The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018

The crowd had parted reluctantly to absorb Degsy. Frank had watched as the other O’Brien muscle had appeared from the sidelines, all given the order. The spotlights had shone on the bouncers’ bald pates as they too merged with the revellers from front of house.

‘I can’t see a bleeding thing,’ Frank had muttered, wringing his hands.

He’d shooed some kids off a sofa in one of the seating areas then, scrambling onto the sticky leatherette seating to see what was going on.

Degsy had made for the black guys. The entry-fee-paying clubbers had scattered around them, sensing danger like a herd of antelope at the water’s edge where hyenas lurk in the tall reeds. The bouncers had rounded on the white guys.

It had started with a scuffle. A little pushing and a testosterone-fuelled hokey-cokey where neither had conceded ground to the other.

‘No guns,’ Frank had prayed quietly to a God that never seemed to listen. ‘Please don’t let them have sodding guns.’

The transition from minor altercation to full-on fisticuffs had taken less than a minute. Otis, his burliest bouncer, had taken a right hook from one of the guys with dreads that had sent him flying backwards into a podium like an ungainly clown.

Now, Degsy had pulled a gun to best the Asian lad’s knife in an underworld rendition of rock, paper, scissors. Shit, shit, shit. The lying, lanky arsehole was armed to the teeth. Should he stop the music? Should he call Conks, after all?

Frank withdrew a baggie of coke from the pocket of his jeans. Took a hefty pinch of the white powder and deposited it on the back of his sinewy hand. Snorted what he could. Rubbed the rest around his gums. The effect was instant. Pharmaceutical Columbian courage followed soon after.

‘Right, you bastards,’ he said to himself, pulling the sleeves of his old James T up in some deluded act of strong-arm bravado. ‘Nobody messes with an O’Brien.’

Ignoring his racing pulse and the feeling that his legs were liquefying, he crossed the club, heading towards the scrum. No need for that big Northern Irish bollocks. Not tonight. Remember Jack. Don’t make this all for nowt. He approached one of the white rogue dealers from behind.

‘Get out my sodding club!’ he screamed in the man’s ear, grabbing him tightly by the scruff of his neck. Turning his collar into a garrotte. Kneeing him in the sweet spot on the backs of his legs so that they buckled.

Frank was a warrior, now, posthumously defending his son’s honour. Heard his own voice, hoarse and venomous above the music.

‘Who’s your boss? Tell me or I’ll rip your bleeding head off.’ Fingers in the man’s kidneys.

‘Fuck you!’ the dealer shouted, elbowing Frank in the stomach.

There was a flash of metal as the Asian lad stabbed one of the bouncers. Fists flew. It was carnage.

‘Back off, or I’m gonna blow you all into next Wednesday!’ Degsy yelled, waving his piece at the interlopers.

But the guy with the dreads and bad acne scarring was suddenly upon Degsy, waving a semi-automatic. ‘Drop the gun, Manc twat, or I’ll put a bullet in your ugly head!’ His death threats were levelled in a sing-song accent like some nightmarish nursery rhyme.

Degsy and Dreads both clicked their safeties off. A stand-off. Not good.

Frank was dimly aware of the shrieking of the clubbers on the fringes of his ill-fated dance floor and of the speed-daters who were clattering up the iron staircase from Jack’s Bar below, fleeing the scene. Gloria Bell’s face in among them, somewhere. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu and fear that his club-owning days were finished bore down on him. But his melancholy musings were interrupted by the unmistakeable growl of Conky McFadden, striding through the phalanx of onlookers.

‘Hands in the air, you scabby wee turds or I’ll take the lot of yous out!’

Who the hell had called the Loss Adjuster? The bouncers, almost certainly.

Upon them now and casting a long shadow over the interlopers like an avenging dark angel, Conky held a SIG Sauer before him. The music had stopped, as if to pay respectful tribute to the fabled Loss Adjuster’s appearance on the charged scene.

‘Do you remember me?’ he bellowed, bearing down on dreads-with-a-gun. Striding right up to him, as though his opponent clutched a child’s toy weapon. Pressing the nose of his gun right into the dealer’s jaw. With his free leather-gloved hand, he removed his shades with a flourish. His bulging eyes shone with obvious professional glee. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Dreads dropped his pistol. Held his hands up. Swallowed visibly. ‘Yeah.’

