The Cover Up Page 27

  ‘Well, what’s he doing repairing an almost new house, then, when Sheila’s never clapped eyes on him before?’

  Bob rubbed his nose and shot a wounded look in Conky’s direction. ‘I told you. I do property maintenance. The pointing wanted a bit of TLC.’

  ‘You sidestep questions like a politician, Robert the Property Developer,’ Conky said. Glancing up at the wet mortar beneath Sheila’s bedroom window, he contemplated climbing the ladder to see exactly what this shifty son of a bitch had been up to up there. But then Conky remembered that he hated ladders with a passion and that his legs were playing merry hell with him because he kept forgetting to take his thyroxine. ‘This is the chump that was tailing Sheila,’ he told Gloria. ‘I’d put money on it that he bashed in your son’s head. What do you have to say to that?’

  Clasping her hand to her chest, Gloria looked as though she were caught in a private maelstrom of conflicting emotions and loyalties. ‘Did you hurt my boy?’ she asked, taking several steps towards Bob in those schoolmarm shoes she wore. ‘My Leviticus, who had to have a brain scan? Did you? Tell me honestly, Bob. There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes …’ Another step towards him and Bob’s face was beginning to buckle like an empty Tango can. ‘ … a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans … ’ Ever closer she moved. The volume of her voice rose until she stood only inches away from Bob, shouting at the top of her voice. ‘ … feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies … ’ She treated Conky to a withering glance. ‘ … and one who sows discord among brothers. Proverbs 6:16–19!’

  Bob shook his head vehemently, crossing his heart with his index finger. ‘God’s honest truth, Gloria, lovey. I don’t know anything about your son. I couldn’t even tell you what he looks like, could I?’ All smiles now. ‘But I’d love to meet him, if you ever fancy cooking me a nice home-made dinner round yours. I bet you’re a cracking lickle home-maker.’

  Gloria folded her arms over her prissy silk dress. Conky could see from the triumphant way she held herself that Bob had won her over. ‘Maybe when we get back from Blackpool.’

  ‘Tell you what. Get your glad rags on. I’ll clean myself up and we’ll go.’

  Gloria smiled cautiously, all outward signs of antagonism now gone. ‘When?’

  ‘Now! See the illuminations.’

  ‘You’re on, honey bunny.’ She winked. Pulp Friction actually fecking winked.

  Polishing his sunglasses on his shirt tails as the two love birds disappeared off for an evening session of Bible study and heavy petting by the sea, Conky sighed deeply and studied the drying mortar from below.

  Ignoring the pain in his calf muscles and the sensation of his knees turning to jelly merely at the thought of climbing a ladder, Conky made his way round to the garaging. Inside, beyond the five gleaming super-cars, he located a long ladder that might just do the job. Carried it to the place where Bob had been ‘working’ and set it against the wall.

  ‘I must be completely mental.’ His bulk forced the bottom of the ladder deep into the soft earth of the flower beds, but setting his feet on the lower rungs, the thing wobbled ominously; barely enough room for his size thirteens. ‘This is precarious activity, Conky McFadden. She doesn’t even love you. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’

  But loyalty and curiosity are strong motivators. Conky knew this much as he climbed higher and higher. The ladder didn’t quite stretch to the sill of the master bedroom window. He found himself balancing on an upper rung, far beyond a level where he could safely grab onto the rails. Flattened against the wall like an overweight, mortal rendition of Spiderman, he felt his way up and over to the wet mortar. Scraped the mortar out from between the brickwork with his index finger, steeling himself not to look down. Beneath his fingertip, he felt something smooth and thin. Cabling. The ladder wobbled beneath him as he gouged at the cable with his short fingernails, trying to prise it free. Juddering and wobbling, his calf muscles screamed in complaint. His sensitive thyroid eyes streamed as the wind changed direction and blasted into his face. He could barely see.

  In the split second that Conky realised he had stretched too far over to his left and that the ladder was beginning to tip, he pulled the cable free. Recognised it immediately as a fibre-optic camera, destined to poke through to the bedroom at the place where the landline telephone cable entered the house.

  Crafty bastard’s Bancroft’s spy, Conky thought as he plunged some twenty or thirty feet at frightening speed onto the unforgiving paving below.

