on that school run. He strained to see who was behind the vehicle’s wheel. Exhaled when he realised it was an elderly white guy. Behind him, a white van was too close to his bumper. He edged forward, annoyed when the van driver closed the gap.
‘Change, damn it!’ he muttered under his breath.
In every car, on every bus, on every motorbike and, above all, in every van, Tariq saw the enemy, poised to snatch the light from his children’s eyes or to tear his father from the car’s passenger seat.
Standing at the school gates, Tariq still felt watched. Checking behind him, he looked for dreadlocked interlopers among the yummy mummies and the odd stay-at-home dad. He appraised the site’s security measures and judged them insufficient. Made a mental note to call the head teacher of the exclusive preparatory school as soon as he was behind his desk. He was paying enough in astronomical termly fees, after all. The least they could do was install some sturdier gates and stick an extra security guard on the door. Old-fashioned striped blazers and the novelty of kids wearing straw hats suddenly didn’t seem enough bang for his buck. Tariq wanted his family to be bullet-proof, and highly rated teaching staff couldn’t promise that.
As he kissed Shazia and Zahid goodbye with a guilty lump in his throat, it suddenly occurred to him that the same white van that had hogged his rear bumper at the lights had parked up, two cars down from where his father was now sitting, glum-faced in the CLS. He cast his mind back to the driver, who had worn a baseball cap at a ridiculous angle. Was it feasible such a man was a parent of a kid at a private prep where solicitors and surgeons sent their kids?
You’re being paranoid, he told himself, waving at the kids; sprinting back to the parking bays to see if the van was still there.
When he got back to his own car, the van had gone. Get a grip, for God’s sake. You can’t turn into Jonny, dwelling on the pitfalls of this crazy path in life you’ve chosen.
Pulling away from the kerb, he thumped his steering wheel in frustration.
‘What’s got into you?’ his father asked, stroking the brain-like folds of fur on his hat.
‘I’m a failure. I can’t protect any of you.’
His father coughed – a deep, rasping rattle. Spat some phlegm into a snow-white handkerchief. ‘You know the answer to that, son.’
‘Look, when I drop you at the day centre, do me a favour. Don’t go walkabout.’
He shot a sideways glance at the old man, noticing to his chagrin that he had trimmed one side of his white beard for him higher than the other. He was losing his touch.
‘Red light!’ Youssuf shouted.
Tariq faced forward abruptly, slamming on his brake. He yelped as somebody ploughed into the back of the Mercedes, sending him lurching over the stop line into the path of a heavy goods vehicle.
Sheila
‘We’ve got a grass,’ Sheila said, pounding away at the Stairmaster as though she was wreaking vengeance on the little shit that had been leaking her business to Nigel Bancroft. She pumped the handles up and down, raining imaginary blows on his or her head. ‘And now you’re telling me that M1 House is overrun with Brummies? You idiot!’
In her brightly lit home-gym in the subterranean spa of the Bramshott mansion, she stared past Frank, fixated by their reflection in the ceiling-to-floor mirrors, repeated in infinite regress: an athletic, middle-aged woman in her prime, clad in pink Lycra, powered by long-suppressed ambition, bawling out a stooped, grey-faced middle-aged man, dressed like a youth, who looked as though the gravity of this harsh world had finally all but flattened him. It was a scene of the strong bullying the weak. And she didn’t like it one bit.
‘Sorry,’ she said, stepping off the Stairmaster. ‘I should be asking you how you are, not having a pop at you.’
The dimpling in Frank’s chin abated. He offered her a weak smile by way of a truce and sat down onto the seat pad of her lateral pull-down machine. He waggled his head from side to side uncertainly. ‘I’m all right, me. Ta for asking. I ended up in A&E thinking I was having a heart attack like our Pad. Turns out it was only bloody indigestion! I’d taken too much gear on an empty stomach and a load of painkillers a few hours earlier. Buggered me guts up, didn’t it?’
Sheila dried her sweaty hands on a towel and squeezed Frank’s shoulder in sympathy. ‘That’s lucky.’
‘The doc kicked us out with a warning about watching what I eat and stress and that. But is it any wonder I’m strung out? Them Brummies are taking the piss. The last thing I need is another shooting in the club. It was close, She. Bloody close.’
Sheila shook her head. Inhaled deeply, conjuring the memory of Nigel Bancroft’s easy, cheesy smile. It was like Paddy all over again. A man, trying to bully her when she didn’t do as she was told, like a good little girl. She ground her molars together until they squeaked. ‘I’m gonna sort this,’ she said. ‘Bancroft seemed to know I was mulling over selling the drugs and protection or farming it out as a franchise. The only time I’ve ever discussed that outside of my house has been at the weed farm. We’ve got a leak. I’m gonna find it. And we need more O’Brien men at the club.’ She pointed at her brother-in-law like an accusing schoolmarm. ‘You need to sort out your bouncers. They’re the gatekeepers and they’re not doing their jobs.’
‘Sorry, She.’
Taking a hearty swig from her water bottle, Sheila said, ‘Bancroft’s muscle nearly blew holes in some woman with a kid in a trolley outside the Lowry. Only reason they stood down was coppers showed up. If they hadn’t been doing a routine patrol, we all could have ended up in the cells or body bags. And Paddy surrounded himself with incompetents, apart from Conky.’ Glancing down, she noted the hurt in Frank’s haunted, bloodshot eyes. ‘And you, obviously.’ No. The hurt was still there. Frank wasn’t that easily fooled or flattered. Much of his child-like lack of cynicism had been buried along with his son. ‘Leave it with me, chuck.’
‘Chuck’, at least, put a half-hearted smile back on her brother-in-law’s woebegone face.
With Frank gone, Sheila pushed herself to put in twenty lengths in the glittering turquoise pool. Swimming on her back, she followed the line of the bricks in the spotlit, vaulted ceiling, savouring the notion that all this contemporary opulence was hers and hers alone, now. She was a woman of independent means with hundreds of staff on the payroll, no longer Paddy’s pushover trophy-wife and punchbag. She realised that it was time to step into the big boss’ shoes in earnest.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she told the lapping water, clinging to the side and wiping her face. ‘It’s time to get tough.’
Dressing for success in skin-tight leather trousers and her favourite Burberry leather biker jacket, she threw her highest-heeled boots into her Chanel tote and drove the Rolls Royce to Gloria’s house. Knocked smartly on the door to the rented semi, clutching the hard case in her right hand. Her freshly worked-out biceps protested at the weight.
When she answered, Gloria was already wearing her coat and shoes. Her best dress that she wore to most meetings was visible beneath the three-quarter-length coat. She looked
