The Cover Up Read online

‘Right, let’s get you a nice, strong cup of tea,’ Brenda said, rummaging in his trouser pocket and finding his keys.

  Paddy stumbled through the door, making a beeline for the old-fashioned sofa – a British Heart Foundation shop classic in threadbare wine jacquard. The cig burns were all his. As the institutional magnolia-painted walls spun around him, he took out his phone. Realised Brenda was otherwise occupied, clattering around in the kitchen – no doubt looking for something edible among the empties and the mouldy takeout leftovers. He dialled the number that appeared most frequently in his call log, apart from Katrina’s and Brenda’s.

  The familiar gravelly voice at the other end: ‘All right, Paddy? How’s it going?’

  ‘Don’t use my bleeding name!’ he said, checking over his shoulder. No sign of Brenda. The room continued to spin. He drowned out the profuse apologies with his reason for calling. ‘What have you found out? Anything?’

  There was a brief pause. Squeaking – perhaps the sound of a window being wound up on a vehicle. ‘That detective has been sat outside your old house day and night, from what I can tell,’ his oldest school friend and now paid ally said. ‘It’s hard to say without getting inside the property. I followed her into town this morning though. She took a big sack of something into a safety deposit facility.’

  ‘And? Have you seen her with any men?’

  There was another pause. The sound of a cigarette being lit, inhaled, exhaled. ‘The only one she knocks around with is Conky McFadden. I’ve seen them together in her car, coming out of her drive.’

  Paddy scratched at his four-day-old stubble, mulling over the news. Was it unreasonable that Sheila would have retained Conky’s services? No. And it was highly unlikely that she’d be shagging the big, ugly bastard. Not after she’d had Paddy O’Brien giving it to her for all those years like a proper man.

  ‘Try to get closer,’ he said. ‘Keep an eye on that cow, Gloria Bell, too. And I want to know where she lives. I’ve got a bone to pick with that lump of shit she calls a son.’

  ‘The black woman? She’s a crafty bastard, that one. Slippery, like. I can never keep tabs on her. I’ve tried following her, like you asked, but she always does a bloody Houdini.’

  ‘Try harder, then,’ Paddy said, thinking of Sheila and reaching into his jogging bottoms to grab his erect penis. He started to massage himself rhythmically. ‘That’s what I’m paying you for, isn’t it? I want information, not a damned sightseeing tour!’

  Ending the call, he withdrew his hand from his jogging bottoms and hurled the phone onto the sofa. Hauled himself to his feet, swaying slightly, watching the scuffed skirting board move upwards, upwards, downwards, rising and falling in waves like a heat shimmer created from alcohol fumes. Brenda.

  Weaving his way to the kitchen at the back of the terrace, he found his humble, willing shelf-stacker checking on the progress of a pie through the greasy oven door. He started to yank his jogging bottoms and underpants down, eyeing Brenda’s ample bottom as she knelt down.

  ‘Brenda, love,’ he said. ‘Grab the worktop. I’ve got something to give you.’

  Glancing over her shoulder with a watery smile on her unadorned lips, she stood up, and turning, caught sight of Paddy’s erection. Baulked.

  ‘Oh, Kenneth. I’ve got to be back in work in five minutes.’ She pointed to the clock. ‘I’m already running late. I’ll get told off by the manager.’

  But Paddy wasn’t interested in Brenda’s work concerns or tardiness. He wanted what he wanted.

  ‘Don’t come all coy with me,’ he said, advancing towards her. Grabbing her around her stout middle and pressing her large breasts against him. Grinding his penis into her stomach. ‘You love giving me the runaround, don’t you?’ He reached behind her and hitched up her frowsy skirt. Yanked at her knickers and stuck his finger inside her, enjoying the feel of her struggling against him.

  ‘I’m going to be late, Ken!’ She giggled nervously, clearly unsure as to whether she should be flattered or affronted. ‘We can do this properly later when you’ve slept the booze off. You’re hurting me! The drawer handle’s digging in my bum.’

  ‘I’m going to fuck you through to the other side of Christmas,’ he said. ‘Your arse will be hurting from more than a frigging handle when I’ve finished with you.’

  She tried to push him away. ‘No, Ken! I need the work!’

  ‘My chunky monkey.’ He could feel she was dry and unyielding. It didn’t matter. In fact, that was better. Made him feel like a triumphant Viking, claiming his spoils.

