The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018

The Cover Up

MARNIE RICHES

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Marnie Riches 2018

Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008203962

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008203979

Version: 2017-10-06

Praise for Marnie Riches:

‘Gritty and gripping’ Kimberley Chambers

‘A leading light in the field of Mancunian noir’ Guardian

‘Drags you down the mean streets of Manchester with verve and authenticity. You can almost smell the blood and rain’ Simon Toyne

‘Riches’ storytelling is blistering, vivid and super-pacy. It’s also very funny, even at its darkest’ Helen Cadbury

‘Fast-paced, enthralling and heartrending; I couldn’t put it down’ C. L. Taylor

‘A strong, edgy debut that deserves to do well’ Clare Mackintosh

‘Fast, furious, fantastic … One killer thriller!’ Mark Edwards

What the reviewers said:

‘Absolutely brilliant, kept me on my toes from the start to the final page!’

‘A great gritty story. Plenty of drama with the Manchester underworld!’

‘Breathtakingly brilliant’

‘More please – and soon!’

‘Truly outstanding’

‘An intricate, fast-paced and utterly compelling thriller’

Dedication

For my grandparents,

Margaret, Ida and Harry:

three of Manchester’s finest.

Though they’re gone, I owe my fat knees and terrific boobies to Margaret – a beautiful woman and the kindest of souls, who knew how to rock a leopard-skin dress. I owe my love of a good rummage for a bargain to Ida, the inimitable Jumble Queen of Manchester whose carbon footprint in her long, long lifetime was lightly trodden. I owe my love of cars to Harry, who drove a black cab by night and a burgundy Wolseley by day – potless, maybe, but never less than stylish. They were all terrible cooks but I loved them for other reasons.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Marnie Riches

What the Reviewers Said

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Sheila

Turns out, marking your territory wasn’t the sole preserve of spraying tom cats with big balls. Sheila smiled at the thought as she prowled around the basement bar of M1 House in her Louboutins.

‘I’d like you to rearrange the seating down here,’ she told Frank, describing the space in the bowels of the super-club with a wave of her arm. Her Tiffany bangles jangled merrily, audible above the thub, thub, thub of the bass from upstairs, as the DJ and sound engineers performed the soundcheck ahead of an evening of revelry.

Frank was nodding like one of those toy dogs you got in the rear window of crappy cars. Jumpy, as usual. Her brother-in-law had never been anything but.

‘Yeah. Yeah, Sheila, love. Mint. But what do you mean?’

‘Get one of the staff to move the furniture, Frank. Set up single tables and two chairs.’ Visualising how the space would ideally work in this debut foray into the world of speed-dating, Sheila stalked over to one of the tables in the subterranean bar, recently redubbed, ‘Jack’s bar’. On the wall hung a neon sign, styled from a lyric her nephew had apparently written on one of the toilet doors.

In the beginning, there was Jack.

She glanced momentarily at it. Reminded of how much Frank had lost. Grabbing the sleeve of Frank’s baggy top – an old James long-sleeved T from the band’s Gold Mother heyday – she changed tack. ‘Are you eating?’ Through the cotton fabric, worn soft and thin with use, she could feel that his forearms, always wiry at the best of times, were mere bone and sinew now, covered with skin.

Frank cocked his head to one side. Entirely grey-white, though he’d always boasted the best head of hair out of the two O’Brien brothers. Paddy had had only a ring of shorn fluff around a shining freckled pate, by the end. The fiery ginger of his youth had dulled in later years to a dirty strawberry blond. But Frank had inherited different genes entirely. And not just follically. ‘Course,’ he said. ‘I had a lovely kebab on Tuesday. It had sauce and everything.’

‘That’s two days ago. Have you eaten since?’ Sheila asked, pondering the shadows that the basement bar’s mood-lighting cast along the gaunt furrows either side of his mouth.

He grinned at her. Narrowed his eyes. Wagging his finger, as if he’d just sussed some sister-in-lawly subterfuge. ‘I see what you’re doing. You’re checking up on me, aren’t you?’ He pulled his sleeve gently out of reach, ramming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘It’s nice of you but—’

‘Come round for dinner with me and Conks tonight. I’ll make a curry.’ Sheila knew what an overgrown boy like Frank needed. Mothering. Perhaps she could find him a woman through her speed-dating venture.