‘Get out of this club and get on a train back to Birmingham, like the yokels you are,’ Conky said, encasing Dreads’ throat in a large hand. ‘Tell your eejit boss Nigel Bancroft that if any of you set foot in South Manchester again, you’ll be going home in Tupperware stacking boxes. And you make sure he understands fully that if I see his ponce’s bake in O’Brien territory again, I’ll shoot some fucking wrinkles in him that Botox will never remove.’

Realising that he had been holding his breath all the while that Conky had been speaking, Frank straightened himself up. Inhaled. Exhaled. He acknowledged with some bitterness that he’d been unable to control what went on in his own environment. He felt the humiliation neutralise the bravado in his body. But his pulse thundered on apace and for a moment, as pain travelled up his left arm and encased his tired heart in pure, uncut agony, he wondered if he too would be going home in a wooden overcoat.

‘Frank. Are you okay?’ Conky’s voice, close by.

Clutching his arm, Frank dropped to his knees. I’m coming, Jack. I’m coming.

Chapter 8

Tariq

‘I’m not coming in,’ Jonny said. His voice was gruff and thick with sleep.

Tariq imagined his business partner lounging in bed or, perhaps, sprawled on the sofa in his den. Par for the course, these days.

‘Aw, come on, Jon. For God’s sake! You’ve been in work twice in a fortnight. When you do come in, you hole yourself up in your office with the Fish Man.’ Tariq held his phone in one hand, pouring muesli into a bowl with the other. He could feel Anjum’s eyes on him, scanning his every move for signs of subterfuge. The kitchen felt several degrees colder with every second that she scrutinised him. He lowered his voice, turning his back to her, hoping the sound of her mashing egg mayo for the children’s packed lunches would be enough to drown out the finer points of his conversation. ‘Plotting. That’s all you do. Plotting revenge. Like that’s going to bring Mia back!’

Screwing down the plastic muesli sack deftly, he replaced the box inside the cereals cupboard. Irritated that the flaps wouldn’t quite fold shut, destroying the neat line of the cereal packets. Taking the muesli out again, he jostled the phone in one hand and rummaged for the sellotape in the stationery drawer with the other.

‘Hold on,’ he said, exasperated. Setting the phone down, he detached a length of tape with his teeth and strapped the wayward flaps shut – the way he liked it. At least he could impose order on a cardboard box, if on no other area of his life. ‘Now. What was I saying?’ Eyeing his wife as she smoothed the eggs onto bread for Shazia and Zahid and buttered toast for his father, he imagined agitation, rising in waves from the top of her hair. She wore a chignon today – styled tightly against her skull, mirroring the tight expression on her unmade-up face. Only animosity between them now that she finally knew how he and Jonny really made their handsome living. ‘So, you’re staying at home. Again?’

‘Yeah. I’ll be in tomorrow.’

‘I won’t hold my breath.’

Tariq was just about to hang up when he remembered the point of the call. ‘Wait! Before you go … You ever seen a black guy with dreadlocks and a big white guy with a dirty blond crop working for the O’Briens?’

There was silence, followed by a yawn. ‘No.’

Glancing at the finance pages of the newspaper, laid out on the breakfast bar, Tariq yet again scanned the article that reported on multi-millionaire Nigel Bancroft’s expansion into corporate property, north of Birmingham. He tapped the photo of the bland-faced playboy in his collarless, pin-tucked dress-shirt and jazzy leather-trimmed evening jacket, posing for a professional shot at some post-polo-match charity ball. ‘What do you know about Nigel Bancroft?’

On the other end of the phone, Jonny smacked his lips. A rustling sound as he rolled over in bed, perhaps, preparing himself for nothing more taxing than spending yet another day obsessing over the possible Margulies blood on Leviticus Bell’s hands while Tariq did all the work.

‘Runs the Midlands, doesn’t he?’

‘Yep.’ Tariq walked to the fridge. Scowled at the selection of milk in the door, staring in disbelief at the almond milk. Sweetened! He took out the carton, shaking it at Anjum with a questioning look on his face.

There was a hint of mischief in his wife’s eyes. A smile, playing at the corners of her mouth. Had she deliberately bought him the sweetened milk, knowing he wouldn’t drink it? Knowing that if he resorted to using the wrong milk, it would set him on edge for the rest of the day?

‘Look. I don’t know any more than you about Nigel-whatever-his-name-is,’ Jonny said. He hung up then, leaving Tariq staring at the word ‘sweetened’ with a bad taste in his mouth.

Had the men who had tried to snatch his father from the car wash forecourt been Sheila’s soldiers? Or had they heralded the arrival in Manchester of a sortie that had been despatched on a reconnaissance mission by an enemy force from beyond the Staffordshire hills?