  The fingernails digging in his neck and the knee in his inner thigh, however, were unexpected.

  ‘No, Ken! No!’ Anger contorted Brenda’s smooth moon-face into something unfamiliar and unwelcome.

  When he brought his fist down on her defiant face, he was pleased to see that it knocked the rebellion and fire out of her immediately.

  He stood back to admire his work. completely unaware of Brenda’s teenaged son, Kyle, who should have been at school but who had bunked off straight after chemistry, following his mother to her boyfriend’s house. Now, stealthy, keen-eyed Kyle was lurking in the doorway, watching this domestic noir unfold.

  Deciding the thump was assault enough, Paddy put his deflating penis – unreliable thanks to the alcohol slopping around inside him – back inside his pants.

  Brenda cowered before him, sobbing, with hurt in her eyes that he found almost delicious. She pulled her skirt back down. ‘Your pie’s ready.’ She wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her supermarket fleece.

  Paddy said the words he knew would be balm for the bruise. They worked every time on women like her. ‘You know I love you, don’t you, Bren?’

  Chapter 5

  Youssuf

  ‘Ah. There you are! At last,’ Youssuf said in Urdu as his son Tariq marched towards him, wearing a concerned look on his face.

  Grabbing his walking stick optimistically, contemplating hoisting himself off the leather sofa that was positioned against the wall near Tariq’s office, Youssuf opened his mouth to ask again if he was ready to drive him over to the old people’s day centre.

  But Tariq had already disappeared into his office. And Youssuf’s words were swallowed by Mohammed, the book-keeper, who breezed past with his own demands, clutching at a sheaf of paperwork.

  ‘Tariq! What do you want me to do about this faulty order?’ Mohammed asked, pausing at the threshold to the office. Fingering the brass plate telling everyone that a Director occupied the sacred space beyond the door, with its big, oak desk and only slightly worn brown carpet tiles. ‘You know? For the other site.’

  Tariq reappeared in the doorway, thumbing his beard contemplatively. Youssuf waved frantically at him, hoping to catch his attention, but his son’s focus was reserved solely for Mohammed.

  ‘Get the supplier on the phone. I’ll speak to them.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper, though Youssuf could hear well enough. ‘I can’t sell poorly recorded porn films as the latest from Leo DiCaprio. They’ve got a cheek. This is Jonny’s contact, isn’t it?’ He tutted. Finally, Tariq glanced towards his father. Scratched at the beard, clearly distracted. Turned back to Mohammed. ‘Not out here.’ He held his hand up to Youssuf, fingers splayed. ‘Five minutes, Dad. I promise.’ Slammed the door to the office.

  Except Youssuf had been promised five minutes at least forty minutes ago and his bottom had gone numb.

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Youssuf muttered, rubbing his stomach that growled audibly, even beneath the layers of his tunic, cardigan and overcoat. He checked his watch, barely able to see the time clearly as his hand trembled with ill health and low blood sugar. It was almost midday. He’d spent too long with too many tablets in his system and nothing to eat beyond the toast that his daughter-in-law, Anjum, had given him for breakfast. The prospect of missing out on lunch at the day centre was a grim one. That stuck-up old idiot, Ibrahim, was sure to snaffle all the bhajis as was his wont if he didn’t get there soon. It wasn’t t
hat great a distance to walk. Not if he paced himself.

  With a grunt, he rose from the low sofa, donned his karakul hat and made his way downstairs. The staff of T&J Trading smiled benignly at him. Even the girl on the desk bade him a friendly, ‘Morning, Mr Khan!’ But nobody stopped him.

  Outside, the air was fresh. Too fresh. Youssuf had never been a fan of the Mancunian cold and damp that crept into his bones a little more with every year that passed. He buttoned his coat, glanced up at the offices on the first floor and made a disgruntled harrumphing noise.

  ‘Treats me like a child,’ he said, making his way towards Derby Street where he would quickly blend in with the hustle and bustle of men going about their business. Here, among the poorly parked vans and mess of discarded cardboard packaging that was whipped around on the stiff wind like abandoned kites gone rogue, he could be just another brown man in an area full of industrious brown men. No longer somebody’s ailing father or liability.

  ‘Youssuf!’ A voice called after him on the other side of the street.

