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  Smolensky was leading the charge, of course, carrying a Bren gun that looked too heavy to aim reliably at anything. But Smolensky was military. A crack shot. He had assembled a small unit of dealers – mainly muscle from Lower Boddlington and a couple of Salford lads, who were toting handguns. Sitting in Jonny’s Maserati, parked some hundred yards down the street, Jonny and Tariq were watching them make their preparations, no doubt with the engine running and in air-conditioned comfort. Lev knew that the moment there was a whiff of trouble, the bosses would be gone, leaving only exhaust fumes and a dim memory of something powerful and beautiful having been in an area of town where the disenfranchised and the ugly lived.

  ‘We go in. We kill everything. We get out,’ Smolensky whispered, holding the weapon across his long torso. He looked at the pocket watch concealed in his waistcoat. ‘No longer than ten minutes. No stealing the weed or meth. If I find any O’Brien drugs on anyone when we get back to T&J for debrief, I’ll kill you myself.’

  The other men nodded and all murmured their agreement.

  ‘In and out. That’s your mission. Okay?’ Smolensky’s eyes reflected the yellow streetlight, putting Lev in mind of a sleek black panther on a night-time hunting trip. ‘Watch out for Degsy’s number two, Maggie. She’s a lethal bitch. Put her down a.s.a.p.’

  Bitch, pronounced ‘beach’ in Smolensky’s Israeli accent. Made Lev think of Gloria. Thick-skinned old Gloria, hiding from her frailty and maternal guilt behind a Wailing Wall of her own construction. And Tiffany. There was a lousy beach. Full of love and promise when her tide was high. Now, all washed up, leaving only a trail of shit and broken dreams. The women in his life he could do without. Then came a thought of poor pregnant Irina. He hoped she would be tucked up somewhere in a women’s refuge, safe from harm and strange men’s cocks, dreaming of a better future for her baby than the one Jonny Margulies and Tariq Khan had planned for her. A moment of silence passed in which Lev considered he might die in the next few minutes inside this O’Brien cannabis factory. And finally, he thought of little Jay and of the money that would be in his account any day now … Hope. Yes, there was still hope.

  Live through this, Lev. For the boy.

  ‘Stand back,’ Smolensky said, sticking a small square package to the lock on the thick, steel door. Retreating some ten metres to where the group was huddled. He pressed a detonator that he produced from his coat pocket.

  With a boom that made Lev’s ears ring and a billowing puff of smoke, the lock was blown. A military-grade battering ram, wielded by the biggest of the Salford lads, made short shrift of the door.

  Following the others, Lev quick-marched through the smoke, gun drawn. Safety off. The sharp smell of cordite was quickly replaced by a damp, organic fug. Intoxicating and cloying, the smell of high-grade marijuana leaped up Lev’s nostrils and lodged itself between his eyes. He started to weave down the straight path. Steadied himself. Difficult when he had to check left, check right to see if anyone was coming at him through the pungent leafy growth of the O’Brien cannabis crop. His focus was waning. Was it merely psychosomatic or was he really beginning to feel spaced out? But there was no time to contemplate just how high he could get off the fumes alone. Smolensky was already a way ahead. The rat-a-tat of the Bren gun made the concrete floor shake beneath him. Screaming from every direction. High-pitched voices of the trafficked Chinese and Vietnamese kids that the O’Briens used to farm the weed. Brap, brap of Boddlington handguns and the coarse shouting of his compatriots, as they silenced one squeak after another.

  Not the kids, you arseholes.

  It was Maggie that he was after. That shitty ponytailed little witch with her shell suit and scabby mouth and rabid, fuck-ugly Staffordshire bull terrier that she called Shep, like the brainless half-wit she was. She would be hiding out here. Somewhere. Lurking like a coward, waiting to pick them off one by one. With lush green plants growing tall as far as the eye could see under huge UV lamps suspended from the ceiling in the hot, clammy warehouse, Lev felt like he was a GI hunting the Viet Cong in the jungle.

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ he said under his breath, giggling inappropriately.

  Chapter 21

  Sheila

  ‘Come on! Come on! Get inside before anyone sees us,’ Sheila said to Amy and Dahlia.