He set the phone down. Held the almond milk out gingerly, as if it contained plutonium. ‘Darling, what’s with this?’ he asked Anjum. ‘You know I’ve cut out processed carbs.’

She slammed the plate of toast onto the butcher’s block counter in front of Youssuf with some force, sending the toast scudding onto the wooden surface. ‘You know where Tesco’s is, darling.’

With a bemused expression, Youssuf looked from Anjum to him, then to Shazia and Zahid. His father smiled at his grandchildren with a shrug and a wink, though Tariq could see the discomfiture behind those milky eyes. The children merely giggled in response, thinking their old Daada funny; not for an instant picking up on the bitter acrimony between their parents in that kitchen.

Sighing, Tariq poured the wrong milk onto his muesli, wincing inwardly as the sickly-sweet taste registered on his discerning palate as a culinary affront. Damned if he was going to give his wife the satisfaction of not drinking it.

‘What have you got on the cards today, my love?’ he asked, willing her to make nice for the sake of the kids.

She peered at him through her Prada glasses, narrowing her eyes. ‘Oh, you know … preparing asylum cases for trafficked girls …’ She raised her voice. There was an edge to it. Even the children fell silent. ‘Who have been forced into slave labour by morally bankrupt, money-grubbing hypocrites and subjected to systematic abuse by men who see them as nothing more than commodities made from flesh.’ Anjum sat down primly at the breakfast bar and took a violent bite of her apple, gnashing her molars together without moving her laser-like gaze from him.

Tariq felt a twinge of corresponding pain in his groin. He swallowed hard, wishing that time-travel back to the winter – the time when his secret had still been safe – were feasible, or that if parallel worlds were really a possibility, another Tariq Khan existed, still living a harmonious family life with a wife who still believed he was nothing more than a respectable, hard-working businessman. He pushed away the bowl of unpalatable muesli, realising that Anjum would never unsee the trafficked Slovakian girl in her offices or unhear the story of her enslavement at the hands of the Boddlington bosses.

In spite of the comforting sound of the children jabbering away excitedly in the back, the journey to school was agony. At his side, his father sat in silence, clutching his karakul hat on his lap and sighing repeatedly.

‘Give it a rest, will you, Dad?’

The old man threw his hands up. ‘What? You have a go at me for talking while you drive. If I sit quietly, minding my own business, you’re still not happy. I can’t win.’

‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Shazia shouted.

With mounting frustration, Tariq glanced at his daughter in the rear-view mirror. ‘What is it, sweetie?’

‘Is Mummy picking us up?’

‘No darling. Daddy is. Mummy’s in court today.’

The traffic came to an abrupt standstill. A black van pulled alongside his Mercedes at the lights. Tariq held his breath, feeling suddenly over-exposed on that school run. He strained to see who was behind the vehicle’s wheel. Exhaled when he realised it was an elderly white guy. Behind him, a white van was too close to his bumper. He edged forward, annoyed when the van driver closed the gap.

‘Change, damn it!’ he muttered under his breath.

In every car, on every bus, on every motorbike and, above all, in every van, Tariq saw the enemy, poised to snatch the light from his children’s eyes or to tear his father from the car’s passenger seat.

Standing at the school gates, Tariq still felt watched. Checking behind him, he looked for dreadlocked interlopers among the yummy mummies and the odd stay-at-home dad. He appraised the site’s security measures and judged them insufficient. Made a mental note to call the head teacher of the exclusive preparatory school as soon as he was behind his desk. He was paying enough in astronomical termly fees, after all. The least they could do was install some sturdier gates and stick an extra security guard on the door. Old-fashioned striped blazers and the novelty of kids wearing straw hats suddenly didn’t seem enough bang for his buck. Tariq wanted his family to be bullet-proof, and highly rated teaching staff couldn’t promise that.

As he kissed Shazia and Zahid goodbye with a guilty lump in his throat, it suddenly occurred to him that the same white van that had hogged his rear bumper at the lights had parked up, two cars down from where his father was now sitting, glum-faced in the CLS. He cast his mind back to the driver, who had worn a baseball cap at a ridiculous angle. Was it feasible such a man was a parent of a kid at a private prep where solicitors and surgeons sent their kids?

You’re being paranoid, he told himself, waving at the kids; sprinting back to the parking bays to see if the van was still there.