  He looked beyond the black Volkswagen van that was hugging the kerb on the opposite side of the road, crawling along at a walking pace. Squinted, peering at the small old fellow in the smart navy suit. ‘Amir!’ Wheezed with laughter as his sprightly chum from the Asian elderly people’s day centre crossed the road with a spring in his septuagenarian step.

  They embraced.

  ‘I’ve escaped,’ Youssuf said, nudging Amir. ‘That boy of mine was driving me insane. Five times he promised me a lift to the centre; I gave up in the end.’

  ‘Ah, the price you pay for having a child who’s a big shot.’ When Amir spoke, his false teeth clacked slightly. He smoothed his thinning, Brylcreemed hair, making sure Youssuf saw the gold watch his own son had bought him for his last birthday. The same trick, every time they met. ‘I just dropped a packed lunch in to my boy. He didn’t give me the time of day either. Come on! We don’t need them.’

  Together, they ambled towards Cheetham Hill Road, engaging in a well-intentioned game of one-upmanship on their son’s behalves. Tariq was buying and selling this gadget from the Far East and that sought-after skincare from Paris. Making a packet, of course. Amir’s son, Rashid, was importing that specialist model of Mercedes from Germany and exporting this must-have toy to America. Sitting on a fortune, naturally. In this game of vicarious career-tennis, Youssuf knew he could volley for hours with Amir and happily neither win nor lose. Old men loved to boast about their sons. This much he acknowledged.

  As they neared the sprawling plot of the hand car wash on the corner of Derby Street and the deafening din of Cheetham Hill Road with its wholesalers and Asian fast-food takeouts and kebab shops, Amir stopped suddenly and looked askance at the black Volkswagen van.

  ‘Are we being followed?’ he said, tugging at Youssuf’s sleeve.

  Youssuf leaned on his stick, panting from the exertion of having walked some two hundred metres in sandals. ‘What am I looking at, here?’

  ‘The black man in the van.’ Amir pointed, though Youssuf instinctively pulled his friend’s arm down. ‘Is he staring at you?’

  ‘Keep walking,’ Youssuf said, almost tripping as he sped up. He’d seen enough. The driver of the van had indeed locked eyes with him. He had dreadlocks, untidily stuffed beneath a knitted hat of some description. Though Youssuf had never seen the fellow before, the hairs on his arms were standing to attention and his bladder was throbbing as if in protest. ‘If he’s following us, he’ll have to turn onto Cheetham Hill Road. Not so easy with all those buses.’

  ‘Let’s cut through the car wash,’ Amir suggested. There was excitement in his voice as if this was some big adventure.

  But Youssuf knew the line of business Tariq was actually in – beneath the shining entrepreneur-of-the-year veneer. And the dreadlocked stranger’s face didn’t fit round here, in the tight-knit business district that nestled in the long shadows cast by Strangeways Prison.

  They shuffled onto the forecourt of the car wash. Youssuf stole a glance over his shoulder. All thoughts of steaming hot bhajis and of bagsying the massage chair in the day centre were gone. The driver was speaking on a phone. Nodding. But eyes still on them.

  ‘Go through the car wash bit itself,’ he told Amir. ‘He’ll lose sight of us in there. We’ll just sidle past the cleaners.’

  But the van’s idling engine thrummed swiftly into overdrive. With squealing tyres, it hung a sharp right, bouncing onto the forecourt of the car wash, coming to an abrupt halt only inches from Youssuf and Amir. They were hemmed in between the unforgiving front end of the van and the rear of a large saloon in front, awaiting its turn beneath the spray.

  The dreadlocked driver hopped out, a rash of acne scarring across his forehead and cheeks.

  ‘Ya-allah, what’s going on?’ Amir cried. ‘Help!’

  Youssuf had swung around to face his assailant and was now gripping his walking stick like a baton. Ignoring the pains in his chest and the crippling icy pangs of fear that prodded his tired, old body. Trying to gauge the situation.

  ‘Get in the fucking van, granddad,’ the driver said in an accent that Youssuf wasn’t immediately familiar with. The man slid the side door open to reveal a cargo hold that was empty, save for a burly white man with shorn fair hair, crouched in the shadows. ‘Don’t give us no trouble and you won’t come to no harm.’ Birmingham. Maybe that was the sing-song accent. Same as his cousin in Solihull.

  Chatting animatedly in some central Asian dialect behind him, Youssuf spotted the car cleaners in his peripheral vision. Would they step up to defend two defenceless Pakistani old codgers? But as the driver grabbed at Youssuf’s shoulder, he realised that, just for once, he didn’t want young men leaping to his aid, emasculating him.