‘Aw, She. I’m busy actually. I’ve got this—’

‘Now. Tables and chairs,’ Sheila said, assuming that the dinner was a done deal and turning her attention to the layout of the bar area. ‘Me and Gloria went to another speed-dating night, run as a franchise by some big company that covers the north. They had the same set-up. A number on each table. You ring the bell. The men move round after three minutes to sit with a new woman. So the seating’s really important.’

Scratching at his ear, Frank frowned. ‘Sheila, I hope you don’t think I’m a cheeky sod, but you’re the head of the O’Briens, now. You’re the boss-lady. What the hell are you doing, messing around with lonely hearts crap?’

Sheila moved over to the bar where she had left her laptop in its bag. Beckoned Frank to follow her. She could barely contain her excitement as it effervesced like Cristal champagne inside her. Several months ago, Paddy would have popped those bubbles for her with a verbal put-down or a physical slap.

‘This is my latest entrepreneurial vision, Frank. And you’re helping me do it. Come and look.’

Opening the laptop on the bar, she brought up a brightly coloured website. Photo after photo of beaming, attractive, wholesome-looking couples holding hands, kissing, embracing … ‘Online dating.’

Slack-jawed, Frank stared at the web page’s masthead. True Love Dates.

‘It’s a play on words,’ Sheila said. ‘True Love Dates instead of True Love Waits. Get it?’

Frank nodded, clearly not getting it at all.

‘It’s me and Gloria’s new venture. We’re gonna do speed-dating to draw people in, and I’ve just had this website designed. There’s millions of subscribers to some of the bigger online-dating sites. We get their credit card details and bam! You slap on an admin charge and you’re making a fortune from sod all. Algorithms do the work. And once I’ve got a stack of subscribers, I’m going to do a big phishing scam that can’t be traced. I’ve got this speccy computer geek from UMIST reckons he can cream millions off the top, straight into an offshore account.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘It’s the darknet, or some shit, Frank,’ she said, savouring the thrill of her racing pulse and the endorphins that momentarily almost snuffed out the stress of Ellis James and the tax and annoying CCTV cameras that saw everything. ‘This is the future. It’s so good, because it’s almost legal!’ She tapped her nail extensions on the gleaming reinforced glass bar for emphasis. ‘And sophisticated. The set-up costs are sod all. And me and Gloria get to spread a little love into the bargain. We’ve already got fifty sign-ups for tomorrow night’s speed-dating and a couple of thousand on this dating website.’

‘Doesn’t sound like much,’ Frank said, leaning over the bar to pour himself half a lager from the tap. His T-shirt riding up to reveal an emaciated, concave stomach.

Sheila looked away abruptly, stroking the web page that glowed lovingly out at her from the laptop’s screen. ‘Give it a couple of months and it will,’ she said, somewhat irritated that her enthusiasm wasn’t as contagious as she’d hoped. Remembering the way Paddy had ridiculed her idea to start up a cleaning agency all those years ago. Bastard. But now he was dead, and the cleaning agency, staffed by women they’d rescued from scumbag traffickers, had a turnover of a couple of million a year and was growing month on month. Income she could spend, however circuitously it made its way to her current account … unlike Paddy’s dirty cash that sat in rubble sacks beneath the tiled floor of her guest en-suite. ‘I know what I’m doing, you know. Same as you knew what you were doing when you bought this place, Frank.’

‘I’ve had nothing but aggro since I bought this club,’ Frank said, opening an old-fashioned pill box and dropping a small tablet into his drink. ‘My son was murdered on my dance floor, and then, that twat, the Fish Man killed a load of kids. Our Jack’s dead. My reputation’s hanging by a thread. Some savvy businessman I am.’

‘But that was all down to Paddy,’ Sheila said, rubbing Frank’s bony shoulder as a gesture of solidarity, though he shrugged away from her touch. ‘And he’s gone. You’ve done well to get this place open again. Sod that bullying arsehole. He’s just a memory. To hell with the past, Frank. You own one of the country’s biggest super-clubs and you do it well. All the outrage in the papers from worried middle-class parents made kids who were desperate for a walk on the wild side wanna come back! M1 House is edgy and cool. You’re cool! Have faith in yourself, chuck.’

Sighing heavily, the crow’s feet around Frank’s eyes seemed to deepen. The shadows on his face seemed to lengthen. The Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, sticking out of his scrawny neck as though a malign spirit had taken up residence in his throat and was trying to punch its way out.

‘I’m not so sure,’ he said. ‘Just when I got the Boddlingtons off my back, and I’m getting back on my feet with the club, there’s been a few new faces around. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.’

