Born Bad: A gritty gangster thriller with a darkly funny heart

‘Not so hard, sugar,’ he said to the girl on her knees beneath the desk. ‘Flick your tongue around it while you suck. Okay?’

The blonde paused and looked up at him quizzically. Smudged eyeliner ringing her eyes looked like it had been applied days ago and never washed off or replenished. Oh well. She had a nice mouth and a sweet face and he had a hard-on the size of Texas. All was well.

‘You not like?’ she asked. Said something in Polish or Estonian or whatever the hell language she spoke. She smiled uncertainly. Cupped her small breasts. ‘You want I play?’

Jonny shook his head, batting the uninvited mental images of Sandra that encroached on the fantasy. Get out of my head, for God’s sake. Sandra, with her orange face and prune mouth. The half-starved and gorgeous Mrs Margulies – mother of his legitimate children but not sexy like this tasty little Eastern European tart.

‘No love. You’re fine.’ He set down his bagel and cupped her face in buttery hands so that she looked up at him. He mimed the technique he wanted her to adopt.

‘You want more lick. Yes?’

He nodded. ‘That’s right, love.’

The girl smiled. Her teeth were clean. He liked that. The dentist looked after all the girls’ dental hygiene well. He reached down and stroked her breasts. Felt his erection grow harder still. Wanted to put it inside her tight little pussy. He pulled her up towards him, not caring if anyone from the upper floors of the prison could see him. He just wanted to screw this girl right now.

‘Sixteen?’

‘I?’ She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sixteen. Yes.’ She rubbed her breasts on his face. Soft pink nipples brushing his stubble. Not a single blemish on her young, pale flesh. She was far younger than his daughter – but she wasn’t his daughter.

Reaching in her thong, he could feel her, soft and wet. Hot, where his finger slid inside. Two ties at the side came loose easily. She climbed onto him and started to ride him – inexpertly, but what the hell?! This was a glorious start to the day. Until …

The knock at the door was insistent.

‘Jonny!’ came a man’s voice on the other side. ‘The tax inspector is back.’ Strongly accented, pronouncing inspector as inspecter, betraying his Jerusalem origins.

Pushing the girl off his lap, Jonny’s desire cooled immediately.

‘Come in, Asaf, for Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, zipping his deflating penis into his chinos. He waved a hand at the girl. ‘Get dressed! Anyone asks, you were asking directions to TK Maxx.’

The girl looked at him blankly until he threw her clothes at her in a bundle.

‘Ah, dress. Yes.’ Scrambling to cover herself, she had at least picked up on the urgency in his voice.

The office felt smaller with the tall figure of Asaf Smolensky standing in it. Clad in his usual black double-breasted suit with its old-fashioned overdone padding to the shoulders. The thin, white strands of his ritual tassels – tzitzits – hanging outside his trousers. Scuffed shoes and a stained waistcoat juxtaposed against the immaculate cropped hair and ringletted sidelocks of the Hassids. He smelled of chopped and fried fish. He looked like he meant business.

‘Is it that tax bird again?’ Jonny asked him, feeling the blood drain from his face faster than it had from his dick. His pulse was racing. Suddenly, the half-eaten bagel in his stomach felt like lead. His brain whirred into overdrive, checking through the list of changes he and Tariq had instigated last time the stupid bitch had come calling, demanding to snoop around. They had fobbed her off, but only temporarily.

Smolensky nodded. Perched on the edge of the oversized desk, wearing a grim expression.

‘Yes. Ruth Darley. She’s come with two assistants today and some official-looking paperwork. HMRC wants your blood, Jonny.’ He toyed with his unruly beard, a thick eyebrow raised archly.

‘Tariq know?’

‘He’s at Sefton Street.’

‘I’ll call him.’ Pulling his mobile from his trouser pocket, Jonny inclined his head towards the young prostitute.

‘Do us a favour. Get Lev to get her away from here without anyone seeing. And make yourself scarce.’

Asaf stood tall and grabbed the girl by her upper arm. Said something to her in an Eastern European language that Jonny didn’t understand. The girl looked afraid, clutching her shoulder bag close as Asaf steered her through a second door in the office which led to the stone stairwell at the back of the building.

Locking both doors shut, Jonny dialled Tariq’s number. Sweat breaking out on his top lip. Tariq answered on the fourth ring.

‘What’s up, bro?’ Tariq asked. The chatter of workers was audible in the background, along with the whirring and clanking of a production line.

‘Darley’s back.’

