think you must be getting me mixed up from somewhere else, mate. I sometimes do charity work for me mam’s church.’
The cop turned to the bosses, finally, thankfully.
‘Bit late for a lads’ get-together, isn’t it?’
‘You got a warrant?’ Tariq asked.
‘I don’t need a warrant to make friendly enquiries.’ There was no mirth in the detective’s smile. ‘A friend of mine – Ruth Darley from HMRC – says she found some interesting paperwork in here the other day. Showing some transactions between T&J Trading and a couple of Chinese shell companies. Seems you’ve been importing fresh air from ghosts. What would you say that sounds like?’
Tariq rounded on the uninvited guest, toying with the cuffs of his shirt. ‘This is a legitimate business, Detective James. Right? And my associates here and I came out to check on the premises because the alarm apparently was going off. If we’ve been swizzed by some dodgy company in China, that’s not our problem. We export and import goods from all over the world. Sometimes we get lumbered with a dodgy business contact. It happens.’
Jonny finally abandoned his stool. Pulled the belt of his trousers up. Positioned himself next to Tariq, standing shoulder to shoulder. Presenting a united front that made Lev wish for the solidarity and support of a reliable friend, relative, woman … anybody at all!
‘I don’t see what our accounts have got to do with you, detective.’ For a man with a high-pitched voice who normally came across as affable, Jonny sounded like the dangerous gangster he was. ‘And I don’t see the point in you being here at nearly midnight unless you’ve got a legitimate reason to be here and a warrant. Now, we’ve got homes to go to and we’ve got to be up very early in the morning. And I think you’ll find, if you check our company’s records, that we pay enough tax to keep you and all your little harassing friends back at the station in your jobs.’
‘Where’s Smolensky?’ the detective asked. Beady eyes through the lenses of those glasses had clearly clocked all of them on their approach in the people carrier.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jonny said.
‘Asaf Smolensky. The lunatic fishmonger. Where is he?’ Ellis James took those steel-rimmed glasses from his nose and started to polish them on the edge of his coat, as though he had time to kill.
‘I don’t know Asaf Smolensky personally, detective, but my wife tells me he gives excellent weight and his smoked salmon’s the best in Cheetham Hill. You fancy some herring or a nice piece of hake, detective, I suggest you go to see Mr Smolensky yourself at his splendid fishmonger’s on Monday. Because it’s Friday night right now, and I’m sure even an ignoramus like you knows that religious Jewish people are tucked up at home on the Sabbath. So, as for him being here …’ Jonny cast an arm around the empty, dimly lit factory. ‘I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I’m afraid.’ Glanced at his watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, my associate here will show you to the door.’
‘Well, wish Mr Smolensky a happy Sabbath from me, won’t you?’ Ellis said with a maniacal smile that barely belied the pure acid in his voice. ‘I’ll see you again very soon, boys. Very soon.’
Nasim ushered the persistent interrogator out. Finally.
‘Shit,’ Tariq said, tapping at the face of his watch. ‘We’ve got to get this cash down payment across town to McFadden in fifteen minutes or the O’Brien deal’s off.’
‘Have a drink, Conks,’ Frank shouted over the thud, thud, thud of the garage music. Thrusting a bottle of Cristal in his general direction, so that the foaming liquid sploshed onto his suit trousers.
Conky pushed the bottle away. Stood abruptly, sick of being penned into that damned VIP area, surrounded by a wall of gyrating young girls dressed like cheap strippers, though the club had only just started to fill up in earnest. Early birds, catching the worm. All of them, on the lookout for a man with a fat wallet, a small dick and lack of moral fibre. He hated it. This was nothing more than a prison made from fat silken rope instead of bars.
‘No. Thanks all the same.’
Frank looked momentarily crestfallen. ‘But we’re celebrating.’
‘The boss is celebrating,’ Conky said, looking over at Paddy, who was in the process of pouring champagne onto the cleavage of a blonde girl, sitting on his lap. Licking it off, as though that was merely hors d’oeuvres for the main course, which would inevitably be enjoyed in the back room of the club later. Poor bloody Sheila. ‘I don’t see why you’re so happy, Francis.’
But Frank wasn’t listening. He shrugged. Smiled. Swigged from the bottle himself and started to dance along to the deafening music as though he hadn’t a care in the world. A harmless prick, but a prick nonetheless.
Checking his watch, Conky assessed with some relief that it was time to escape the childish, hedonistic bullshit of M1 House. He didn’t bother excusing himself. Paddy would not thank him for the interruption.
Pushing his way through the phalanx of sweaty bodies, careful to avoid having his hair arrangement knocked by the dancing, prancing kids’ flailing arms, he wondered how life would be once he was no longer in the employ of the O’Briens. Frank had offered to keep him on, but he sure as hell had no intention of working for that gurning buffoon.
Outside, the air was fresh and smelled only a little of diesel from the passing buses and taxis. The night reverberated with the beat of the music, as though the club contained within it a giant throbbing heart, trying to burst its confines. Conky lit a cigarette and exhaled heavily.
‘Three months,’ he told the pink haze of the city’s sky. ‘After twenty long years.’
In three months Paddy would be up, up and away, Thailand- bound – Sheila on his arm, which would be more than enough for any man under normal circumstances – hell, he’d be happy to spend his life in Glasgow’s Gorbals or Runcorn if Sheila was his – and without a care in the world. Until then, Conky had agreed to work out his notice for severance pay that was more than generous. No doubt he would be paid his six-figure sum out of the first mill he was about to take receipt of from those arseholes, Jonny Margulies and Tariq Khan. Conky McFadden – an independently wealthy man. What a thought! He would somehow launder it to pay off his mortgage, raised ten years ago on a lacklustre end terrace in Didsbury, using fake payslips from O’Brien Construction Ltd.
Paddy was a generous benefactor. Too generous. And that was the problem.
On the drive to meet the Boddlington bosses, Conky took a detour, slowing the Jag as he traversed the city’s invisible borders into Parson’s Croft. Peering down street after anonymous street of Victorian terraced housing, where Degsy and his girls dealt drugs. From here to the outskirts of Wythenshawe, every shitty pub operated as a hub where locals would go to receive Maundy Money even on a Thursday from their monarch. Those were places where disputes were solved, work was asked for, respects and dues were paid. The shopkeepers whom Conky collected protection money from paid up on time. The disloyal and disobedient
