The Cover Up Page 21

  Dreadlocks had been scuppered by the sheer volume of people. Youssuf had slipped through an opening on the concourse as the train had arrived. He’d shaken Dreadlocks off. Temporarily, at least. Shaking and struggling to breathe, he’d had no option but to shelve his aspirations to head straight for Colin Chang and had instead made for a budget hotel in Covent Garden, simply by following a gaggle of backpackers from some Spanish-speaking country and hoping for the best.

  Now, having blown most of his emergency cash, he stood at the reception desk. He handed in his key card to the bemused-looking receptionist, determined that today, he would confront the pharmacist that had fallen from grace.

  Taking the packed and stuffy tube, he clutched his stick and the Disney rucksack he’d taken from Zahid’s wardrobe, alighting at Leicester Square. Late-morning, and already the smell of Peking duck pervaded the streets of China Town – a sweet/savoury welcome for an old Asian adventurer who planned to free one man with a view to locking up another.

  ‘I’m looking for Colin Chang,’ he told the disgruntled-looking waitress in the restaurant. He had never been inside a noodle bar before. While he waited, he was transfixed by the fat little bottles of soy and chilli oil; the canisters full of paper-wrapped bamboo chopsticks; the small type of the menus that sat beneath the glass of all the easy-wipe tables. Photos of numbered dishes were backlit in lightboxes on the walls. Cantonese conversation rang out from the kitchens.

  His old heart clippety-clopped inside his chest. Would Colin show? What if this trip had been nothing more than an old fool’s final indulgence? With no warfarin and heart pills and some criminal, hell-bent on kidnapping him in order to get to Tariq, it was entirely feasible he wouldn’t make the return journey to Manchester at all.

  But then, he felt eyes on him for the third time that trip. Glancing over to the back stairs, he caught sight of the familiar face of the man who had dispensed his myriad lotions and potions for over ten years. Youssuf shuffled towards him.

  ‘I found you. At last!’ He beamed at the sight of his favourite pharmacist, though Colin Chang appeared shorter and thinner than he’d remembered, dressed in washed-out clothes that looked borrowed and were too big for him. Certainly, the shadows beneath his eyes and the haunted expression on his face told Youssuf this was a man dogged by a guilty conscience or else fear.

  ‘Youssuf? What the heck are you doing here?’

  They engaged in an awkward fumble of an embrace.

  ‘I’ve come to check you’re all right,’ Youssuf said, bidding him to sit with a nonchalant wave. ‘You haven’t been around for months. I was worried, you follow? One minute you’re there. Next, you’re gone and the shutters are down on your pharmacy. Nobody could tell me where you’d got to.’ He clicked his fingers, ignoring the sting of the arthritis in the joints. ‘But Youssuf Khan is determined, if nothing else.’ Took his hat off and held it on his lap. Ran a shaking hand over his trim white beard and slurped the green tea that one of the waitresses had brought him. It was the first drink he’d had all day, since he hadn’t been able to afford breakfast at the hotel. ‘I heard you were in trouble with bad men.’

  ‘I’ve been …’ Colin dabbed at his top lip with a napkin. ‘Visiting family. I thought I was overdue a break. A sabbatical of sorts.’

  ‘Working in a restaurant?’ Youssuf looked up at the oversized photos of stir-fries, crispy duck and noodle dishes on the wall. His stomach growled, though the meat in this place would be haram and inedible for a good Muslim. He inclined his body stiffly towards the window, where bronzed ducks turned on a rotisserie to entice passing customers inside. He sniffed. ‘You’re a man of more talents than I gave you credit for.’

  ‘Look, Mr Khan—’

  ‘Please. Youssuf, after all these years.’

  ‘Youssuf, it’s very nice of you to come. It’s really kind of you to care.’ Colin’s eyes swam suddenly with tears that didn’t fall. ‘But honestly, if I’d wanted people to know where I was, I’d have put up a note in the pharmacy or called my favourite customers. I just needed to get away.’

  ‘There, there.’ Youssuf gripped his walking stick, hoisting himself out of his seat. He patted him on the shoulder. ‘There’s no need to get upset.’

  Colin shrugged his touch away. ‘I’m fine. I’m not upset. I’ve got an eye infection.’

  ‘Yes. Okay.’

