Born Bad Read online

  ‘I’m surprised our Paddy hasn’t put the kid on the game. Does he know you’ve got one of his girls in a van?’

  ‘Please, She. He told me to put a bullet in her because she’s too ugly to work in one of the brothels. I just couldn’t do it.’

  Sheila looked down at the chewing-gum-spattered pavement and sighed heavily. ‘Paddy’s made me close the cleaning company down,’ she said. Shook her head. ‘What about the bloke?’

  ‘He’s our pharmacist, Colin Chang. Got a chemist’s in town but supervises all our meth production. He’s into Paddy for quarter of a mill. Bad gambling debt. I like the eejit. Couldn’t bring myself to shoot him, you know? He’s not like one of the little shites who deals for us. Fate’s foisted a bad hand on him. Sure, he’s just got caught up in unfortunate circumstances.’

  ‘Paddy’s going to end you if he finds out you’re rescuing his bloody workforce. Are you mental?’

  ‘Maybe it’s a midlife crisis, She. Maybe I’m just losing my touch.’

  Checking her watch again, Sheila bit her lip. Felt the weight of this conundrum pressing down on her already overburdened shoulders.

  ‘Jesus. Why did you have to dump all this crap on me?’ Looking up at Conky, she felt the sudden urge either to kiss him or slap him. ‘I turn a blind eye and get on with my own business. That’s how I sleep at night. Now I’m involved!’

  Conky touched his elaborate hair arrangement awkwardly. The gusting wind blew his comb-over awry, revealing clips, hair-piece and the naked scalp beneath. He looked suddenly fallible and far from the usual super-human persona of the Loss Adjuster. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to ask.’

  Sheila tutted. ‘Just threaten them and let them go, for God’s sake. And don’t let Paddy ever find out about this.’

  Chapter 22

  Lev

  ‘Let us in!’ Lev shouted through the letterbox. ‘Gloria. Please! Mam!’

  He peered over his shoulder to check nobody was watching from the bedroom windows on the opposite side of the leafy road. But this was Chorlton. Home to long-standing local residents, well aware of who came and went on these streets. Home to upwardly mobile trendies, with their wooden shutters, who were always on the lookout for suspicious types who had wandered with thieving intentions into the hip enclave from Whalley Range or Withington. Of course they’d be watching, even if he couldn’t see them.

  ‘I know you’re in there. Open the door, for God’s sake.’

  Eyeing the Mazda on the drive, he wondered briefly if she had walked to the shops with Jay in the trolley. But Gloria was an exhibitionist, despite the church elder meek-inheriting-the-earth bullshit. She wouldn’t have gone more than 100 yards without those gleaming wheels.

  Stepping back, he surveyed the windows of the neat semi with its honeysuckle growing around the arch of the 1930s porch. A middle-class, aspirational world away from the dump across town where she had dragged him up. And then he saw what he needed. A twitching curtain in the third bedroom, where Jay was staying.

  ‘Gloria, open the fucking door!’ he yelled, knowing that by causing a scene, she was more likely to usher him inside. All about the appearances, was his mother. She always had been.

  The door was wrenched open. There she was, wrapped up in a kimono with her feet stuffed into bejewelled flip-flops. Painted toenails. A towel on her head. Her attractive features were contorted into a thunderous glare. ‘Get in here now or I’m calling the police!’ she said between gritted teeth, jerking her head backwards. ‘And keep your voice down. I’ve just got your son to sleep.’

  The house was warm from the morning sunshine that streamed in through the side window in the hall. It smelled of clean washing, beeswax and nail varnish remover. Lev remembered the comforting scents from childhood but defiantly pushed any nostalgia to the back of his overwrought mind.

  ‘Is Jay alright?’ he asked, wishing he could bound upstairs and whisk the boy to a different life and a better future. He noticed a food stain down the front of Gloria’s kimono. A faint whiff of Sudocrem about her.

  ‘He’s fine. Thanks to his nan coming to the rescue at no notice whatsoever! Certainly no thanks to you and that junkie harlot, Tiffany. I take it she’s still in hospital.’

  A mental image popped unbidden into Lev’s mind. Tiff in the stifling, packed side-ward, harnessed to a web of tubing and machines that bleeped. The nurses, treating her as though she were some kind of suicide risk. Screw her.

