The Cover Up Read online

  ‘You can’t leave!’ Gloria yelled, as Lev carried the heavy case to the cab. She followed him outside in her bare feet. The rain had started to fall and the dried blood washed into the fabric of her dress like a stain of guilt.

  ‘I can and I will. I’ve had it up to here …’ – he poked the top of his forehead – ‘… with the bullshit.’ He walked back inside to retrieve Jay in his car seat and all the bulky regalia that was essential to life with a toddler.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She reached out to touch Jay’s cheek but he swung the car seat out of reach.

  ‘Somewhere safe. Somewhere we can’t be found. I’m starting again, Mam.’ He looked down to see her tugging at his forearm. ‘Let us go.’

  As he slammed the car door, he glanced at his rain-soaked, bloodstained mother, shivering in her stockinged feet. Felt like a weight was lifting and that somewhere, the sun was coming out.

  ‘You can’t take my grandson away like this.’ The ferocity in her voice cut through the closed windows of the car.

  ‘Get going,’ Lev told the taxi driver.

  ‘I’ll find you! I mean it!’

  In answer, Lev shook his head and waved dismissively. The taxi pulled away, leaving Gloria Bell standing alone in the middle of the quiet, suburban street, quoting a Bible passage at the top of her voice.

  Chapter 42

  Sheila

  ‘You ready for this?’ Sheila asked Gloria.

  ‘I’ve got nothing left other than what I started with – me, you and the church. What have I got to lose?’ Gloria’s smile was one of wistful resignation.

  Sheila nodded sympathetically. ‘You got everything?’

  Gloria patted the tartan shopping trolley that was wedged in the rear footwell of the Mercedes GLE, driven by a twitchy, overexcited Degsy. ‘Shotgun. Spare cartridges. Baseball bats and a handy spade that I found in the garden shed. Oh, and some nasty-looking aphid killer. I’m sure a dash of that in the eyes won’t be very pleasant.’

  Sheila nodded, staring at the plaster on her business partner’s head. An incongruous fawn colour against mid-brown skin. She felt anger surge through her, enlivening her sluggish, bloated, newly pregnant body like a cheeky vodka and tonic. ‘Great. Good. Let’s do this.’

  Degsy pulled up outside the office block in Spinningfields where Sheila had only recently viewed space to let for their own enterprise.

  ‘Stay there,’ she told the scabby-faced arse-clown, using the same tone as she’d use on a dog. Degsy was a liability, but with Lev gone, what choice had she had? Not Conky, that was for sure. Conky was too busy getting his thyroid checked at the sodding doctor’s.

  ‘No worries, Mrs O’B,’ Degsy said. He produced a fake disabled badge and slapped it onto the dash. ‘We’re good all day, now.’

  ‘Keep the engine running. And if Conky calls, you don’t know where I am.’

  Degsy failed to make eye contact with her, smiling unconvincingly.

  ‘I mean it, Degsy. Remember who pays your bloody wages. And it’s not Conky.’

  Together, she and Gloria stood before the entrance to the refurbished block, staring up at its many floors. Like a northern Tower of Babel, it stretched towards the brooding, bruised skies, housing inhabitants who spoke in the languages of accountancy, advertising, marketing and law but who all understood each other and their corporate world perfectly. There, at the very top, she knew Nigel Bancroft lurked.

  ‘Feeling biblical, Gloria?’

  At her side, Gloria nodded. ‘Apocalyptically so, Sheila. The best trick Satan ever did was making the world think he did not exist.’

  ‘New Testament?’ Sheila asked.

  Gloria shook her head and started to walk forwards, wheeling her shopping trolley. ‘The Usual Suspects, if memory serves.’

  The lift ascended, carrying four other people with them to the upper levels. Smartly dressed men in their fifties, by the looks, smelling of that damned aftershave that Paddy had worn; a ubiquitous stink in every smart bar and restaurant in Cheshire, since the 200-pound price tag spelled success. And there was a young lad – perhaps an office junior – with great hair that the older men could probably only remember wistfully, wearing a cheap suit and plastic shoes. Sheila wished they’d bugger off. In silence, she played through the mental footage of her past twenty-four hours.

  Meeting Katrina at Jodrell Bank. Being certain that she was about to pull a gun on her. And it had turned out to be nothing more sinister than Rosary beads.