Sheila snapped the lid of the laptop shut. ‘New faces? How do you mean?’ She studied Frank’s face for signs of drug-fuelled paranoia and hippy bullshit.

‘You got new lads working for you? Dealing in here?’

‘A couple of temporary workers, doing a bit of this and that. We’re struggling to find the staff since Paddy got stabbed. A couple of the lads got caught in the crossfire when the Boddlingtons did over the cannabis farm. Quite a few have just lost their nerve and said they were going straight. I can’t exactly stop them. Or blame them.’

‘Paddy would have had them killed before he’d let them go,’ Frank said, running a thin finger around and around the rim of his half-pint glass.

‘I’m not Paddy,’ Sheila said, pressing her lips together tightly. Stifling an outburst. ‘And that’s precisely why I’m trying to build up me and Gloria’s cleaning business and do these new start-ups. White-collar crime, Frank. It’s less risky. It’s more forward-thinking. It’s how the rich get richer. All that gun-toting bad-boy crap is Paddy’s legacy. I’ve got a functioning brain and a beating heart, Frank. I can’t fill my days, sitting on my backside, sewing a fine seam like some merry widow. My Amy and Dahlia have grown up and flown the nest. One at uni. One a lawyer in the City. I need something more than nail bars and chardonnay and I don’t want my daughters having their inheritance seized by the coppers and dying of shame if I go down. Now, who were these new faces? You got any security footage of them?’

Taking her laptop bag with her, Sheila followed Frank up the winding staircase to the echoing vastness of the main club. Here, the house music that the DJ played reverberated off the empty, gleaming dance floor – sanded down and refinished not once, but twice, to remove the life’s blood of those who had fallen at the hand of that slippery eel of a Fish Man, the Boddlington gang enforcer, Asaf Smolensky. Glancing at the DJ booth, she expected to see her nephew standing there, all muscles and bronzed-Adonis-handsome, with his cans pressed to his ear. Young Jack, Manchester’s golden boy, waving at his Aunty Sheila. In his stead, there was just some young, trendy-looking black guy she didn’t recognise – up from London no doubt – and the chubby, middle-aged sound engineer, perched behind a mixing console on the other side of the club.

As Frank disappeared through to the backstage area, Sheila noticed the tanned man in overalls, marking a spot on the wall with a pencil. He wore a baseball cap at a ridiculous angle for a middle-aged man. Wielded a measuring tape with clean hands that looked out of place on a manual labourer. The thought that he was somewhat familiar drifted in and out of her head so rapidly that it left no trace whatsoever. Her brother-in-law was always having work done to a building that was now tantamount to a memorial to Jack.

‘Here we go,’ Frank said in his office, pulling several sheets of paper out of his desk drawer. ‘I had Otis, the security feller, come up with these. Pictures from the footage.’ He pushed them across the desk towards Sheila. Tapped on the heads of two men – one black with dreads, one white with a crew cut, both man-mountains – who, even given the poor quality of the CCTV stills, clearly stuck out as far older interlopers among the firm, lithe bodies of the partying youngsters.

Sheila noted a shiftiness to the men’s eyes – perhaps imagined, given how grainy the images were. But the tense way that they held their bodies gave them away as dealers, not dancers. And who the hell wore quilted bomber jackets on a sweaty dance floor?

‘They’re not any of my temps,’ she said, digging at the back of her molars with her tongue, feeling some kale left behind from the badly blended smoothie that Conky had made her. A for effort. C for execution. ‘Give them to me. I’ll see what Conks thinks. He knows everyone. If it’s a rival crew, he’ll be on it like flies on dog shit.’

Click-clacking her way across the dance floor, clutching her fur gilet close around her slender body against the cold air of the vast unheated super-club, Sheila pondered how she might offload the responsibility of the dirtier side to the business elsewhere. Heading into the triple-height vestibule, she contemplated the meeting she had yet to attend that day at the head office of a commercial airline. Ably assisted by Gloria, she would deliver a pitch to the airline’s board members for the contract to clean European-bound aircraft at several airports in the north. She imagined speaking authoritatively, dressed just on the business side of provocatively. She would use a breathy, sexy, irresistible voice. She was sure that flashing a little titty, in addition to their competitive rates and immaculate reputation, would land the lucrative deal.

