Born Bad Page 12

  Conky removed his sunglasses and watched the pupils in Goodman’s eyes dilate. The Eyes worked every time. He didn’t even need to say anything.

  ‘Jonny denied it for most of the call. But in the end, Maureen pressed him. You know.’ Goodman looked down at his crotch. Sighed. ‘She can be very persuasive.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘After a while he just caved. Said Jack had raped Mia, apparently, and he’d told Smolensky to off him, but to make it look like someone else had done it. Hush, hush, like.’ Goodman glanced at the kitchen clock and looked up at Conky with desperation in those naïve brown eyes. ‘I’ve told you what I know. Will you go? Please?’

  Patting the boy’s hand, Conky put his gun away. ‘Don’t tell your mother-in-law that we’ve spoken, will you? No need for her to know about our regular little chats.’

  Goodman shook his head. Sweating freely on his top lip. ‘I never do. I never have! Honest. But what does this mean for the deal?’

  Conky raised himself to his full height and buttoned his coat shut, inwardly contemplating Paddy’s reaction to this news.

  ‘Oh, there’ll be no more deal, David. There’ll be war.’

  Chapter 18

  Lev

  ‘I’m here for collection,’ Lev told the new girl, edging his way down the narrow hall of the rambling Victorian house, following the progress of her pert bottom as it swung to and fro beneath her cheap yellow polyester robe. She responded to him only with the flap, flap of her bare feet on the bare wooden boards. The dirt had created quirky black question marks on her soles.

  In silence, she beckoned him deeper in without turning round.

  He clocked the bowl of condoms on the radiator cover. Tasteless erotic posters on the walls in cheap frames. The smell of latex and sex was so thick in the air, Lev was surprised it wasn’t visible as some kind of decadent fog. It clung to the very fabric of the house – on the ancient flock wallpaper that covered the walls, in the dated soft furnishings – in the same way that acrid damp and mildew clung to his. He wrinkled his nose, trying not to breathe in deeply. ‘Where’s Kai and Tommo? They should be expecting me.’

  The girl padded through the erstwhile dining room that acted as a kind of waiting-cum-selection-area for punters, as well as a thoroughfare that led to the kitchen. Today, the space contained only a coffee table full of old porn mags, creased and curled up at the edges, and two white men, seated on threadbare old armchairs. One young, with the worst acne Lev had ever seen. One in his sixties, who looked like he’d not had a bath or a haircut in a good twelve months. A pungent whiff of unwashed arse confirmed Lev’s assessment. Both punters immediately looked at their shoes as he bypassed them, following the girl to the kitchen.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I tell you,’ the girl said in a heavy Eastern European accent. She stopped short by the filthy worktop, covered in used, unwashed crockery. Reached for a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches. Her robe parted to reveal round tits with large, pale pink nipples that were perfect but for almost luminous blue veins running over them. Naked white flesh that bore testament to her rarely leaving the house. She re-tied the gown. Her eyes were unfocused. Dead like a shark’s through drugs or depression or both. She took a cigarette out of the pack. ‘Basement. They play cards.’

  ‘What happened to your neck?’ Lev narrowed his eyes at the livid scar that ran part-way across her throat.

  The girl replied in a string of unintelligible vowels and syllables. Something Eastern European, no doubt. But when she drew a line across the skin with her index finger and said, ‘Fish Man,’ he understood, alright. A sudden flash of recognition came over Lev as he stared at the girl’s face.

  ‘You’re Irina, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I’ve driven you before. We spoke. Remember?’

  She locked onto the lightning flash on his head with a glum stare. Scratched her armpit with bitten-down fingernails. Blank-eyed, the girl lit her cigarette and blew smoke towards him. ‘Irina. Yes. My name.’

  He flushed with embarrassment and shame that he hadn’t been able to help her that day, beyond the empty gesture of asking if she had been okay. This girl was supposed to have been sold in a sham marriage. One of many. He’d heard about how Smolensky had turned on her during the transaction. The buyer had chickened out and made a snappy exit. If only he’d done something to stop that chain of events. If only he’d been the brave, chivalrous man he aspired to be instead of a corruptible streak of piss that couldn’t even get his shit together to file for custody of his own kid.