  ‘I have!’ Colin folded his arms tightly across his chest. Those tears had gone now. ‘You’ve not told your son where I am, have you?’ He shot a surreptitious glance at the door, as if he expected Tariq to walk through it at any moment. Clearly, this unassuming pharmacist knew about the nefarious doings behind the respectable front of T&J Trading, too.

  Youssuf took his seat again. Started to cough and chuckle, his lungs wheezing and groaning like a pair of overworked vintage bellows. ‘My boy doesn’t even know where I am. I’ve gone rogue!’ He threw his head back, laughing heartily at his own daring. ‘Isn’t that what they call it?’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Last night, I blew most of my money on a hotel. Today? I don’t know!’ More laughter as Youssuf contemplated the lunacy of what he’d done. ‘I’ve got some relations in Southall but thought I could maybe stay with you.’

  Colin swallowed hard and looked down at his hands. The skin was wrinkled and red, as though he spent his days washing up. Was that the truth of it? Had this educated man run away to London to wash up in a restaurant rather than face the wrath of a Manchester crime lord? ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s not possible. I bed down in here and I’m not supposed to. If my cousin found out …’

  ‘So you are in trouble?’ Youssuf studied his body language carefully to see what it revealed.

  Shaking his head, Colin pulled at the grimy, stained fabric of his tank top. He looked again at the red-raw skin of his hands. ‘Maybe a bit.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ Youssuf said. He took up a pair of pristine chopsticks. Removed them from their paper wrapping with trembling fingers and snapped them apart, making Colin jump. ‘Everybody has a breaking point. Well, I’ve reached mine. I’ve had enough and I’m here to put an end to it all.’

  A sweat had broken out on Colin’s forehead. ‘What do you mean? An end to what?’

  ‘The illegal and immoral goings-on. My son. The O’Briens. I know what you’re all caught up in. I overheard my daughter-in-law, Anjum, telling Tariq that you’d been into her offices, trying to help some young Chinese girl to seek asylum.’

  Colin blanched. Shrank back in his seat, clasping his arms around him. He rose abruptly. ‘I’ve got to go, Youssuf. You shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.’

  But feeling frustration and disappointment mushroom inside him, Youssuf banged his walking stick on the floor, causing one of the waitresses to glare at him. He glared at Colin. Pointed in accusatory fashion, though the small outburst exhausted him. ‘We can put everything right. I know you have a good heart.’ He stood with some effort, leaned over the table and poked Colin in his pigeon chest. ‘I can see it. I’ve always known it. You’re in debt. Am I right? Gambling? Yes? You think you travel entire continents and live a life of poverty in a country where you can’t even speak the language and bring up children and get to my age and still can’t read the truth in people’s faces? Think again! I see the story in your face, Colin Chang, pharmacist. I see your conflict. The more you stir up filth, the more it smells. And I can smell it! Now, man up! Isn’t that what the youngsters say?’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Colin shouted.

  ‘The truth. What were you doing for the O’Brien scum?’

  Silence between them seemed to make the time slow. The air thickened.

  ‘Free yourself, Colin,’ Youssuf said, retrieving Ellis James’s business card from his pocket. ‘I intend to.’

  Opening and closing his mouth, Colin glanced down at the card, reading the detective’s handwritten note, saying that Youssuf should call when it all got too much. He shook his head vehement
ly. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I came all this way. I know you’re involved. Tell me!’ Youssuf had to convince him. The restaurant staff were watching and trying to eavesdrop. Could he change Colin’s mind before they forcibly threw him out on the street? ‘You must. You can trust me.’ He softened his voice deliberately now, taking on the tone of an encouraging father.

  ‘You’re right,’ Colin finally said, flattening his palms on the table top. ‘I got into bad gambling debts. Over quarter of a million in illegal poker games. I think O’Brien had rigged the cards on purpose.’ Blushing, he stared blankly at the menu beneath the glass table top. ‘I owed him. He had me running a cannabis farm. More of a factory, really, in an old disused warehouse on a semi-derelict industrial estate. I advised on the production of crystal methamphetamine. You know what that is?’

  Youssuf tutted. Shook his head.