  Looking over her shoulder, she ushered her daughters from the busy south Manchester roadside, beyond the 1930s façade of a long-dead cinema and into the lofty sanctuary of the local bingo hall. Drank in the nostalgic smell of cheap carpet, Babycham and old ladies’ talc, feeling a rush of adrenalin at the thought of what she was attempting. Her heart thumped inside her chest like an over-zealous boxer pummelling a speedball. No sign of Paddy or anyone who worked for him. Good.

  ‘In, I said!’ She let the door slam behind her and exhaled heavily. Focused on what lay ahead.

  ‘Where is she?’ Amy said, barely concealing the excitement in her voice, like a kid awaiting Santa Claus. Undoubtedly, Amy was the obvious carrier of unadulterated O’Brien genes with the strawberry blonde hair and freckled skin but her exuberance reminded Sheila of herself as a young woman. Before Paddy.

  Dahlia, on the other hand, who had the dark looks of her maternal grandfather, looked solemn and unimpressed by the ex-cinema full of grandmas with their brassy-blonde-dyed helmet-hair and support stockings. ‘I’d sooner go home and mourn our Jack. I am in mourning, you know. Can I go and mourn? Really, Mum, I was happier being miserable.’

  Sheila rounded on her daughter. Lowered her voice to a whisper, lest she draw the gathered bingo aficionados’ attention away from the announcements of the bingo caller to their trio’s subterfuge.

  ‘Stop moaning. She’s not seen you since you were four! This is special.’ She clasped her eldest in a bear hug, pinioning her arms to her sides. Willing her to be more enthusiastic. ‘I thought it would take your mind off Jack. And your dad’s busy with some emergency, so … I thought we’d make hay.’

  Dahlia fixed her with hard, accusatory eyes. A lawyer’s stare.

  ‘Please, love. Do this for me.’

  The preoccupied pensioners, scrunched up in their seats like decaying foetuses, did not look up from their bingo score cards, which they marked with fat pink pens, or tablets that they poked methodically with arthritic fingers, their brows furrowed with concentration and wishful thinking.

  ‘All the sevens; seventy-seven. On its own; number four.’

  The monotonous voice of the bingo caller droning on through the PA whisked Sheila back to her childhood, when she used to slip into the bingo on the sly with her mam and Auntie Fionnula. She smiled.

  ‘There she is!’ she said, grabbing Amy’s arm. Trying her damnedest to stem the threatening, roiling tsunami of emotions from sweeping her away. Regret, anticipation, love, guilt …

  The elderly woman sitting in the orange seat, wriggling the toes on the end of swollen feet which she’d shoved shoeless into the aisle, looked up.

  ‘By Christ,’ she said. ‘Sheila.’

  ‘Mam,’ Sheila said, holding her hand out. She sat down in the seat next to the woman that had given birth to her. Put her arms around her, pulling her into an awkward hug. The old lady smelled of chips and hairspray. A familiar smell, instantly triggering memories of a blissful childhood.

  Her mother looked up at her with eyes that were substantially more crepey than she remembered. Spidery lashes, coated in cheap, claggy mascara. Watery blue irises that had none of the youthful vividity of Sheila’s, as though the colour had leached out over time. A reflection of how Sheila might look at seventy, should she lead a different life without the cash and the Botox and the spa treatments.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ her mother said.

  The sound of the bingo caller continued in the background. ‘Two little ducks.’

  ‘Quack quack,’ her mother shouted in response along with her rapt compatriots.

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  Her mother’s eyes were back
down to the score card. Scanning her lines for a match. She hadn’t even registered the presence of the girls.

  ‘Mam. I’ve brought Amy and Dahlia.’

  ‘Never been kissed; number sixteen.’

  ‘House!’ somebody shouted several rows down on the left.

  Finally, her mother looked up at Sheila, scowling. ‘That’s Elsie Shufflebottom,’ she said. ‘Jammy old bastard won fifty quid last week.’ She folded her arms, the pruning deepening around her lips, as Elsie jumped up and down in her seat, pumping her swollen red hand in the air and high-fiving what appeared to be her daughter in a matching lilac fleece with a matching giant arse.

  ‘Jesus,’ Sheila said. ‘I remember her from when I was a kid. Is that Julie, her youngest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s … quite a unit.’