  ‘She’ll live. But I’m in trouble,’ he said. ‘Big trouble. I need a place to stay. Lay low, like.’ He stood, propping himself on the highly polished sideboard in the hall that showed photos of Gloria with the pastor. Gloria with her church cronies. Gloria with Sheila O’Brien, holding up some gaudy golden award in the shape of a yard brush saying, ‘Scrubbers of the Year 2014’. Frame after ornate brass frame, set out in neat rows on doilies. Nothing showing him. Naturally.

  ‘I’m going to a funeral, Leviticus,’ inglorious Gloria said, arms folded across her chest. ‘Jack O’Brien’s funeral. They’ve finally released the body. It’s time the poor boy was laid to rest.’

  ‘That prick?’ Lev said. Immediately wishing he hadn’t. He needed Gloria. Now was not the time to wind her up. Too late.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, poking him in the chest with an electric blue fingernail at the end of a work-worn finger. ‘Show the dead some respect! That’s my business partner’s nephew. I knew Jack from birth. I changed his nappies when I babysat for his dad. I hoovered his bedroom and wiped down his cot when I was still mopping Frank and Paddy O’Brien’s floors to feed you, you ungrateful boy!’

  ‘Spare us the lecture,’ Lev said. ‘Look, can I stay here for a couple of days or not? I’m due the money for Jay’s operation any day now. I just wanna book the tickets and go. The specialist reckons he can book in the surgery at short notice.’

  Gloria snapped her fingers, indicating that Lev should follow her into the kitchen. She filled the kettle and switched it on. Spooned instant coffee into two china mugs.

  ‘What’s going on with you?’ A shapely raised eyebrow. ‘What in the Lord’s name are you up to now, Leviticus?’

  Lev bit his lip. ‘I’ve got Asaf Smolensky watching me every time I fart. I told you it was him that OD’d Tiff the other day. The guy’s a wanker. Nearly kills my babymother off just so he can warn us he’s got his eye on me. He’s found out me and you are speaking and he reckons I’ve got something to do with Jack’s murder.’

  Gloria flung the teaspoon into her shining sink. Said nothing. But he could tell she was mulling it over.

  ‘So, you know the deal’s off between my lot and your lot,’ Lev said.

  Gloria hooked her hand onto her hip, eyes flashing like a lights on a level crossing.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, “your lot”. I’m a respectable businesswoman and God-fearing church-goer. Don’t lump me in with a bunch of murdering ne’er-do-wells.’

  Lev felt resentment and anger effervesce inside him. Why did she have to be such a bitch? Making him feel like worthless scum. He needed her help but the temptation to treat her to an angry retort was so strong that he had to bite down hard on his tongue. He succumbed.

  ‘Yeah. Whatever. Well you should know that it was me who stabbed Paddy O’Brien and put him in hospital a few weeks ago. Yes. Me.’ Raised an eyebrow, matched with a calculated smirk. Take that, Gloria.

  Gloria’s coffee cup stalled in its ascent towards her open mouth. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I was in the club. I got fingered as a Boddlington. It’s a long story. I knifed him. He had the heart attack because of it, I heard.’

  Slamming the cup down on the worktop, Gloria’s full lips compressed into a hard line.

  ‘Are you telling me that you’re behind Paddy’s decision to move to Thailand? Is it down to you that my livelihood and a lifeline for all my employees is going out of the window?’

  Lev was certain that if she removed the towel from her head, her wet hair would ha
ve bristled into braided spikes. He shoved one hand deep into his jogging bottom pocket. Drank awkwardly from the blistering hot coffee, risking a scalding rather than letting her read his guilty expression.

  ‘Oh and I battered the living daylights out of Degsy, one of Conky McFadden’s best, so I’m gonna have him on my case any minute.’ Lev sat the coffee cup down carefully. Rubbed the hot skin of his face. Wishing he could somehow erase the creeping embarrassment. Dispel the fatigue that had set into his bones. ‘Last night was the worst, though. I fucked up—’

  ‘Language!’

  ‘I cocked up a raid. Passed out in one of the O’Brien’s cannabis farms, when I was meant to take Maggie out. I was under strict orders from the Fish Man. And I just fainted. I was so tired. One minute, I’m on my feet with a gun in my hand. Next minute, I’m on my back, staring at these UV lights. When I came to, there was bodies everywhere. Kids dead. Some of their people dead. Couple of our lads with holes in them like sieves. And the others had gone. They left me. Maybe they just couldn’t find me. But when they do, I’m dead meat. And if I’m dead meat, our Jay’s toast.’