Tense silence hung between them for too many moments.

‘I see,’ Tariq said. ‘Do you want me to come over?’

Jonny peered out of the window to the car park immediately below, avoiding looking at Strangeways, now, for fear that he might somehow jinx his precarious freedom. There were two cars he didn’t recognise parked out front, next to his own Maserati. A silver Toyota and a black Mondeo. Tax man’s cars. He willed his hand to stop shaking. Gripped the phone harder.

‘No, you’re alright. I’ve got it covered. If they’ve got eyes on the street and spot you coming out of there, we’re totally buggered. Stay put. I’ll call when they’re gone.’

His secretary’s instantly recognisable rat-a-tat-tat on the door said it was time to put on the grand performance.

Clad in a frumpy blue suit with her banana legs and fat ankles stuffed into cheap shoes, Darley was already strutting through the warehouse, examining the stock. Jonny willed himself to smile before she had even turned around to face him, lest he make it too obvious that he’d like Asaf to bone her like a haddock with his sharpest knife. In his peripheral vision, he clocked her minions – two men: one who looked about ready to retire and the other who didn’t look more than twenty. They were speaking to the workers, who were bundling the cheap jewellery into even cheaper packaging.

‘Ms Darley,’ Jonny said, adopting his magnanimous and friendly voice that he used for PTA meetings. ‘What a pleasure to see you again.’

Darley turned on her heel, a grim expression on her face that implied the pleasure was not mutual. ‘Mr Margulies.’ She held out her right hand and treated him to the iron handshake of a woman who broke balls for a living. In her left hand, she clutched an oversized accountant’s briefcase. ‘I’m here to search your premises. Please make all your accounts and employee records available.’

Jonny felt like his bowels were somehow ingesting themselves. The tell-tale sensation of needing the toilet, fast. But he wouldn’t show this bitch any fear. The authorities were like dogs; the moment they caught a whiff of guilt, they knew they had you. Tariq was relying on him. Both of their families depended on his giving a convincing performance. He put one foot in front of another and showed her to an office that looked onto the main factory floor through a large plate-glass internal window.

‘You can work in here,’ he said politely, switching on the flick-flickering strip lighting and pulling out an uncomfortable-looking brown plastic chair. It was cold in there. The thin carpet tiles were peeling upwards, revealing perished rubber underneath. Let the tax bastards suffer.

‘Where is Mr Khan?’ she asked, touching her no-nonsense brown bob. It appeared rigid and moved only slightly.

‘Family emergency. He’s been called away.’

Darley looked over her purple plastic-framed glasses, fixing him with hard hazel eyes. ‘Convenient.’

Shrugging, he held his palms aloft in a gesture of honesty.

‘Am I my business partner’s keeper?’

Jonny wished he could run away. Give it all up. Hide on a beach in Israel or South America or even crappy Marbella would do right now. Silently, he cursed Tariq for having chosen that morning, of all mornings, to visit their other place, leaving him to sort out this gargantuan shit-storm on his own.

As the day wore on, Jonny felt his spirit ebbing away, answering intrusive questions and observing his book-keeper, old Mohammed, delivering box after box of files to the temporary hub of HMRC investigation.

Knocking timorously on the door, he popped his head in to see Ruth Darley busily going through a sheaf of invoices with a determined look on her face. Her underlings flanked her, like Padawans studying beneath some great Jedi. Jonny looked at his watch pointedly.

‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘Would you like my secretary to bring you and your colleagues a coffee?’

Darley looked at him and slid her glasses further up her nose. Glanced at Jonny’s wrist. ‘I don’t need a Breitling watch to tell me what time it is, Mr Margulies.’ She offered him a grimace that was an approximation of a smile. ‘We’ll be leaving in ten minutes, but we’ll be back tomorrow.’

Jonny folded his arms. Imagined for a second that he could hear the inmates inside Strangeways jeering at him from behind their barred windows.

‘Back? Oh. You haven’t seen everything you need today? I thought Janice had given you access to the full monty. We’ve got nothing to hide here, you know.’

Ruth Darley stood and held a separate sheaf of invoices aloft. Invoices written in Chinese, by the looks of it. At that moment, a sweat broke out on Jonny’s top lip and he wished, however improbably, that he knew the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese. Had the invoices somehow got mixed up? Maureen would surely never allow that to happen.

‘I have found anomalies, Mr Margulies.’ Her smile was genuine that time.

Shit. Those were the last words he had wanted to hear.

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