  Chapter 37

  Tariq

  ‘What do you want me to do with him?’ Asaf Smolensky asked, pointing to the Chinese pharmacist who was currently sitting in the hot seat in the hole – the windowless place where punishment was meted out on grasses, turncoats, thieves and anyone else who foolishly failed to walk in step with the Boddlington bosses. He had been strapped multiple times with duct tape to the chair that was bolted to the floor. The silvery tape covered his mouth as well, of course, though there were no other outward signs of abuse. Not yet.

  Smolensky had removed his hat and his yarmulke, revealing the dark clippered hair beneath. He was standing behind a petrified-looking Colin Chang, sharpening boning knifes. Like fingernails being scratched down a blackboard, the sound set Tariq’s teeth on edge.

  ‘You want me to cut him?’ Smolensky asked.

  Pulling up a chair so that he was facing Chang, Tariq sat in silence, studying the puffy-eyed face of his father’s favourite pharmacist. Wondering what to do with this curious find.

  ‘No. That won’t be necessary. Take the tape off his mouth. I want to speak to him.’

  Smolensky ripped the duct tape quickly off Chang’s mouth. Tariq winced at the noise. It brought back memories of his father whipping plasters off his scabbed knees as a little boy. He had yelped, just like Chang.

  ‘Why are you keeping me here?’ Chang asked, whimpering. He craned his neck to stare accusingly at the Fish Man. ‘What is he going to do with me?’

  ‘Well, that rather depends on you,’ Tariq said in a soft voice. Smiling deliberately to put the man at his ease. Educated guys like Chang scared easily enough without the need for unrelenting violence or the threat of it. Especially a submissive beta-type like this. ‘You and my father were going to the police, weren’t you? Tell the truth.’ He blinked slowly and steadily, still silently assimilating the painful revelation that his own father had been poised to tell that scabby little detective everything in return for guaranteed entry to paradise in the hereafter.

  When Chang didn’t respond immediately, Tariq waited. Observed the pharmacist’s bloodshot eyes. The sweat stains around the yoke and the armpits of the borrowed tunic he wore were deepening, creeping ever outwards. Two days in the hole. He’d talk all right. He was clearly just finding careful words.

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell Ellis James about you,’ he said. ‘Obviously. I don’t know anything about the Boddlingtons. My relationship to Mr Khan is coincidental. He’s a good man, your dad …’

  Examining his perfect fingernails, Tariq raised an eyebrow. ‘You were going to tell the police about the O’Briens?’

  Chang nodded. ‘Your dad convinced me. In exchange for my old life back. I thought I’d get police protection or something, so I could come back to Manchester. I miss my—’

  ‘And my dad said he was going to blow the whistle on me.’

  Even in the dim light of the naked bulb that buzzed above them, Tariq could see Chang blushing at the awkward truth. ‘He’s worried about you. About your kids. I think he meant well.’

  In a soft but deadly voice, Tariq reminded the pharmacist that he didn’t need a stranger to pronounce on his father’s motives. It was time to step up the drama. With an almost imperceptible nod in the Fish Man’s direction, the sound of knives being sharpened ricocheted around the claustrophobic room once again.

  ‘I�
��m going to tell you how you can avoid being filleted and dressed with cucumber at the hand of the skilful Mr Smolensky, here,’ he said, ‘and served up on a man-sized platter for Sheila O’Brien’s delight and delectation. Shall I tell you?’

  The pharmacist’s face crumpled and tears started to leak onto his cheeks, drip-dropping perfectly round, sorrowful splashes onto the concrete floor. He nodded.

  Reaching forward, Tariq slapped him playfully on the shoulder, knowing he would flinch, thinking it was the end. ‘You’re going to come and work for us!’ He grinned, knowing his plan was pure genius. ‘It’s serendipity really. My business partner and I need to get in on the pharma side of things. We Boddlingtons normally play to slightly different strengths, you see. We’ve always brought our ecstasy and meth in from Holland and the Czech Republic. But you’re going to help us expand into a new field of home-made synthetic drugs.’ He pointed at his gaffer-taped guest with both index fingers as though he were selling him a top-drawer investment. Genuinely pleased with this little turn of events. ‘I’m going to save you a wasted, premature trip to the cemetery by offering you the job of company chemist on a part-time basis. I’ll even pay you generously, which, I heard on the grapevine, Paddy O’Brien never did. So, providing you keep your mouth shut and stay away from the boys in blue and that carbuncle in a bad wig from the tax office, you get to live and my dear old dad gets to keep his favourite pharmacist. What do you say?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ Chang asked. His eyes were dead now. Resigned to his fate of continuing bondage.