  He trod heavily on the driver’s trainer-clad foot, grinding the man’s toes beneath the sole of his unyielding chunky leather sandal. Somehow shook loose from his grip. Brought the walking stick down on his forearm with a satisfying crack.

  ‘Ow, you fucking old psycho!’ he yelled, clutching at his arm. ‘Who do you think you are? Paki Rambo? Sort this bastard out, Trev!’

  Youssuf raised his stick, preparing to hit him again, when the giant white man clambered out of the van.

  ‘Oi! You can pack that in,’ Trev said, trying to wrench the stick from Youssuf’s determined grasp. ‘Don’t play no hero with us. Get in the fucking van, old man.’ His voice was gruff but tinged with amusement.

  ‘You think I’m some kind of joke?’ Youssuf shouted, steadfastly clinging to the stick. The incandescent fury that burned within him gave him courage. He aimed another hefty kick, this time at Trev’s private parts. Missed. Watched with irritation as his sandal flew off, skittering like a frightened rat beneath the van.

  Suddenly Youssuf gasped as an icy deluge of water hit the side of his head, knocking his hat off. The jet bypassed him, becoming stronger and more directional as two of the car cleaners advanced towards Dreadlocks and Trev, training the spray on them. Shouting in pidgin English that these interlopers should get the hell off their forecourt.

  Amir grasped at Youssuf’s arm, trying to drag him out from between the vehicles and away from the claustrophobic jet-wash enclosure.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he said in Urdu.

  Finding himself rooted to the spot, Youssuf was only dimly aware that the sock that covered his one bare foot was now ringing wet.

  ‘Come on!’ Amir yelled.

  Youssuf snatched up his hat but still couldn’t move. Amir let go of his coat, slowly starting to back away from the scene.

  Suddenly, Youssuf was standing alone, caught in the middle of a fight of fists and high-intensity hoses between out-of-towners, hell-bent on kidnap, and outraged Uzbeks. But the hoses started to fail. The flow of water slowed. Soon, there was nothing more than a trickle dribbling from the ends. The car-cleaners looked quizzically at their equipment, shouting to the kiosk in which their boss lurked. When the pressure didn’t return, t
hey too started to retreat in haste.

  ‘Get Khan, and let’s go!’ shouted Dreadlocks.

  Paralysed, feeling the adrenalin drain away rapidly from his ailing body as though someone had pulled a plug in his bunioned feet, Youssuf was aware of being grabbed from behind. Strong-armed towards the open door of the van. He shouted for help. He prayed to God that he might be saved. He thought of Tariq and his grandchildren, little Shazia and Zahid, whom he might never see again.

  ‘No! No! I’m not getting in!’ he cried, kicking against the side of the van, though the man-mountain hoisted him aloft like a doll.

  ‘Put my father down!’ A familiar voice sliced through the pandemonium. Tariq.

  To his right, Youssuf caught sight of his son’s henchman, Asaf Smolensky, sprinting towards the kidnapping Midlanders. Clad in his usual Hassidic garb of a full-length black overcoat and an oversized felt Homburg hat, his ringletted sidelocks jiggling atop his shoulders, it was an unexpected sight to see him move with the pace of a panther. He was wielding a machete.

  Dreadlocks baulked. ‘Shit! It’s the Fish Man. Leg it, Trev!’

  Trev released Youssuf from his grip instantly, leaving him to stagger back against the enclosure’s damp walls.

  ‘I’m gonna kill you!’ Tariq shouted, throwing himself onto the man-mountain.

  As Dreadlocks scrambled into the van to escape the blade of a Fish Man with human harvest on his mind, Youssuf watched Trev square up to his only son. The difference in height between them was at least ten inches. Tariq’s slender build didn’t help. It was like David facing down Goliath.

  ‘I’d like to see you try,’ Trev said, swinging a punch at Tariq.

  But Tariq was quick on his feet and deft with his hands. Years of aikido and judo lessons as a youth had stood him in good stead. Within three easy moves, he had thrown his outsized opponent to the ground and sat astride him now, clutching the man-mountain’s bull neck with the manicured hand of a gentleman.

  Overwhelmed by a fresh surge of outrage, Youssuf whacked at his felled attacker’s legs with his walking stick, hurling insults at him in Urdu.