  Her mother wheezed with laughter and winked. ‘Good to see that ferrety little arsehole you married hasn’t sucked all of the fun out of you, our Sheila.’

  Finally the old lady turned to Amy and Dahlia. Looked them up and down. Her face crumpled and tears started to leak from those wrinkled, tired eyes. ‘Come here, you beauties.’ She held her arms wide, encompassing her grown granddaughters in the sort of hug only a grandmother could give.

  ‘Oh, Mam,’ Sheila said, stroking her mother’s shoulder. Enjoying the warmth that emanated from this long overdue girls’ reunion. ‘Thanks for agreeing to this. I’ve missed you so much. I can’t tell you …’ She swallowed the threat of tears, not wanting her own daughters to see her pain and judge her for inflicting that same anguish on her own mother. Keep dignified, She. Hold it together.

  Her mother dabbed at her eyes with the napkin from her half-eaten chicken-in-a-basket and fries. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I got that email. Your dad only got me online last Christmas, so I could speak to your Auntie Fi in Queensland. She’s in Queensland, now, you know?’

  Clasping her mother’s nicotine-stained hand inside hers, Sheila drank in the sound of her voice, rendered rough and deep by too many Lambert & Butler, or whatever it was she smoked nowadays. She committed to memory the details of her face. Tried to see herself in the bone structure. Wondered how she had looked in the years they had lost.

  ‘Did you tell Dad I’d be here?’ she asked.

  Looking down at her giant pink marker, her mother shrugged. ‘He didn’t want to come. I asked him. He’s not up to another run-in with Paddy.’

  ‘It’s been twenty years, for Christ’s sake! Couldn’t he have put the past behind him? Especially after I’d been so brave, getting in touch.’ Sheila slammed her hand down onto the table but the sound was drowned out by the crowd singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to somebody’s great-nana, who had just turned eighty-six. ‘It wasn’t easy you know. All that sneaking around.’ She visualised the antique Ottoman flintlock rifles in their case, and Paddy’s overwhelming disinterest in them as a peace offering. ‘You’ve no idea what it cost me.’

  Her mother looked up. Met Sheila’s inquisitive gaze. The softness around her eyes had been replaced by something colder and less forgiving. ‘And do you think we haven’t had to pay a heavy price all these years?’ She looked at Amy and Dahlia with accusatory eyes. ‘Not seeing these lovely girls grow up. Our grandchildren. Not being able to speak to our own daughter.’

  Sheila looked down at her diamond eternity ring. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so—’

  ‘Your dad’s not well.’

  Sheila held her breath. Felt her pulse pounding in her neck. Fingered her charm bracelet nervously. ‘Not well? How do you mean?’

  With closed eyes, her mother spoke so quietly that Sheila had to strain to hear her above the chatter and hubbub of the bingo hall, between games. ‘It’s the aggro. He’s had a stroke. Lost all the movement in the left side of his body. He gets very frustrated. His speech isn’t …’

  ‘Shit. You’re joking.’ Sheila clasped her hands to her mouth.

  Her mother’s lips thinned to a hard, straight line. Her voice growing in power and acerbity. ‘No, Sheila. I’m not joking. And you can blame that scumbag you’re married to for banning you from seeing us. He’s poisoned your mind, She. Poisoned!’ Her mother took out a new score card. Waved it at her daughter. ‘I run the gauntlet every time I come to bingo. I have to leave your dad propped in front of an old VHS of Falcon Crest. The sight of Jane Wyman is the only thing that calms him down.’ Disengaging suddenly, as if her long-lost family wasn’t sitting there, Sheila’s mother shoved four cold chips into her mouth and started to study her numbers, chewing ferociously.

  ‘Mam!’ Feeling frustration mounting at her mother’s manner and the news that she had not been there for her father when he had needed her most, Sheila wished she could have done things differently. But there was no opportunity to undo the past. She shook her mother’s forearm. ‘Mam! I didn’t risk lumber off our Paddy to watch you play frigging bingo.’

  Her old lady looked up. Glanced over Sheila’s shoulder and tutted. ‘Oh, here we go. Nothing bloody changes, does it?’ She raised an eyebrow at a tall, smartly dressed figure who trod a sure path across the gaudy blue carpet towards them. ‘There’s a blast from the past. What was his name? Beaky? Always hung around you like a bad smell.’

