule reverberate. The confrontation left Sheila only with the feeling that she was nothing more than a gangster’s moll. No, worse than that. She was a materialistic, unfeeling lump of shit with no true friends, a family that kept its distance either through embarrassment or fear, no sense of community, no conscience. She was nothing. In fact, she was less than Efe. Efe, once a slave and a whore and a prisoner, was now none of those things. She was free. Whereas Sheila was all of those things but with a better manicure and more expensive clothes.
Rhythmic crunching of gravel on the driveway snapped her out of her reverie. The thrum of an engine. She was not alone.
Loose stones kicked up against the discreet, anonymous-looking people carrier. It bounced along the potholed road, past the girls on the street corners, who ducked and dipped like erotic waterfowl to make eye contact with the driver every time they saw a car slow down. Thigh-length boots and miniskirts. Cut-off tops, whatever the weather and whatever time of night it may be. Preening to attract a fast mate who would pay hard cash.
‘Look at these poor cows,’ Tariq said, gunning the vehicle towards T&J Trading. ‘Risking life and limb to make the rent. Not like our girls.’
‘Our girls don’t make bloody rent,’ Jonny said. ‘They pay off my colossal mortgage and fund Gorgeous Sandra’s Botox habit, thank you very much!’ Guffaws of laughter and elbows in the ribs. Obviously on top form after what had taken place at the gallery. ‘What would they do without Uncle Jonny and Auntie Tariq, keeping them off the streets?’ More laughter.
‘Cheeky sod.’ Tariq playfully punched his business partner. ‘Last time I looked, you were the one with well-trimmed testicles, my friend. Snip, snip.’ Miming Gorgeous Sandra, no doubt.
But Lev was only partly paying attention to the banter. He sat on the back seat, uncomfortably sandwiched between Asaf Smolensky and a giant of a man called Nasim he had never met before until that evening – apparently Asaf’s apprentice and a second cousin of Tariq.
He felt his pulse. It was still racing after that loon Paddy O’Brien had lunged for him, trying to squeeze the breath out of him as some sort of retribution for M1 House. The arsehole had fingers of steel. How any of them had walked out with their lives intact with all of those guns and knives drawn was nothing short of a miracle. No, he mused. Actually, it wasn’t a miracle. It was down to that accountant woman. She was the scariest bastard he had ever met. Holding a briefcase that some loser in a suit had handed to her. Reminding them that it contained damning documents and that if they didn’t put their dicks away and stop the pissing competition immediately, she would have her man, who knew a man, place a few strategic phone calls to a few strategic people in Greater Manchester Police and HMRC. That had shut the lot of them up.
Now, Lev was trying to work out how to tap up his bosses for £150K, while they were still feeling triumphant as the new Kings of the Wild Frontier. Their coronation was all but certain, as soon as this down payment was made. Provisional supremacy to the tune of a mill in cash. Maureen Kaplan had decreed it, witnessed by her sons, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful and her son-in-law, Doc, so it had to be so. The King would be dead. Long live the Kings.
Nearing safety, they passed the hulking silhouette of Strangeways tower to their left.
‘Am I going mental with post-traumatic whatsit, or did I just clock that little schmuck, Ellis James, in a Mondeo?’ Jonny asked, craning his head to see the bonnet of the black saloon that was now just out of sight.
‘The cop? Where?’ Asaf asked.
‘Parked on the corner.’
‘Maybe he’s cruising for a lady of the night,’ Tariq said, steering the people carrier into the loading bay and pulling up in front of the metal shutters. He applied the handbrake. ‘A gnome with a face like a smacked arse like him would have to pay for it.’
‘It’d better bloody not be Ellis,’ Jonny said, suddenly seeming decidedly less cocksure. ‘Not tonight. Not with what we’ve got to do.’ He turned to Tommo, who normally manned one of the brothels, and Tariq’s second cousin, Nasim. ‘You both stay here. Keep an eye out for that snooping bastard. Call me if he gets out of his car.’ Turned to the rest of them, wearing an expression that said he had more than just Gorgeous Sandra snipping away at his balls. ‘Come on. Let’s get inside.’
Lev followed the others into the factory, trailing behind the tall figure of Asaf. With the machinery off and only one or two lights on, the space seemed eerie – not a place he was yet wholly familiar with as a lowly Sweeney Hall street dealer. He tried to block the mental image that flickered in his mind’s eye like an epilepsy-inducing strobe: his former colleague, Suspicious Sid, lying dead at the top of a multi-storey car park in Bury. Filleted like a side of salmon, complete with cucumber laid like scales over his flank in the way that only Asaf Smolensky, the infamous Fish Man, left his kills. Had Suspicious Sid’s count not been short several times of late, Lev would never have been promoted to a rank he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
‘Tariq,’ he said, patting his boss on the shoulder blade.
Tariq swung around and treated him to a smile and a wink. ‘How’s the neck, son? Gave Pissy Pants Paddy a run for his money, didn’t you? You’ll go far.’ Normally a controlled man who seemed to consider every word before he spoke it, tonight, Tariq’s exuberance was almost tangible.
Maybe now was the time to get him onside. ‘Can I ask—?’
‘Not now. We’ve got to get this cash out and over to Conky McFadden by midnight.’ He took the pistol out of the inside pocket of his reefer jacket and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. Took his jacket off. ‘You and Asaf wait here. Some things only me and Jonny can do. Know what I mean?’ Wink.
The bosses disappeared off upstairs, presumably