  ‘I’m a Bride of Christ,’ Katrina had said, thrusting Jesus into her face. ‘Why would I lie to you about the death of my very own kid brother? Good Lord, Sheila. You’ve lost all perspective since he died. You’re seeing white and calling it black. My faith is as solid as that big dish.’ She had pointed up at the telescope, pointing to the heavens. ‘Do you really think I’d risk my place in heaven and the purity of my soul to fudge Paddy’s death? To what ends? Have I tried to seize O’Brien power? No! Of course not. I’m a nun! A nun, Sheila. And you’re mad to think there’s some kind of dodgy cover up going on! Get some flipping bereavement counselling, woman! And get to church! When was the last time you confessed?’

  There had been nothing but sincerity and grief etched into Katrina’s face. Sister Benedicta had seemed to be telling the truth. Conky had insisted that the blurry photo of Paddy was spurious at best. Perhaps he’d been right. Conky surely wouldn’t lie. Tariq had simply got it wrong. Hearsay from his father – an old, ailing man in his dotage who had never met Paddy even once in person.

  As the men stepped out on the tenth floor, she and Gloria found themselves alone in the lift.

  ‘You sure you’re ready for this?’ she asked.

  Gloria was admiring her pure silk white dress in the mirror like an avenging angel, checking she looked the part for this show-down. She turned to Sheila, her eyes gleaming with deadly intent. ‘My son’s left me. I might never see my grandson again. My boyfriend tried to kill me. The pastor doesn’t love me. I’ve got killer PMT. Three of those things are down to Bancroft. He’s going to wish he’d never been born.’

  The lift doors opened at the top. It was easy for two respectable-looking, middle aged women to gain access to Bancroft’s business premises. But at the reception desk, they were met with blank stares from the receptionist, who merely batted her false eyelashes at them and chewed gum noisily.

  ‘You got an appointment?’ she asked. Boredom freezing her youthful, over-made-up features into a mask of nonchalance. She smelled of market-stall perfume.

  In her mind’s eye, Sheila had fantasised about going in there, all guns blazing. But the message she wanted to deliver would be ineffective if she couldn’t even get past the gatekeeper. She needed to get into Bancroft’s inner sanctum. Had to exercise measured self-control where Paddy never had.

  ‘Not exactly. But he’ll see me.’

  The idiot girl was blinking too much, looking incredulously at Gloria’s shopping trolley. ‘Oh yeah? Mr Bancroft doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.’

  ‘He’ll want to see me.’ She wanted to slap the girl into submission. Felt she was about to cry inexplicably. Hormones working overtime. Sheila touched her abdomen.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Tell him Sheila O’Brien has come to discuss terms with him. And I have to see him now. Right this minute. Okay, love?’

  At her side, she sensed Gloria, bristling. ‘Has nobody ever told you chewing gum is a foul habit, young lady? Show your elders some respect!’

  The girl’s face fell. She rolled her eyes, picking up the phone. Speaking, presumably to Bancroft at the other end. Staring at the two women. Nodding. Every second seemed to pass with slavish slowness. Then a nod.

  This was it. Squeezing Gloria’s hand, Sheila offered a prayer to a God she wasn’t sure about that they would triumph; that the baby growing inside her would be safe; that she would prove to Conky and all her male acolytes with their swinging-dick routines and testosterone-fuelled
shows of supremacy that she and she alone ruled now.

  ‘Mr Bancroft says he’s busy,’ the receptionist said. Bat, bat, bat with those cheap showgirl’s eyelashes. Superdrug’s best.

  Caustic ire – the lethal kind that only pregnant women and the PMT-afflicted will ever know – swirled within Sheila, burning away all her self-disciplined resolve. Bugger this for a game of soldiers.

  Pulling her handgun, she leaned over the reception desk and grabbed the girl by her make-up-stained collar. Pressed the gun to her screaming head. ‘Take me to his office now, cunt.’

  Euphoria flushed warm through every cell in her body. At her side, Gloria had withdrawn her baseball bat from her tartan chariot of fire and was smashing up everything that came within reach. Holes in partition walls. Shattering the glass of office interior windows.

  ‘Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it!’ Gloria yelled.

