The Damage (David Blake 2) (13 page)

As usual with us though, there was an angle. Second Chances was a great scouting ground for new talent. We could find out all about a guy under the umbrella of the programme then, if we thought he was suitable for more skilled labour with the firm, someone outside of the Second Chance centre could come along and offer him a legitimate-sounding job in another branch of our organisation. This was how Palmer recruited Robbie, who headed up our little group of ‘watchers on the shore’ as I called them, after the Stan Barstow novel no one else in our firm had heard of. Robbie was an IT boffin, an electronic whiz kid who could make computers talk to him. Here was a young lad who could break down firewalls, hack into systems he had no right to and plunder information for us without anyone knowing about it. He’d learned the importance of that the hard way, after he was sent down for a year for fraud and insider trading.

I used to say I was like Robbie, a strictly white-collar criminal who’d never hurt a fly. When he was sent to prison he was petrified. He thought he’d be raped or murdered, or both, but Palmer had read all about his case and been impressed by his skills, even if he had been caught in the end. Palmer arranged for some protection for Robbie and made sure he knew who was looking after him on the inside. When Robbie came out of jail we gave him a place on the Second Chances scheme and left him alone for a while, until he realised we were his only real shot. He was never going to get a legitimate job anywhere with his tarnished CV.

By the time I met Robbie and offered him a job he was already halfway to the dark side without even realising it. He chose to throw his lot in with us and it worked out great. Palmer loved working with this geeky little bloke with his Joe 90 glasses and the slight stammer when he got nervous. His sideline speciality was electronic surveillance. ‘When I was in the regiment, I used to dig a ditch and sit in it for days, not moving, shitting in bags, just waiting for a glimpse of the target,’ Palmer told me, in a rare reference to his SAS career, ‘these days Robbie can get a bead on someone from miles away, using a satellite and their mobile phone signal. It’s a modern fucking miracle.’

The Second Chances scheme was the reason I was attending a meeting of belligerent football fans at a pub in the Bigg Market. We were packed into an upstairs room, clutching pints of beer, listening to a politician who was standing on his metaphorical soap box. The venue may have been a long way from the oak-panelled corridors of Westminster but veteran Newcastle MP and former Home Office Minister, the Right Honourable Ron Haydon, was still in full sway, assuring us he shared our hatred of ‘the buggers who have brought this once proud club to its knees and turned us into a national joke in the process!’ before adding ‘they have run this club with all of the style and grace of a pimp in charge of a brothel, well, no more!’ that got him his first round of applause. ‘They…’ he was pointing in the direction of St James’ Park, which was a couple of blocks away, ‘….have rebranded a hallowed shrine until it resembles little more than a cash-and-carry…
they
are men who know the price and cost of everything but the value of nothing.’ There was some positive murmuring at this sentiment, ‘I’m talking about society, community, a shared history where a father and son go to the match together to watch their local team for generation after generation.’ I wondered when he had last seen them play; probably years ago. ‘What they don’t…what they fail to understand…’ he was jabbing his finger at us now for emphasis, ‘…is that no one ever really owns a football club…they are simply custodians for future generations!’ I was pretty sure he’d nicked that last line from a magazine ad I’d seen, but it didn’t matter.

Ron Haydon concluded his rousing speech by appealing for a more democratic world, which involved fans owning their own football club and bringing the game back into the community, but I couldn’t see it myself. Why would a fat billionaire listen to the fans when he patently didn’t have to? He got a round of applause just the same.

‘I was wondering if you’d received my letter,’ I told my MP after I’d waited ten minutes for the back-slappers and glad-handers to disperse, ‘about attending the launch of the Second Chances centre, the home of our prisoner rehabilitation programme,’ he looked right through me, ‘we believe in offering convicted criminals the opportunity to turn their lives around through gainful employment.’

He gave me a big grin, ‘Spoken like a politician,’ he told me, ‘you should join the party, son. You’ve got the gift of the gab.’ This didn’t sound like a compliment, but I carried on regardless.

‘We were hoping you might choose to grace us with your presence when we open the building later this month in Dunston, but we have yet to receive a reply to our letter from your constituency office.’

‘I got your letter alright, but I won’t be attending,’ he told me. The smile had gone now, ‘I don’t mix with criminals.’

‘We prefer to see them as former criminals.’

‘I wasn’t talking about them, son,’ he said it low and threatening, ‘I was talking about you.’

‘Me? I’m a company director of the Gallowgate Leisure Group, a legitimate…’

‘Don’t waste your breath,’ he interrupted me, ‘you’re forgetting I was a Minister at the Home Office, so I’ve seen the files on your outfit,’ he was speaking quietly, so the other guys in the bar couldn’t hear us and he’d planted a half smile on his face so a casual observer might think we were discussing the state of the Euro, ‘I don’t like gangsters in my city,’ he said that bit like he truly believed it was
his
city, ‘but I’m glad we’ve had this chance to meet Mr Blake because I want to tell you face to face what I am going to do about you and the rest of Bobby Mahoney’s firm. I am the newly-appointed chairman of the Police Authority and I am going to see to it that the Chief Constable makes you his highest priority. The day you go down, I will be standing on the steps of the court house with a bloody big grin on my face.’ And he gave me a look that told me he was going to relish that moment.