When he got back to his own car, the van had gone. Get a grip, for God’s sake. You can’t turn into Jonny, dwelling on the pitfalls of this crazy path in life you’ve chosen.

Pulling away from the kerb, he thumped his steering wheel in frustration.

‘What’s got into you?’ his father asked, stroking the brain-like folds of fur on his hat.

‘I’m a failure. I can’t protect any of you.’

His father coughed – a deep, rasping rattle. Spat some phlegm into a snow-white handkerchief. ‘You know the answer to that, son.’

‘Look, when I drop you at the day centre, do me a favour. Don’t go walkabout.’

He shot a sideways glance at the old man, noticing to his chagrin that he had trimmed one side of his white beard for him higher than the other. He was losing his touch.

‘Red light!’ Youssuf shouted.

Tariq faced forward abruptly, slamming on his brake. He yelped as somebody ploughed into the back of the Mercedes, sending him lurching over the stop line into the path of a heavy goods vehicle.

Chapter 9

Sheila

‘We’ve got a grass,’ Sheila said, pounding away at the Stairmaster as though she was wreaking vengeance on the little shit that had been leaking her business to Nigel Bancroft. She pumped the handles up and down, raining imaginary blows on his or her head. ‘And now you’re telling me that M1 House is overrun with Brummies? You idiot!’

In her brightly lit home-gym in the subterranean spa of the Bramshott mansion, she stared past Frank, fixated by their reflection in the ceiling-to-floor mirrors, repeated in infinite regress: an athletic, middle-aged woman in her prime, clad in pink Lycra, powered by long-suppressed ambition, bawling out a stooped, grey-faced middle-aged man, dressed like a youth, who looked as though the gravity of this harsh world had finally all but flattened him. It was a scene of the strong bullying the weak. And she didn’t like it one bit.

‘Sorry,’ she said, stepping off the Stairmaster. ‘I should be asking you how you are, not having a pop at you.’

The dimpling in Frank’s chin abated. He offered her a weak smile by way of a truce and sat down onto the seat pad of her lateral pull-down machine. He waggled his head from side to side uncertainly. ‘I’m all right, me. Ta for asking. I ended up in A&E thinking I was having a heart attack like our Pad. Turns out it was only bloody indigestion! I’d taken too much gear on an empty stomach and a load of painkillers a few hours earlier. Buggered me guts up, didn’t it?’

Sheila dried her sweaty hands on a towel and squeezed Frank’s shoulder in sympathy. ‘That’s lucky.’

‘The doc kicked us out with a warning about watching what I eat and stress and that. But is it any wonder I’m strung out? Them Brummies are taking the piss. The last thing I need is another shooting in the club. It was close, She. Bloody close.’

Sheila shook her head. Inhaled deeply, conjuring the memory of Nigel Bancroft’s easy, cheesy smile. It was like Paddy all over again. A man, trying to bully her when she didn’t do as she was told, like a good little girl. She ground her molars together until they squeaked. ‘I’m gonna sort this,’ she said. ‘Bancroft seemed to know I was mulling over selling the drugs and protection or farming it out as a franchise. The only time I’ve ever discussed that outside of my house has been at the weed farm. We’ve got a leak. I’m gonna find it. And we need more O’Brien men at the club.’ She pointed at her brother-in-law like an accusing schoolmarm. ‘You need to sort out your bouncers. They’re the gatekeepers and they’re not doing their jobs.’

‘Sorry, She.’

Taking a hearty swig from her water bottle, Sheila said, ‘Bancroft’s muscle nearly blew holes in some woman with a kid in a trolley outside the Lowry. Only reason they stood down was coppers showed up. If they hadn’t been doing a routine patrol, we all could have ended up in the cells or body bags. And Paddy surrounded himself with incompetents, apart from Conky.’ Glancing down, she noted the hurt in Frank’s haunted, bloodshot eyes. ‘And you, obviously.’ No. The hurt was still there. Frank wasn’t that easily fooled or flattered. Much of his child-like lack of cynicism had been buried along with his son. ‘Leave it with me, chuck.’

‘Chuck’, at least, put a half-hearted smile back on her brother-in-law’s woebegone face.

With Frank gone, Sheila pushed herself to put in twenty lengths in the glittering turquoise pool. Swimming on her back, she followed the line of the bricks in the spotlit, vaulted ceiling, savouring the notion that all this contemporary opulence was hers and hers alone, now. She was a woman of independent means with hundreds of staff on the payroll, no longer Paddy’s pushover trophy-wife and punchbag. She realised that it was time to step into the big boss’ shoes in earnest.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she told the lapping water, clinging to the side and wiping her face. ‘It’s time to get tough.’