  Gloria drummed her fingernails on the worktop, staring into his eyes, as though she was some lesser holy woman, trying to divine for the soul in him. ‘Look after your son while I’m at the funeral,’ she said. ‘But if you so much as touch a single thing in my house, you’re out. If you let anyone know you’re here, I’ll call the police. Do you understand? And I want you to find somewhere else to go by tomorrow night. I can do without the likes of the Fish Man turning up on my doorstep. And I certainly don’t want any truck with Conky McFadden. Keep a low profile. You hear me?’

  When Gloria pulled out of the driveway in her Mazda with the top down and her funeral hat in a box on the seat beside her, Lev exhaled heavily. Crept upstairs to watch his sleeping son.

  ‘Hello, love,’ he whispered, peering into the travel cot that Gloria had erected in the box room. Expecting to see a peaceful cherubic face. Except Jay’s face was anything but. His eyes were screwed tightly shut and his small mouth was set into a grimace. As if sensing his father was close by, Jay started to whimper in his sleep. Within seconds, he was wide awake and screaming.

  Lev picked him out of the travel cot. Panicking. Reached for a dummy, lying on the base of the cot. Jay spat it out. Offered him a teddy bear. Jay threw it angrily to the other side of the room. ‘Shush, shush, shush, little man,’ he said, his useless voice smothered beneath the blanket of agonising noise.

  He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Repositioning his distraught child on his hip, he tried to pull the device from his jogging bottoms. Withdrew his gun by accident. Placed it hastily on top of Jay’s changing bag. Finally retrieved his phone, managing to get the message up from Asaf Smolensky.

  You ballsed up. There will be consequences. I’m coming for you.

  Shit. Lev swallowed hard and moved to the window. Peered through the net curtain down the street to see if Smolensky’s people carrier was within sight. He would surely track him down to Gloria’s. He couldn’t stay there, not right now.

  ‘Come on, little man. We need to get you somewhere safe,’ he said, kissing his son’s head. Clambering down to the hall, holding his phone in his mouth, his gun in his pocket, Jay in one arm and the changing bag in the other. Lev found a slightly melted KitKat on the radiator cover and gave it to the boy in a bid to placate him. ‘We’re going on a little trip, son. Daddy can’t stay here.’

  He tried to keep his voice calm and low. Inside, he was a tangle of fear, guilt and confusion. Where exactly could he go? Home wasn’t safe. The O’Briens had eyes in Sweeney Hall and those eyes would now be trained on him. That irresponsible twat Tiff was laid up and out of commission.

  As he strapped the wailing Jay into the pushchair, his phone went. Swallowing down a lump of ice, he expected Jonny or Tariq, demanding to know why he had gone AWOL. But the number was unfamiliar. Maybe it was his benefactor. Hope surged within him at the thought of £150,000 landing in his account.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Bell? This is social services. We’d like a word with you about your son’s living arrangements.’

  No, no, no! This was getting worse by the minute.

  ‘He’s with me. I’m his dad. He’s fine.’

  ‘But we’d like to come and inspect your abode, because …’

  He zoned out from the woman’s monotonous voice. Wondering how he could stave off a visit to a flat that was anything but fit; a flat he dare not go back to. How could he take the boy and get on a plane to the US with social services breathing down his sodding neck?

  ‘You’re breaking up, love,’ he said, and cut the call short.

  There was only one place he could go but it would involve a biblical trek across town.