  Lev reached out and touched her stomach. Felt the slight bulge. She grabbed his hand and pulled it down onto her warm crotch. ‘No,’ he said, staring at those firm veined breasts and feeling himself harden, despite his best intentions. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this in your condition,’ he said. He snatched his hand back, as though he had been burned.

  The girl gasped. She retreated to the glazed patio doors at the end of the kitchen, shooting him a wounded glance. Hurling a string of abuse at him, which he probably deserved for being part of this. She started to sob, pausing only to exhale clouds of blue smoke.

  The urge to grab that cigarette off her and throw it down the sink was almost unbearable. Hadn’t he watched Tiff smoke her way through her pregnancy with Jay? Selfish cow! Relieved at least that his hard-on had receded as quickly as it had appeared, he sighed and closed his eyes. It was going to be one of those days.

  ‘Do you think I want to do this for a living?’ he asked the girl. ‘You think I woke up at the age of ten and thought, “I know. I wanna push drugs on a shitty council estate and collect brothel money for a living”?’ Deep inside him, he could feel the anger and disappointment ferment and swell. He was sure the girl couldn’t understand any of what he said, but the words forced their way out nevertheless. ‘You think I don’t wish every day that I’d made something of myself? Listened at school, instead of playing silly-buggers and wagging off? But what’s a thick wanker like me gonna do when he grows up? Spend my life claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or stacking shelves for peanuts, when I can make hundreds a week selling weed? And then our Jay comes along and it’s money for this and money for that? What would you do, you judgemental bitch?’ He thumped the worktop. Remembered Asaf Smolensky standing in Jay’s little bedroom, holding a knife to the boy’s neck, just as he had to this prostitute’s …

  ‘Tell me what you’re up to,’ Smolensky had said in Israeli-English that had a sing-song quality to it. ‘Tell me why you’ve made contact with your mother, or I’ll stick the boy.’ His dark eyes had seemed to have only unfathomable depth to them, like a sinister well that led all the way to the scorching core of the earth. There was something wrong about him – beyond the fake Hassidic get-up and the tough-man ex-Mossad bullshit that he sometimes spouted. Lev had seen it in Jay’s bedroom. Lev knew hard-cases. But they were generally just flawed, tortured meat-heads. Smolensky was different. It was as if he was broken or missing a key component that you needed to make a human. Smolensky had had no compunction about pressing the knife into his screaming son’s vulnerable, baby-soft skin.

  ‘I haven’t seen my mother in donkey’s years,’ Lev had lied. ‘Give me my son, you loon.’

  ‘I’ve been watching you,’ Smolensky had said, his husky voice booming above Jay’s hysteria. ‘You’re up to something. You’re in bed with the O’Briens and you’re a liar. I saw you with her.’

  Lev’s heart had pounded so hard, he wondered if it had been visible, pulsating beneath his T-shirt. No point bluffing. ‘My son’s ill. I only made contact with my mam because I needed her to know. It’s just family shit, man.’

  ‘It’s always family shit,’ Smolensky had said. ‘And you are balls-deep in Mr Margulies’ family, aren’t you?’ He had winked. Gripped the knife between his teeth and set the boy down deftly, allowing Lev to breathe again. Removing the knife from his mouth. ‘I’m keeping my eye on you, Leviticus.’ He had pointed the tip of the blade towards Lev. Even with t
he cot between them, Smolensky’s arms were long enough to have enabled a fatal lunge. ‘You’re up to something. I know it. I can’t prove it and I’m not yet sure what it is, but I want you to know I’m watching every move you make.’

  Lev had snatched a bewildered-looking Jay out of the cot. The child had been wide-eyed and suddenly silent, as if realising that whatever his father chose to say next could either sustain life or bring death. Lev’s inclination was to tell Smolensky to go fuck himself, but he was brighter than that. ‘Well, you keep all the tabs on me you want, Fish Man. I’ve got nothing to hide, mate. Just a sick son. And an OD’d ex – thanks to you, I assume.’

  Smolensky had laughed. Stepped out from behind the cot, sheathing his knife and straightening his hat. ‘If I have reason to come back here, Leviticus, next time both of them will be dead. You understand?’

  Both of them will be dead. Jesus. Standing in the squalid kitchen of the brothel, Lev shook his head, trying to dispel the memory of Asaf Smolensky’s threat and the pungent, lingering smell of fish, followed by the pointless, panicked locking of all doors and windows once the uninvited visitor had departed. Waiting for the ambulance to come for that irresponsible twat, Tiffany.