  ‘Of course you have a choice! Of course you do!’ Tariq said, standing. Patting his shoulder in a chummy fashion. ‘We’re not totally amoral.’ Giving the Fish Man the nod.

  Smolensky grabbed Chang by the hair, yanking his head to the side. He took one of his long, thin boning knives and pressed it against the pharmacist’s carotid artery.

  ‘You work for me or you die right now. Not one, but two choices. Which is it to be?’

  With that bit of business satisfactorily concluded, Tariq left the unlisted, anonymous-looking Boddlington factory with its hustle and bustle of trafficked workers and the grind of the conveyor belts feeding a production line for counterfeit goods. He walked through the potholed backstreets, sidestepping mud-splattered packaging from the wholesalers inside the old Victorian warehouses that squatted in the shadows of Strangeways’ gothic splendour. It was a place where all the shit nobody would ever need was bought and sold for a handsome profit. It was Tariq Khan’s spiritual homeland. He had swapped the spires of Oxford for the lesser, steepled peaks of HMP Manchester and its surrounding brick-strewn field of broken dreams.

  Bidding familiar faces a jaunty, ‘Assalamualaikum’ as he passed his favourite snack bar, he was careful to check he wasn’t followed back to his legitimate premises of T&J Trading. Inside his office, his father was sitting with his feet up on the leather sofa, reading a copy of Architectural Digest and sipping tea.

  ‘How long are you going to keep me a prisoner here, Tariq?’ the old man asked, looking at him pointedly over the tops of his glasses.

  Tariq squeezed some antibacterial gel onto his hands and rubbed it in a little too thoroughly. ‘You’re hardly being held prisoner. I’m just—’

  ‘Keeping your beady eye on me!’ His father threw the magazine onto a side table and swung his feet onto the floor. ‘Treating me like I’m a wayward child and a liability.’

  ‘Dad, you were on your way to tell the police everything. If I hadn’t been on the ball and arranged for the Fish Man the keep a lookout for you, I’d be on remand, awaiting trial now. And where would you be? Relying on people’s charity?’ He was raising his voice. He felt guilty for being disrespectful, but the tension and resentment that had been building over the past week felt like a vice clamped around him. Tightening, tightening, it had finally pushed vitriol up and out with some force. ‘Do you really think anyone in the community would have taken pity on you, Anjum and the kids if I’d gone down?’ He could feel his eyes threatening to water, unwilling to break eye contact with his father. ‘You would have been shunned. Untouchable. Have you never heard of guilt by association? Nobody would opt to be seen with the family of Boddlington Park’s most-wanted.’

  Finally, his father heaved himself off the sofa and walked stiffly to the window. He gazed out at the rooftops of the neglected buildings opposite from which buddleia sprouted optimistically. His posture curved submissively towards the view, rendering the old man some three or four inches shorter than he had been a decade ago. Tariq felt so protective of him; so angered and frustrated by him.

  ‘I already told you. I’d had a change of heart anyway.’ He sighed, placing a gnarled hand on his paunch. Shook his head. ‘I would never have gone through with it. I couldn’t betray my only boy.’

  ‘Anjum still might.’

  ‘I doubt it. Make amends with her, Tariq. And try to fix this broken life you’ve burdened yourself with. It’s not too late. You’re not safe, son. None of us are safe while you’re playing these dangerous games. You have enemies everywhere and you’ve forgotten what true friends look like.’

  Arranging some paperwork into a neat pile, Tariq considered Sheila O’Brien’s welcoming curves. What they had together … was that friendship? Or was she still his enemy, offering the white flag during a vulnerable truce? ‘I know what I’m doing. I know what’s best for my family.’

  ‘Do you? Oh really? What about Paddy O’Brien?’ the old man suddenly said, turning round and beaming at him, as though he’d had a revelatory thought.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was your arch-enemy, wasn’t he?’

  Did his father know about the clandestine affair with Paddy O’Brien’s widow? No! Surely not. It wasn’t possible.

  ‘Why are you bringing Paddy O’Brien up, Dad? What’s he got to do with my fall and redemption? He’s been dead for months.’

  ‘Ha! Shows how much you know.’

  His father looked suddenly smug. There was no other word for it.