  ‘I never did a thing to help any of the trafficked kids there. Not a thing, and I should have. The way they were treated … starved, abused, exposed to toxic chemicals. I was weak. I was scared.’ He wiped a tear away. ‘But how does this help me? How does my telling you undo all the bad things that happened to those kids? They’re dead. That’s it for them. And this is my punishment. I made it out alive. My pharmacy will bring me in money that maybe one day I’ll get my hands on.’

  Youssuf cleared his throat. ‘My son thinks I can’t work a computer. But he’s an ass. We have computers at the day centre. So, I looked up this O’Brien man. There was a two page obituary in the Manchester Evening News. Two pages!’

  Colin’s thin eyebrows shot upwards towards his receding hairline. ‘O’Brien’s dead?’

  ‘Apparently.’ Youssuf considered showing Colin the photo he had taken in Bury’s indoor market of a man he could have sworn was Paddy O’Brien. Running his tongue over the palate of his false teeth, he opted to keep quiet. It wouldn’t do to spook this reluctant refugee. ‘But the funny business and illegal doings are still going on. His wife’s in charge now, I believe. And my Tariq is …’ He sighed. ‘We can stop all of them. For good. The net’s tightening, Colin, and we hold the strings.’

  He was certain he could see wistful longing in Colin’s eyes. He held his hand out. ‘Come back with me to Manchester. Ellis James will be pleased to hear from you. He can offer you protection in return for giving evidence in court. I’ve already broached the subject with him … in secret, of course.’

  ‘You’d grass on your own son?’

  Youssuf nodded. ‘If it means my grandchildren escape the ill effects of this immoral mess and grow up to be good people. Yes.’

  He closed his eyes for at least a minute, waiting for his encouraging words to sink in. When he opened them again, he smiled. ‘Well? Will you come with me to the police?’

  Chapter 29

  Paddy

  ‘Guess who I had a call from, begging me to fish him out of the clink?’ Katrina said, walking at a pace Paddy wasn’t entirely comfortable with. She climbed upwards in those ugly flats she wore, pausing only to regard the satellite tower rising out of the golden and orange-clad trees that surrounded them. ‘You’ll never guess!’ She turned back to him, grinning. Beckoning him to hurry.

  Paddy almost lost his footing entirely as he trod on a giant fallen horse chestnut casing. His ankle turned painfully. ‘Ow! Slow down, Kat. It’s not a sodding race. I haven’t got the shoes for this. And I can’t catch my breath.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve brought you out for a walk, Patrick. You need to keep in some kind of shape. Look after your heart, and your heart will look after you.’ She was already advancing on the border fence that surrounded the Heaton Park Reservoir. Was the crazy bitch going to climb over it and go for a bracing dip? Paddy wouldn’t put it past her.

  ‘It’s only a couple of months since I was on life support. Christ’s sake, Katrina!’

  ‘Blasphemy!’

  ‘Slow down! Or did you save me just to kill me …?’ He came to a standstill. Grabbed at his knees, wiping his sweaty hands on the crappy acrylic fabric of Kenneth Wainwright’s trousers. Gasped for air and stood, grimacing. ‘… when it suits you, your worshitfulness?’

  ‘Your mouth always was like a sewer.’

  The ground was damp and muddy, crunchy in places where it was covered with a blanket of fallen acorns and hazelnuts. Paddy spied a horse chestnut and grunted as he picked it up. Running his thumb over the smooth, shiny umber and chocolate stripes that ran through it. Remembered playing conkers with Frank as a kid. Never brilliant with his hand-eye co-ordination, he had always ended up giving Frank a pasting with his conker in frustration at not being able to win the game. He tossed the nut away. A life lost. Memories that were now worth nothing.

  ‘Come on, Patrick!’ Katrina grabbed the arm of his anorak and pulled him along like he was some docile resident in her nursing home. Her cheeks had coloured up in the fresh autumnal air. She looked as though she’d been at the whisky. ‘Put your best foot forward, man. Don’t you want to hear my gossip? Come on. It’s not like we meet in person that often.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Conky.’ She turned to face him, clearly waiting for a reaction.

  ‘That cheeky Irish bastard?’ Paddy considered all the information Hank had passed on about Conky and Sheila. ‘My corpse isn’t even cold. He’s in my bed, and here I am, living hand to mouth, no chance of seeing my girls. My house. My wife. My life.’