  Cigarette smoke rose in acrid roiling funnels above the smokers standing by the Outpatients entrance of North Manchester General Hospital. Their pallor and crumpled faces told Lev all he needed to know – these were the scum stuck to the sole of society’s shoe. The kind of fleece-clad, super-strength-lager-drinking no-hopers he would have been one of, if he hadn’t been recruited into the Boddlingtons. It had seemed so glamorous when he was in his mid-teens. Flogging wraps of gear to desperate junkies and wearing a gun stuffed inside the waistband of his jeans, pretending he was a real player – going somewhere in style. The girls had fallen for it every time, as though he himself had addictive, narcotic qualities. Now, he knew better. He had seen things he wished he could un-see and done things he would spend his entire life repenting for privately. The worst kind of role model for his infant son, he knew. But at least he had Tariq and Jonny’s money on top of his dole, and a semi-structured, Russian Roulette of a career path to follow. You took your chances. He’d always known that much. Take a right turn, he’d be scaling the broken bodies of those who’d gambled and lost to take his place at the top of the enlightened heap. Take a wrong turn, and the unrighteous path would lead him straight into the dark of an early shallow grave with a bad-man’s bindi between the eyes. One thing he mused was for certain, as he walked past the rotten, stinking flesh of smokers who were trying on their corpses for size, if he hadn’t chosen to pick up a gun and a fistful of baggies instead of a pint and a betting slip, he’d be dead by thirty anyway.

  Pushing Jay’s pram along the squeaky lino of the corridors, he passed a sea of washed-out, harried faces. Nurses on their break. Hurrying, scurrying doctors, clutching at their stethoscopes as though they were magnetised, drawing them inexorably to some trauma elsewhere. Relatives, looking like they’d rather be anywhere than in this city that never slept. Past the chapel on his left, the snack stop on his right. Praying that nobody would spot him. Delving into his pocket, he took out the piece of paper with her ward number on it. F3. Or was it E3? Squinting, he couldn’t clearly read the number, smudged as it was by blood from God knew where. Maybe Tommo or Kai’s blood? Maybe Irina’s or Degsy’s?

  With Jay screaming and arching his back in the pushchair, Lev entered a ward, peering at the beds in the hope of finding her. The smell of medicinal alcohol made him feel woozy. He was expecting women in fluffy dressing gowns with lank hair plastered to their heads. Wrong place. It was all men – mainly old guys with yellow complexions and oxygen cannulas strapped to their faces. Worried wives by their bedsides, looking like they’d still managed to get their hair done for the occasion.

  ‘Can I help you, love?’ a tubby auxiliary asked. Her greasy locks were scraped tightly into a bun on the top of her head. Her lilac uniform and pink glasses made her look like a nursery nurse.

  ‘I’m looking for Tiffany White,’ he said, shuddering at the strange feeling that one of the men in one of the beds was watching him intently. A quick scan of the ward revealed nothing untoward, but his senses burned on red alert.

  ‘Upstairs,’ the smiling woman said. Cooing at a grizzling Jay who screamed blithely at her sudden attention. She looked less chirpy, then.

  Final
ly, he entered the ward where Tiffany was being kept under observation. It was brightly lit and swelteringly hot. At first, the stout staff nurse had been reluctant to let him in during lunchtime, but Jay was his green card.

  ‘He needs his mam,’ he said simply, looking beyond the heavily fringed woman in the dark blue uniform.

  Ensconced in a side room, sitting on top of her bed in a onesie covered in black pup’s paw prints, Tiffany was flicking through Heat magazine. When she caught sight of Lev and her son, she threw the magazine aside and treated them both to a doleful stare.

  ‘Fucking nice of yous to come,’ she said, sarcasm dripping thickly from her grey lips. She tried to fold her arms but became tangled in the drips that fed into a cannula in the crook of her arm and the back of her hand.

  ‘I brought Jay to see you,’ Lev said, popping the fasteners and lifting the boy carefully out of the pushchair.

  With his hands clamped to his temples, Jay began to scream. Lev had half-hoped that Tiffany would hold out her arms to embrace him, offering a mother’s comfort. But she merely looked away despondently, folding her arms even tighter to her chest.

  ‘I need you to look after him for a couple of days,’ Lev said. ‘My mam’s had him since you OD’d. But she’s buggered off to a funeral, so she’s no use. No change there. And I’m in a spot of bother.’

  Suddenly, her eyes were on him; an accusatory glare that could have stripped the flaking drab paint from the hospital walls.

  ‘Aw, don’t be like that, Tiff. It’s not safe for him to be around us. You seen what happened to you.’

  His babymother leaned forward, her jaw set hard so that he could see the nicotine stains on the underside of her bottom teeth. Dark circles beneath her eyes. Hair plastered to her head. Not so foxy now.

  ‘Yes, I bleeding saw what happened to me! And why did I end up in here, Leviticus? Was it because some nutcase Jew in a cowboy hat shot me up with a load of heroin as a warning because of some shit you’ve been up to?’