  Sheila rose from her seat and approached the interloper.

  ‘Conky. What’s the matter? How the hell did you find me?’

  Conky took her arm. His demeanour was stiff; tension and urgency emanating from his every pore. ‘Two things,’ he said. ‘First, Paddy knows you’re here and he’s on his way.’

  Open-mouthed, Sheila frowned. She felt the blood drain from her lips. Her heartbeat quickened. ‘But how?’ She looked around the bingo hall, expecting to see her husband running towards her with a thunderous expression on his red face and his fist raised in readiness for retribution. Her very own god of hell-fire.

  ‘He’s got a GPS tracker on your car, She. I should have told you before.’ Staring down at his feet, Conky took his glasses off and treated her to an apologetic shrug. ‘There’s nothing Paddy doesn’t know about your movements. And he’s had some kid hack into your email since he found out you were in touch with your mother and you changed your password.’

  ‘Mum! Are you okay?’ Amy asked, putting a hand on Sheila’s shoulder.

  Feeling her legs give way beneath her, Sheila steadied herself on a chair.

  ‘I’ll be back in a second, love. Talk to your nan.’ She nodded unconvincingly and smiled at her youngest. ‘Go!’

  The hubbub in the room fell silent. ‘Eyes down!’ The bingo caller proclaimed the start of the next game. Sheila pulled Conky past the rows of concentrating gamers, into the foyer, where the air was cooler and their conversation would go unheard.

  ‘Why isn’t he with you?’ Sheila asked, searching Conky’s bulging eyes for the truth. She dabbed at her top lip with a tissue. The bead of sweat that tracked its way from her shoulder blades to her bra strap tickled.

  ‘He’s with the firm’s “cleaners”, trying to sort a shit-storm out. There’s been a raid on one of our factories. The Boddlingtons sent a death squad in and killed a load of our cannabis farmers.’ His voice was almost a whisper. Conky looked up to the ceiling and closed his eyes, as if trying to un-see carnage. ‘That’s why I’m here, She. I gave him some cock and bull about having a bad reaction to my medication. I knew I had to get to you before he downed tools and came here, looking for you.’ He reached out as if to grab her hand but seemed to think better of it. Clasped his together formally over his gut.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘I’ll get the girls.’ She turned to go back into the bingo hall. They could be out of there and on their way home inside two minutes flat. She could do this! She would foil that suffocating, spying arsehole she was married to.

  Conky’s large hand fell gently on her shoulder. ‘Wait! That’s not exactly why I came.’

  She turned around to see the big henchman wearing an uncertain expression on his craggy face.<
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  ‘Sheila, I’ve got a favour to ask. You’re the only one I thought could help.’

  He led her outside to a white transit van, parked in a quiet spot in front of a closed down travel agent’s. Opened the door to reveal a young girl and a man, both sitting cross-legged in the centre of the loading area. Gagged with their hands tied. They both looked Chinese, Sheila assessed. The man, dressed in cords and a tank top like a maths teacher, was in his thirties, by the looks. But the girl couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. The utilitarian overalls that she wore were covered in what appeared to be soil and blood. Sheila could smell the familiar botanical tang of cannabis on both of them and something sulphurous and chemical beneath that.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ she said, staring from the wide-eyed girl to the silently weeping man. ‘I don’t want anything to do with Paddy’s unsavoury shit. I know what he does for a living but I don’t need it ramming down my throat.’

  Conky held his hand out in front of the two. Spoke in a placatory tone. ‘Wait there. It’s going to be okay.’

  He slid the van door shut, concealing the couple inside.

  ‘What’s going to be fucking okay, Conky?’ Sheila asked, pulling her cashmere cardigan closed against the stiff summer breeze. ‘You’ve got a Chinese feller and some trafficked girl in a van, covered in blood. For Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Can you take her? For your cleaning company, I mean? Her name’s Mae Ling. She’s a good worker. These two were the only survivors. The bastard Boddlingtons slaughtered the rest like sacrificial lambs. It was like an act of genocide in Cambodia or bloody Rwanda. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Conky looked away and blinked hard behind those Ray-Bans.