  When Bancroft emerged from his office, clearly nonplussed, Gloria whipped out her shotgun, advancing before Sheila could even say a word.

  ‘You!’ She poked the shotgun into his belly; the baseball bat pressed against his forehead. The musculature on her forearms was that of an athlete. ‘You had Hank lure me into lasciviousness and then try to murder me, you scoundrel!’

  Sheila was being upstaged. Delivering a blow to the receptionist’s shoulder with the stock of her gun, she forced her down onto the floor and waved her weapon at the office staff.

  ‘Get on the floor! Hands above your head where I can see them. Any of you pricks calls the police, and I’ll put a bullet in every last motherfucking one of you!’ Turned out, Pulp Friction was great fun after all. Sheila had never felt so alive. She pocketed the gun. Snatched the baseball bat from Gloria, striking Bancroft on the collarbone until he backed inside his office.

  ‘Not enough you should try to rob my business,’ Sheila screamed, feeling the burn in her throat. ‘But you had to grass. I’ve had the coppers and the tax man on my back, getting information they could only have got from someone who’s in the know.’ She smashed a framed portrait of Bancroft that hung on the wall above his glass-topped desk. Bancroft pressed his hands to his ears. Eyes clamped shut. ‘And there I was, thinking somebody in my firm had opened their gob!’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said, shaking his head. Not so brave, now that he wasn’t flanked by his two beefcakes.

  ‘You plant one of your arse-kissing lackeys in my cannabis farm? He’s feeding information to you and you’re passing it onto that wanker, Ellis James? Is that it?’ Pop. The glass top on the desk shattered beautifully with an almighty blow from the baseball bat. Pain ricocheted up her arms with the force, but she barely registered the ache. ‘And you blow up my damned builders’ merchants, nearly killing me and her!’ Her ears rang as Gloria fired two shots – one into a cabinet, whose glazed doors fell to the ground in shards like a cloudburst in miniature; one into the maple board table that ran the width of the far end of the office. ‘And then, you send some fat twonk to pump my business partner, in more ways than one!’

  ‘What the—?’ Bancroft was on his knees. Staring up at her now with questioning eyes. Two-faced shite was full of it. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, you crazy bitch.’

  ‘Hank. Hank the bloody Wank, trying to install fibre-optic spying equipment into my bleeding brickwork, so he could earwig on what me and Conky say in my frigging bedroom. Cheeky bastard!’

  At her back, she could hear Gloria reloading her shotgun with fresh cartridges. Clicking the barrels into place. Some commotion outside, though, above the petrified din from the prone staff. Security, perhaps? Police? Surely not. They had to get out of there. Shit. Had to get back to Degsy.

  But Gloria had marched forward, gun raised and pointed at Bancroft’s head. ‘Nobody makes Gloria Bell look like a fool and gets away with it.’

  ‘No, Gloria. We’ve gotta go!’

  Too late. With a deafening boom, the shotgun went off. Bancroft dropped to the floor, writhing for some seconds, then still. All that was left of his beautifully styled hair was a smoking patch of florid, bleeding scalp. Was he dead?

  Backing away from the Birmingham crime boss, Sheila turned to run. They’d gone too far, but perhaps they could get away. That blissful adrenalin had been replaced by a transfusion of pure cortisol and unfettered dread. She could barely see. Panicked tears streamed freely

  ‘Freeze!’ Men’s voices. Shouting at her. ‘You’re under citizens’ arrest!’

  Sheila blinked away the tears to see two security guards. Unarmed. Chancing their luck, clearly, because Sheila and Gloria were mere women. The relief was intense and instant.

  ‘Kiss my arse!’ Sheila said, drawing her handgun and waving it at them.

  Their flushed faces soon drained of colour. They dropped to the floor, lacing their hands together above their heads.

  Without turning to Gloria, she yelled. ‘Let’s go!’

  Stomping through that foyer, she felt triumphant, waving the gun at anyone who dared look at her. She was better than Paddy. She had done all this without the need for Conky. Creating a minimal scene by gangsters’ standards, she had delivered the message that Sheila O’Brien was not to be trifled with.

  Gloria had pressed for the lift but it was already coming up, up, up.

  ‘Nearly home and dry,’ she said, patting Sheila on the back with the hand that wasn’t still clutching the shotgun.

