tonight when Geraldine came back downstairs changed, her husband was still in his work clothes and sitting stiffly in one of the armchairs. He looked pale-faced and distracted, and even though watching the day’s second instalment of Coronation Street, he clearly wasn’t following the events on screen; his eyes were almost glazed. When Geraldine tried to speak to him, he was curt to the point of being dismissive. A few minutes later he apologised, explaining that he’d had a tough day and that there were some difficult decisions to make in the department. She perched on the chair’s armrest and tried to cuddle him, cooing that it would be all right, that he was a good departmental boss and that he knew what was best for everyone. She even tried to massage his shoulders through the back of his suit jacket, but he remained rigid as a board, his eyes locked on the TV screen despite not seeing anything that was happening there.
‘It’s just, I wish …’
He’d been about to say: ‘I wish things were as normal as that. That all I had to do was either sack someone or put them on a warning, or something.’
But even if he had said that, it would have been a lie. Because deep down he didn’t wish for normality at all. He wanted his dukedom back; he didn’t want to suddenly be a servant again.
Which started him on a new train of thought: How much of a servant would he actually be?
The Crew must see some value in him, otherwise they’d have – what was it McCracken had said? – had the meeting ‘out back’. That encounter could have been a lot more frightening, and perhaps considerably more painful. Maybe this meant that an equal partnership still awaited him somewhere up the line? Assuming he proved his worth.
But how far up the line? How much would he have to demean himself to make this happen?
How much more humiliation could he go through when he’d thought he was past all that?
But then, did he even have a choice? It wasn’t as if Frank McCracken had been negotiating. If anything, he’d been laying down ground rules. And how had McCracken even known that Lazenby would be in Hogarth’s, or who he was for that matter? Had they been following him?
Lazenby’s anxiety grew exponentially, his shoulders stiffening even more under his wife’s fingers.
‘My God, Joe … you really need to try and relax,’ she said.
Lazenby couldn’t answer; his mouth was dry, his teeth locked.
They clearly knew everything about him. How else would they have closed in on his business affairs so quickly? But there was still no need to panic. This was the Crew, after all, not some bunch of drugged-up nutcases. But even so, why make it easy for them?
Abruptly, he stood up.
‘What’s the matter?’ Geraldine asked. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
‘No, it’s fine.’ He walked across the room, opened the door and went out into the hall. When he reappeared, he’d donned an anorak over his suit. ‘I’m going for a drive.’
‘Joe, what’s the matter?’ she pleaded. ‘Tell me what’s bothering you.’
‘It’s nothing … it’s really nothing. There are some things I need to work out, and to do that I need to get some peace and quiet. Okay?’
She regarded him worriedly. ‘Do you want me to get Mrs Gallagher to sit in, so I can come with you? We can talk about it.’
‘For Christ’s sake, no … it’s fine!’
As he climbed into his Galaxy on the drive, he realised that that parting shot had been far sharper than he’d intended it to be. He loved Geraldine and the kids. He loved everything about his family. They were the ones he was doing this for. He wanted them to share in the dream, even if they didn’t know about it. And by the look on Geraldine’s face after he’d snapped at her, he’d upset her, which he regretted – but that couldn’t be helped at present.
As he drove out of Coxcombe Avenue and onto Mulberry Crescent, and then onto Leatherton Lane, the main thoroughfare connecting Cotely Barn with central Crowley, he wondered if he was now about to do something he’d come to regret even more.
Only slowly, after driving a mile or so, did he finally conclude that he probably wasn’t.
The Crew hadn’t become who they were through cowboy antics. Okay, working on the basis they already knew everything there was to know about his operation, it was safe to assume they would soon twig what he was up to now – if not tonight, probably as soon as tomorrow. And they wouldn’t like it; it would certainly inconvenience them, but perhaps, being arch-professionals, they’d expect nothing less. Surely, they’d anticipate that he’d try to protect his own corner at least a little bit? It might even impress them, and from his own point of view, though it would be no more than a gesture – as effective an act of defiance as flipping them a V-sign – he might even feel that he’d regained a little bit of what he’d lost.
In truth, he might regain even more than that.
He and McCracken had been talking in round numbers earlier on. The Crew might know an awful lot, but it wasn’t as if they had access to his secret accounts, for God’s sake.
Unless they’d hacked him.
That was an ugly thought. It would also explain a lot. But all Lazenby could do was shake it from his head. What would be would be, and anyway, unless they were still following him, there was no way they could know what he was up to at this moment. He checked his rear-view mirror, but it was half past nine at night: the streets, which were dark and wet from the rain that had fallen earlier, were deserted.
‘It could be you’re flattering yourself,’ he said under his breath. These guys ran what amounted to an underworld corporation. ‘Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re so important that they’ll watch you every minute of the day.’
He told himself this with growing conviction. It was a realistic assessment of the way things were. But his hands still sweated on the steering wheel. Until this evening, everything had been fine. Now his road felt much, much darker.
When he arrived at the Bellhop Industrial estate, it was nearly ten.
At this time of night, there was nobody around, the corrugated metal warehouses and workshops all standing in darkness, their windows and entrances covered by roll-down security shutters. There would be CCTV in operation, of course, but Lazenby was not an unfamiliar figure on the site – he’d been a regular visitor in the three years since he’d taken out a lease here for one of the privately rented lock-ups – so if anyone was watching from a security office somewhere, or a mobile patrol made an unexpected drive-by, his presence, even at this hour, would draw no comment.
In truth, if you wanted absolute certainty that your goods were in strong safekeeping, the Bellhop wasn’t the ideal spot – there were certainly safer facilities in Crowley, but having lots and lots of officialdom around would hardly have suited Lazenby’s purpose. In any case, from the outside, the lock-ups here looked like old garages and so were unlikely to be tampered with by opportunist thieves, while those who knew there were personals stored here would also know that, because of the low rates, it was mostly rubbish: old furniture, moth-eaten clothes, a few corroded car parts. Slim pickings indeed. Nothing worth bothering with.
From Lazenby’s perspective, such