Dressing for success in skin-tight leather trousers and her favourite Burberry leather biker jacket, she threw her highest-heeled boots into her Chanel tote and drove the Rolls Royce to Gloria’s house. Knocked smartly on the door to the rented semi, clutching the hard case in her right hand. Her freshly worked-out biceps protested at the weight.

When she answered, Gloria was already wearing her coat and shoes. Her best dress that she wore to most meetings was visible beneath the three-quarter-length coat. She looked like a formidable Latin mistress on a weekend off. ‘About time.’ Gloria thrust her watch-clad wrist towards Sheila, raising an eyebrow in the sort of disapproval that only the overtly religious mastered. ‘You’re late!’

Sheila thrust the case into Gloria’s hands. ‘I want a quick word,’ she said, waving her business partner back into the house.

‘What’s with the leather and the Roller? Who you trying to impress?’ Gloria asked, kicking off her chunky-heeled shoes and padding in her stockinged feet towards the kitchen. The straps had left an indent in her swollen ankles. ‘Take your trainers off, She! If the no-shoes rule’s good enough for you, it’s darn well good enough for me.’ She peered up the stairs towards the landing. ‘Leviticus! Shake a leg! You’d better be dressed and baby Jay better be ready to roll. Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys – Proverbs 18:9!’

Her words were met with a groan and something muffled in the long-suffering tone normally used by teenagers. Sheila stifled a smile. Remembered that she was here on business.

‘What’s in this case?’ Gloria asked, grunting as she heaved it onto the laminated surface of the kitchen worktop. ‘Your make-up?’

Ignoring the comment, Sheila strode over and clicked the locks open, revealing the contents of the red velvet interior.

‘A shotgun?’ Gloria took a step back, clasping her work-worn hand to her chest.

As Sheila waited for the surprise to sink in, Gloria approached the case again, gingerly lifting the box of cartridges from its recess. Frowning, holding the box at a distance, as though it might explode in her face.

‘It’s for you,’ Sheila said. ‘A gift.’

Her business partner turned to her, shaking her head in protest but surreptitiously stretching an arm back to run her fingers over the beautiful polished wood of the stock. ‘I’m a practising Christian, Sheila O’Brien. Why on earth would you give me an implement of violence?’

‘What do you think they fought the Crusades with?’ Sheila asked. ‘Charm? B.O.?’

‘The power of the Lord!’ Gloria said.

‘And weapons.’ Sheila marched up to the case, pushing Gloria aside. She lifted the shotgun out. Presented it to Jesus’ favourite sunbeam. ‘Hold it. See how it feels.’

Shaking her head yet again, Gloria took her gift. A glimmer of a smile and a hint of mischief in her eyes. ‘It’s very heavy.’ She dropped and raised the gun like barbells, hoisted it to her shoulder and peered down the barrel at Sheila. ‘Ka-pow!’

Steeling herself not to flinch, Sheila prayed that Gloria would play ball. ‘I need you, Glo. Paddy sent a load of boys in to do a woman’s job. I’ve got junkies pretending to run a drugs enterprise that’s worth millions a year. They’re hopeless and smoke most of the product. They wouldn’t know discipline or staffing structures if they came along and shagged them up the arse with a flip chart.’

‘Oh, Sheila! Language! If you please!’ Gloria winced.

Keep going, She. She’s buckling. ‘Your Lev is the most intelligent out of all of them put together. They’re not trustworthy. Someone’s shooting their mouth off to a rival gang in Birmingham. Frank’s overrun with them in the club. And now I think about it, I’m not queuing up to give eighty per cent of my hard-earned cash to some out-of-towner who thinks I should step aside, just because I’ve got a vagina instead of a shrivelled little cock.’ She wiggled her little finger for emphasis.

‘Sheila O’Brien! You’re terrible!’ Gloria snorted. ‘Why should I get involved with that side, though? We don’t have any agreement about Paddy’s old affairs. That’s sinners’ business.’

‘Ten percent if you take the job as my manager. If Christians weren’t supposed to earn money, Jesus wouldn’t have put zeros in “holy” and “godly”.’

‘That makes no sense. Fifteen.’

‘Done.’ Sheila grinned broadly. Knew she would get reliable old Gloria onside in the end. Even a Bible-basher like her had a price. Everyone had a price and Gloria’s was significantly cheaper than Bancroft’s.