  Sheila nodded. Grinning. Breathing too fast. Exhilarated.

  ‘Bancroft picked on the wrong one.’

  ‘Do you think I killed him?’

  Shrugging, she said, ‘Do you care?’

  She moved to the window – a cursory glance at the world below to check that Degsy was still parked on the street. Except there were two Tactical Aid Unit vans parked out front. Two coppers had hauled Degsy over the bonnet of the car and were patting him down. A guy who looked more like military than a cop pointed a long-range rifle at his head. Could someone have feasibly sneaked a call to the police?

  ‘We’ve got company,’ Sheila said.

  The lift kept coming, not stopping at any of the other floors.

  ‘They’re in the lift. Cob your weapons,’ she said, throwing her gun out of reach to the far side of a pot plant.

  Gloria followed suit just as the lift doors parted with a ding. Sheila’s legs gave way as six, maybe seven armed-response police emerged. A phalanx of black Kevlar, with heavy artillery trained on the two of them.

  ‘Hands in the air!’

  Shit.

  Chapter 43

  Tariq, then Conky.

  Tariq was struggling to get to sleep on the sofa bed in the guest room. He could feel the springs digging into his hips. The wadding in the mattress felt uncomfortable. But still, he consoled himself, his father was back, Anjum had not yet gone to the police with what she thought she knew about the Boddlingtons and he had acquired a cook to manufacture pharmaceutical drugs.

  Shifting around so that he was lying on his back, he looked up at the ceiling. Imagined Sheila O’Brien on top of him, riding away with a look of pure delight on her face; her tonged hair bouncing up and down on top of her small, jiggling breasts. He reached into his shorts and felt his erection. Started to massage his penis, feeling the tension leech out of him. Conky himself had said his father’s photo of Paddy O’Brien was nothing but a coincidence, captured by the shaky hand of an old man. He had a willing lover who made him feel young again; made him forget that his wife had filed for divorce and that his business partner had been sucked into the quicksand of depression.

  Things were looking up. Sliding his pants down hurriedly, he lay on his side, tugging away, thinking of Sheila’s pert mouth around his manhood. He needed to come. Needed to lose himself in a moment of self-indulgence. Except there was a loud whumph noise downstairs.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he muttered to himself.

  He could sm
ell smoke and petrol. Couldn’t he? No! No! Don’t be daft. Perhaps it was his overwrought imagination. It had been a hell of a few months, let alone weeks.

  Continuing to masturbate, he put the strange noise out of his mind. The alarm certainly hadn’t gone off, so perhaps it was just movement in the old house’s joists as they contracted with cold. The heating had gone off an hour ago. It made sense.

  Feeling his mojo return in a warm flush of pleasure, he pictured lovely Sheila yet again. Wished she had answered her phone earlier. Couldn’t wait to arrange a new rendezvous so he could hold her in his arms.

  But in the next room, the high-pitched wail that could only belong to his youngest, Zahid, struck up, cooling his ardour in an instant. He waited in the dark to see if the child would settle. The tell-tale padding of small feet on the landing and wracking sobs told him something was amiss. A temperature? A bad dream? Perhaps he would go to the master bedroom to rouse Anjum.

  ‘Daddy!’ The door to the guest room crashed open. There was Zahid in his Disney pyjamas, clutching his teddy. ‘I heard a noise. It smells funny. I’m scared.’

  The choking stench of smoke and petrol billowed invisibly into the room. Tariq yanked up his pants, all thoughts of escaping his life for a moment gone.

  Fire. Was it possible?

  ‘Let’s go and wake Mummy, Zahid. I want you to stay with her until I’ve worked out what’s going on.’

  On the landing, he could hear the crackling of flames downstairs. Could see the glow even from here on the first-floor landing.

  ‘Anjum! Wake up! We’re on fire.’ Ushering his son into Anjum’s room, he snatched his daughter Shazia out of bed, carrying her sleeping form to his wife, though she clung to him like a baby koala and wouldn’t initially let go.

  ‘Fire?’ Anjum said, throwing the duvet back in haste. ‘Call 999!’ She started to cough as the smoke bit. The children were howling, clearly terrified at a commotion they didn’t fully understand. ‘Get your dad. We’ve got to get out. I’ll carry the kids downstairs.’