  Now, Irina padded away, blowing smoke in his face defiantly. Lev was left alone, standing his ground uselessly in a kitchen, empty but for filthy pots, stinking wine bottles and a floor scattered with lentils.

  ‘Basement,’ he said, remembering why he was in a whore house.

  Downstairs, navigating his way through the dank warren of subterranean rooms, he found Tariq’s brothel-keepers, Kai and Tommo, playing poker at an old, battered card table positioned beneath a bare bulb in the largest chamber towards the front of the house. They were both swigging from bottles of Czech beer. Both wearing the informal Boddlington uniform of puffa jacket, G-Star jeans, Nike Airs. Kai, a brother with the beginnings of an Afro who had been two years above him at school. Tommo, a fat white boy from Cheetham Hill, hiding his prematurely receding hairline under a baseball cap. Lev did a double take at the golden ‘M’.

  ‘You wearing a McDonald’s cap, Tommo?’ Lev asked. ‘Serious?’

  Tommo looked up from his cards. Flipped Lev the bird with a chubby, stubby digit. ‘Shove it up your arse, man. Our kid trod dog shit into me Yankees one, so I nicked his, didn’t I?’ He pointed to the embroidered initial. ‘M stands for fucking Babe Magnet, right?’

  ‘Babe Magnet begins with B, you knob end,’ Lev said, amid guffaws of laughter from Kai.

  ‘M for Massive Arse,’ Kai suggested, punching himself in his pillowy chest with his cards.

  Tommo scowled, as tears of mirth ran from Kai’s eyes. But then Lev reflected that he had been promoted above these two chumps. He was on the periphery of Tariq and Jonny’s inner circle, working his way further towards the centre, where the pot of gold was stashed.

  ‘Money. Come on lads. You wanna drink and piss about playing poker? Do it on your own time. Remember how acting the twat worked out for Suspicious Sid. There are two customers upstairs, waiting for girls, and one skinny blonde piece wandering around with a face like a smacked arse. Get it together!’

  He folded his arms. Legs akimbo. Showing them he meant business.

  ‘Who stuck a wasp up your arse?’ Kai asked.

  ‘Pay day!’ Lev said.

  Scraping his chair rebelliously along the rough-rendered concrete floor, Kai sucked his teeth and walked to the safe, set into the distempered brick wall. Click, click, clicking the dial round, he opened the hefty door and pulled out bound sheaf after sheaf of tens, twenties and fifties.

  ‘It’s all there,’ he said, piling the wads into an anonymous-looking black rucksack. Into the sack he also placed a black and red ledger and a spike containing vouchers.

  Tommo looked wistfully at the money and fingered the M on his cap. ‘There’s them two, sitting on a mountain of the Queen’s face. And here’s me, sitting in a shitty cellar, doing their dirty work – earning a bit of cash-in-hand on top of my dole to keep my mam in whisky and our kid in chip butties. I must be some kind of mug. We all must be.’

  ‘Some of us is to the manor born. Some of us is to the council house born. Stop moaning, get upstairs, and sort them two punters out, you lazy fat bastard.’ Lev hauled the bag onto his shoulder and climbed the stairs to where the air was fresher, but only marginally so.

  Squinting in the sudden shaft of daylight that came from the back door, his senses were suddenly on fire as he heard the squeal of tyres on the road, directly outside the house. Car doors, slamming. He froze. Gripped the bag tightly. Turned around just in time to hear a deafening bang. At the end of the long hall, the front door burst open and a tall, scrawny man marched in, holding a sawn-off shotgun. Behind him came a butch girl with a high ponytail.

  Lev recognised them immediately. Degsy. Maggie. The dealers. Shit.

  ‘On the floor! On the floor!’ Degsy shouted, shooting at the ceiling so that fragments of lathe and plaster rained down.

  But Lev just stood there, waiting for his instincts to decide whether it was time for fight or flight.

  Tommo emerged, holding a handgun from the basement. His bulk, blocking Degsy from view. Kai followed, brandishing a baseball bat. Girls screaming upstairs. Punters yelling, as Maggie poked a pistol into the dining room.