In fact, Sheila was so caught up in her fantasies of success and the residual enthusiasm over her speed-dating venture that she only barely registered the white van parked outside M1 House. Nor did she realise that the man in the overalls with the stupid baseball cap was following her onto the street. And when her phone rang out with the full-bodied Pop Queen warble of Adele, Sheila was so baffled by the Brummie accent of the unfamiliar caller at the other end, she failed to notice that the man in the overalls, who did in fact own the white van, was standing right behind her.

Chapter 2

Gloria

‘Is he looking?’ Gloria asked Winnie, who, as usual, was sitting to her right at the end of the pew. No response. She elbowed the old woman gently. Whispering loud enough so that a couple of the elderly men in front turned around and grimaced at her disapprovingly. ‘Is he looking?’

‘No, dear.’ Winnie shook her head, tickling Gloria’s ears with a flurry of petrol-coloured feathers. Waving a lace fan slowly up and down in the stuffy place.

It was a wonder she could see anything from under that hat. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m old, dear. Not blind. Hush! Pastor’s speaking.’

Irritated that her studied cool and feigned disinterest wasn’t working, Gloria faced forward again. Trying desperately to catch the pastor’s eye once more by pushing out her chest and batting her eyelashes.

No response.

The fine man standing in the pulpit, preaching to the swollen ranks of the congregation with vim, vigour and pleasantly developed triceps when he raised his hands to praise Jesus, had not cast so much as a glance her way since the start of the Sunday morning service. And there was Kitty Fried Chicken, still sitting at the front in the spousal hot-seat, wearing a beret, looking like some cross between Jabba the Hut and a black Che Guevara in BHS’ best. Still clinging on to that fine man of God like the oniony stink of sweat clinging to that ghastly polyester ensemble she was wearing.

Smoothing down her own pure silk Hobbs dress, Gloria wondered what had gone wrong in her grand plan. The pastor, by rights, should have been hers now. She’d been giving it her best shot for years, praying to the good Lord that fate would finally bring her the true love with this wonderful man that she so needed and deserved. But despite her best efforts, his marriage to a woman who smelled of four-day-old chicken was no closer to disintegration, and Gloria was no closer to the union of holy souls with the pastor that she desired.

‘Praise Jesus!’ the congregation intoned. ‘Praise him. Oh yes!’

Amid much fervour and hubbub, singing started up. ‘Father Can You Hear Me?’ Naturally, Kitty Fried Chicken was out of her seat, clutching a microphone, her chins wobbling and a sweat breaking out on her forehead as she worked her way up from a delicate soulful whisper to a growling fever pitch. Belting the hymn out, with the choir answering her every worshipful stanza in glorious harmony; the band playing along with enough skilful dynamism to usher a host of angels into the church. The hall was thrumming with love for the Lord Jesus Christ, but Gloria felt only cold and loneliness and bitterness inside, for she saw the truth.

At that moment, the adoration visibly poured out of the pastor, directed not at Gloria but at his dumpy, fugly wife who sang better than any soprano in the Royal Opera House, and who had more soul than any two-bit R&B singer on the television. Gloria realised the game was up.

‘I’m wasting my time,’ she told Winnie.

Winnie popped a mint on the end of her tongue and fanned herself nonchalantly. ‘You give it a good go,’ she said, squeezing Gloria’s arm, like the mother she wished she’d had. ‘But it is time to move on, love.’

‘But she stinks of stale chicken, Win.’ Gloria could feel tears prick the backs of her eyes. ‘I smell of Christian Dior.’

‘Some men just don’t have a very good sense of smell, darling.’ There was sympathy in the milky-ringed irises of Winnie’s brown eyes. ‘He might have blocked sinuses.’

‘But she’s boring!’

Winnie offered her a mint. Speaking the quiet wisdom of the elderly, just audible above the jubilant singing, she said: ‘The only difference between her and you, Gloria, is that she got there first. And he obviously needs his eyes testing, because Kitty has got a face like tripe and beans gone wrong. Or maybe she’s got a diamond-encrusted tutu hidden in those big knickers of hers. Who knows? You can do better, love. Honestly. Pastor’s not all that. He had bad breath last Sunday.’

With the service over, Gloria’s heart thumped insistently inside her ribcage. Time to get face-to-face with the pastor and see for certain, now that the filter of hope had been removed from her sight, if there was any longing for Gloria Bell in his eyes. Just one last double-check. Maybe she could even whisper in his ear that she loved him, just in case he was too stupid to have sussed it after all these years. She knew men were often slow on the uptake like that. But the realisation that her dream was dying settled in her stomach like an accumulation of heavy metal, rendering her optimism nothing more than a giant, unwanted malignancy.