  He took his phone out of his cardigan pocket and shuffled over to Tariq’s desk. Thumbed through several screens with an arthritic thumb. ‘How do you explain this, then, know-it-all?!’

  Tariq closed his eyes and shook his head. Opened them again to look closer at the photo his father was holding before him. Taken by an old man with shaky hands and a basic smartphone, it was a little blurred and grainy. The lighting was appalling. But it undoubtedly appeared to be a photo of Paddy O’Brien, sitting at a table in a café.

  Swallowing hard, Tariq felt light-headed. Ringing in his ears. A cold sweat spanned his back from one shoulder blade to another. His lips prickled. ‘When was that taken?’

  ‘Two weeks ago. In Bury.’

  ‘No. It’s not possible.’

  ‘I recognised him from the Manchester Evening News. The obituaries. I like those.’

  ‘Send that photo to me, Dad. Please. There’s somebody needs to see this straight away.’

  Tariq typed the briefest of messages to Sheila, knowing the photo said everything. It was the worst news he could ever deliver. But she needed to know. And they all needed to take cover.

  Chapter 38

  Gloria

  ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Gloria said, ignoring the insistent reverberations from her buzzing phone inside her handbag. She held Bob’s hand tightly, gazing up at his only slightly sagging jawline. In the twilight of the late afternoon, in the glow of the illuminations, her new boyfriend looked handsome. ‘Just downing tools like that! I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so footloose and fancy-free in all my born days. You’re a bad influence, you are!’

  Bob stopped short outside the spectral glow of the giant skull of Coral Island. The Blackpool Tower – a pocket-sized imitation Eiffel – glittered in the background, pointing to the same darkening celestial canopy that covered Blackpool’s better-heeled twin of Vegas.

  Clamping his hands onto her freezing cheeks
, he kissed her passionately on the mouth. She could taste the salt and vinegar with a fishy aftertaste on his lips.

  ‘Only the best for you, honey bunny. I wanted to be romantic and spontananous.’

  Gloria giggled coquettishly, holding her hand over her mouth as she smiled. Awash with lustful hormones that told her she was in love. Still mindful of the nagging, doubting Thomas in her head that was desperately trying to override the giddy passion with cold reason. Bob was a strange-coloured man who couldn’t pronounce, ‘spontaneous’. And this Golden Mile was little more than fools’ gold, rendered resplendent only by the gleam of a million bulbs, paid for by the council and tourist revenue.

  ‘A trip to Vegas might have done the job better.’ The words tripped out of her mouth gaily. Doubting Thomas had shouted his unwelcome truths above the buzz of electricity and pounding music coming from inside the arcades and bars.

  Bob’s already tight face set hard. ‘Sorry I’m a disappointment,’ he said, walking ahead.

  ‘No! No! I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry,’ Gloria shouted, trotting after him. She struggled against the flow of the crowds heading towards the Tower or else the North Pier, where the giant Ferris wheel beckoned like a blazing beacon. Above her, brightly coloured mermaids and sea turtles hanging from the lamp posts leered down at her, silently berating her for lacking backbone. Or were they screaming that she was shallow and unappreciative? Either way, she couldn’t win. ‘Come back, Bob!’

  The chill wind whipped in from the Irish Sea, blowing the smell of burnt onions, cheap burgers and candy floss towards her. Her eyes streamed. Her phone was still buzzing incessantly but she had made the decision to cut reality loose, just for one evening.

  ‘Wait!’

  Her new-found beau was swallowed up by the thronging stag-parties that spilled out of every venue onto the pavement.

  ‘No! Don’t leave me!’ Somewhere deep within her, Gloria was aware of a gnawing sensation that told her to get on the first coach, bus or train out of there, back to Manchester. Why had Bob acted so strangely in the maize maze? Where had he disappeared to so suddenly, abandoning her like that? Why had he been working on Sheila’s house? Why had he been stalking them? And had Lev sustained a near-lethal head injury at the hand of this man of few charms? The Doubting Thomas inside her wanted answers to these questions. But the part of her that was a desperately lonely middle-aged woman couldn’t bear the thought of losing the suitor who plugged the gaping chasm that her love-disinterest, the pastor, and before him, Leviticus’ father had left. ‘Get out of the way, you foul beasts!’ she yelled at the drunken young white men who lolled in her path, clutching plastic pint glasses full of lager, tilted at rakish angles.