  Then, several things happened:

  The house shook with a boom. A cartridge exploding from the end of the sawn-off shotgun, sending Degsy reeling backwards, erupted inside Tommo. A giant of a man, becoming a firecracker of blood, bone and soft tissue. A hazy cloud of red obscuring Lev’s vision. Kai ran forward, yelling hoarsely. Too late to bring his baseball bat crashing down on Degsy’s rat-like head. Another bang, ringing in Lev’s ears as Maggie let off a shot from her pistol. Bullseye. It hit Kai cleanly between the eyes. He collapsed to the ground.

  Man down. Man down, was all Lev could think. Silly lines from shoot-em-up and cop movies.

  And still, he stood there, clutching his rucksack full of immoral earnings. They were coming for him. He held his breath. Watching girls run forward, towards the door, only to be gunned down by Maggie and Degsy. Two psychopaths, shooting at everything that moved, as though they had been set loose inside an arcade game.

  Lev’s ears were ringing. He was going to die, he realised. Unless …

  Turning back, he saw Irina, scrabbling to unlock the back door using a knife.

  ‘Forget it!’ he cried.

  He picked up the large, steel kitchen bin and used it to smash the glass in the left-hand patio door. Pulled the barefoot girl through with him. Still carrying the bag.

  ‘Run!’ he yelled.

  Dragging her to the bottom of the garden was hard work, with Degsy behind them. Past a cherry tree they sprinted. The trunk exploded, as a shotgun cartridge found its home, disintegrating in the wood. The sound of footsteps thundering down the lawn behind them.

  ‘You’re dead, Bell!’ Degsy shouted.

  ‘Faster!’ Lev urged Irina.

  But suddenly, he was aware of a moment’s peace. Daring to glance backwards, he saw Degsy holding the shotgun over his arm. Reloading.

  ‘We can do it,’ he said, pointing to the fence at the bottom of the garden. Knowing that beyond it was an alley for the bins. If they could only scale the fence, they stood a chance.

  Another glance back at Degsy. Reloaded now and marching smugly towards them, his yellow Adidas tracksuit splattered with the gore of the house’s occupants.

  ‘Not so fucking cocky now, are you, pal?’ he said. Mean words from his wizened junkie face.

  ‘Climb!’ Lev ordered Irina.

  She hoisted herself up, pressing her foot into his cupped hands. One leg over. Her gown caught on a nail. A delay of too many seconds. A series of ominous clicks said Degsy had two cartridges ready to fire. He took aim.

  Chapter 19

  Irina

  Running, running, panting so she could hardly breathe any more. A stitch in her gut. Lactic acid sea
ring her muscles. Too aware of the incessant ache in her unsupported breasts as they pounded up and down so violently, it was as if they wanted to shake themselves free of her. But the acute burning in the soles of her bare feet was the worst. Stinging where the glass from the litter-strewn cobbles had cut her or bedded into the skin. Push it out of your mind, she counselled herself.

  A shotgun cartridge ripped into the red-brick garden wall that loomed above them to her right. She yelped. Close. Too close. No time to think about dying. Not now.

  Behind her, the gun-toting mad man picked up his pace yet again. Gaining on them, every time she turned her ankle on a dislodged cobble. She prayed for smooth asphalt. Within sight, now.

  All those years, sitting in the onion-domed Slovakian church, sandwiched between Mama and Babicˇka, who wore a black shawl and smelled too strongly of mothballs. Praying to the golden icons of Jesus and the Virgin Maria. Behaving as a good, obedient daughter should … until the accident. Falling for the wrong man. This was now Irina’s fate: to be dragged down a back alley by a gangster who was neither black nor white, whom she had seen only once or twice before. Being shot at by a rival criminal. Another few paces and she would be dead, she was certain of it. And her baby would die with her. Her baby’s life would be over before it had even begun. Both of them, punished for her sins. Babicˇka had been right.

  ‘Faster!’ the man shouted, grabbing her hand so hard that it hurt.

  Just a second allowed her a glimpse of his wide eyes and agonised expression. The vein, protruding in his forehead. The sinews in his neck, taut and shining with sweat as he ran.

  Irina had nothing left. She was ready to stop. What was the point anyway? Die here, swiftly, in this alleyway, or die slowly in agony, having to share her body with strange men, late into her pregnancy. Pretend to like it or take a beating. Get through it by drinking the wine they plied you with or the pills they made you take. Perhaps she would be sold to another refugee as a bride. Perhaps they would just take her baby away and sell that.