  Katrina had steamed ahead yet again. Her stout nun’s legs could move some when she tried. Thick black stockings spattered with mud hung beneath the A-line hem of her navy skirt. Her short veil flapped in the gentle breeze.

  ‘Hold your horses, Jolly Fucking Hockey-sticks,’ Paddy muttered begrudgingly beneath his breath.

  His elder sister was only a pack of beagles and a celestial horn short of her own hunt. ‘Don’t you want to know why he called?’

  ‘Go on, then. Please tell me they’ve got him for double murder and they’re gonna throw the book at him.’

  ‘Apparently, the builders’ merchants was blown up.’ Katrina stopped dead and appraised Paddy with a degree of suspicion. ‘That wasn’t anything to do with you and Hank, the Henchman of Heywood, was it?’ A wry smile played at the corner of her mouth. The skin on her lips was chapped, cracking as the smile deepened.

  Paddy shook his head. ‘My builders’ yard? You’re shitting me.’

  ‘Well, it’s just a pile of rubble now. Only, Conky had dropped his handgun in the ruins and got copped red-handed by Ellis James, fishing it out from under a pile of wood.’

  ‘Get out!’ Paddy threw his head back and wheezed with laughter.

  ‘Well, he’s a free man again, thanks to me. Sister Benedicta to the rescue, once again.’

  Paddy’s laughter stopped abruptly. Anger and resentment curdled inside him, along with his medication. Sheila couldn’t hold it together. The O’Brien empire was under attack. Everything he had amassed over decades from a mere fifty-pound investment in some super-strong hash from Morocco that he’d flogged to students, undercutting the Jamaican dealers who had operated in Moss Side’s bull-rings. All he’d built up was being systematically dismantled because of that dozy, weak bitch and her clueless bug-eyed muscle. He punched the perimeter fence, breaking the skin on his knuckles.

  ‘Was that really necessary, Patrick?’ Katrina asked, raising an eyebrow disparagingly. She pushed through a loose piece in the fence and climbed over crowns of thorns in the grass, up the steep slope to the reservoir’s edge.

  Huffing and puffing, Paddy followed reluctantly. He clutched his bloody hand, savouring the sting as a dim reminder of the old days. He didn’t like it up here. Felt exposed. Behind them, the forested area of the park fell away in a glorious autumnal riot of colour. But those pretty pinks, oranges and yellows could be concealing any nosey arsehole that might conceivably, in this neck of the woods, have links to the Boddlington gang.

  ‘This is a bad idea. I might get spotted.’ He peered down at the water.
The gunmetal surface was choppy, thanks to the gusts of cold wind. ‘I’ve got to get my life back,’ he said, feeling the dense skies bearing down on the scene – suffocating him. End of the world cloud formations in a dour monochrome palette of deepest sludge grey. ‘All yous lot have ever done is steamroller me into doing what you want. Just cos you think you’re cleverer than me. Brenda does it. Sheila did it. And you do it … Women! You all reckon you know what I need, don’t you? “Take your medicine, Paddy, like a good lad.” And I just swallow it. You decided to take my life away from me, you interfering god-botherer.’

  His sister rounded on him, fists balled. Ever the alpha O’Brien, whether she was wearing a crucifix around her neck or a knuckleduster on her hand. ‘What a load of stuff and nonsense, Patrick! You? At the mercy of women? Is that how you see it? Paddy the King who ruled by divine right. The Despot! You’re about as hard done by as Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump. Good Lord! And how dare you accuse me of taking your life? I saved you from certain death. Or did you forget that you were left to bleed your last at the side of your own swimming pool? Do you think another willing hitman wouldn’t have come after you to finish what you insist Leviticus Bell started? Really?’

  ‘I’ll never know now, will I?!’ Paddy yelled, his voice echoed across the flat expanse of the reservoir. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t kill Lev Bell. Maybe I should just prove he tried to kill me and tell Ellis James that I hid in self-defence. Or tell him how you bullied me into this fresh start, false identity rubbish. I want my life back. I want—’

  ‘You start revealing your true identity and you know who’ll get it in the neck?’ Katrina yelled. ‘Me! I committed the sort of fraud that will ruin my good reputation, get me excommunicated and put me in prison for life. And they’ll lock you up and throw away the key. Have no doubt about it.’