‘You know, I only really came over to offer my commiserations,’ I assured him, ‘they say all political careers end in failure and you are certainly living proof of that. An MP for twenty-nine years and you couldn’t get into the Government till it was on its dying breath. Why was that Ron? A lot of the ones who made it into high office turned out to be numpties but they all got their chance before you, didn’t they? All those years on the back benches and you only got in at all because you changed your vote on his little war in Iraq.’

‘Haddaway and shite, man,’ he was resorting to Geordie bluster when he couldn’t think of a better denial.

‘You’ll be in your mid-seventies before Labour sorts itself out again and that’s way too old for high office. Now it’s back to constituency work; all those MP’s surgeries, line after line of lunatics pleading for help because no one has collected their rubbish and the grass verges need cutting. You must be going out of your mind with boredom.’

‘You’ve got no idea son, you really haven’t,’ his face had reddened.

‘Enlighten me then. It’s not much to show for all of those years in politics is it? Bobby Mahoney used to say you could stick a red rosette on a monkey up here and everybody would still vote Labour. You could sodomise a schoolboy in front of Grey’s monument and they’d still rather vote for you than a Tory and you know it. What a bloody waste of time and effort your whole life has been. You want to bring me down? Well good luck with that.’

‘Is this the bit where you threaten me, son? I wouldn’t do that if I were you, bonny lad, because I don’t scare easily. They used to send me in to sort out the local union convenors when they wouldn’t tow the party line and there’s no bigger bastard than a proper full-on Union man, everybody knows that. More than one took a swing at me and I always knocked them down where they stood, in front of all their pals. I might be older than you but we can go out back and settle this right now if you want.’

I laughed, ‘Oh please, you look like you’re about to have a heart attack just saying that.’

‘I’m warning you…’

‘No, I’m warning
you
. I can see why you need a hobby these days but I’d recommend fly fishing or golf, not us.’

I turned and walked away, leaving the pub without another word. As I walked out into the street a man emerged from the shadows and stepped out in front of me.

‘Jesus Christ, Palmer, you nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘What?’

‘Lurking in the dark like that and leaping out on me. I thought my number was up.’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’

‘I had to tell you something,’ he said, ‘and you are not going to like it.’

‘What is it?’

‘The shipment didn’t arrive.’

.......................

‘W
ill you calm down?’

‘I am calm,’ I lied, but it had taken me two very swift drinks in the hotel bar even to get me to this stage and I was still boiling, ‘I just don’t like being arse-fucked by a Turk who’s stolen a million Euros from me. I’m old-fashioned like that.’

‘Can you not shout at least?’ asked Palmer, looking around him, presumably expecting undercover cops to leap out from behind the potted plants that dominated every corner of the bar.

‘I’m not shouting,’ I told him, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed the cocktail barman was watching me. I glared at him and he suddenly remembered something he needed to do out back.

‘Then will you at least lower your voice while you talk about drugs, Turkish dealers and missing Euro millions,’ he added reasonably.

‘Fine,’ I said and I realised we must have sounded like a couple of old queens having a lover’s tiff, ‘I’ll keep my voice nice and low if you get back on to the Turk tonight and tell him I want him to send me either the shipment or the money but definitely not the excuses.’

‘It’s difficult,’ said Palmer, ‘there’s a lot of stages he has to go through to get the product out and any one of them can cause a delay.’

‘Who are you working for, Palmer?’ I asked him.

‘What?’

‘Him or me?’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Well don’t.’

Palmer just blinked at me and fell silent, his face an unreadable mask.

When Palmer left, I took my third drink with me into the restaurant, a dimly lit so-called brasserie that had attracted two other diners that night, both solitary males on business trips. I could have guessed the contents of the uninspiring menu without opening it and I settled on a medium steak with fries and a béarnaise sauce. I travel a lot, so solitary meals in hotels are nothing new. They also give me time to think and, for some strange reason, my mind kept coming back to Simone and what she was doing working at the massage parlour. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have enough on my plate already; what with Doyle getting shot, Braddock taking the piss, Gladwell wanting a partnership and the Turk holding out on me but, despite all of that, I’d started wondering if maybe I could help her. If I could save Danny, I reasoned, then surely I could do something to alter this girl’s life for the better.

Was I attracted to her? Of course, who wouldn’t be? She was a stunner, but it wasn’t just that. A lot of girls have a nightmare boyfriend when they are young, but they don’t all end up doing what she was doing. Simone had her whole life ahead of her. It seemed a shame to waste it like this.

I made a decision then. I was going to take Call-Me-Tanya on, as a kind of personal project. This girl would give me a chance to do the right thing for once and I knew she’d thank me one day.

I wouldn’t normally go near the Sunnydale estate – and not just because it is a shithole. I didn’t want anyone to make the link between me, the high-rises and the product. Most of our supply issues were handled by Kinane’s sons but, from time to time, if there was a problem or a dispute, I had to step in. This was definitely one of those times.

It was up to Braddock to keep order on the Sunnydale estate, which he did with some considerable skill, mainly because he employed the hardest people in the high-rises and he, in turn, was tougher than all of them put together. He should have been the ideal guy for Sunnydale, but the gaping holes in our accounts said otherwise.

The drugs business won’t vary that much. Your customer base doesn’t suddenly elect to spend its money on something else. Addicts have a need for the same amount of hard drugs every single day of the week. That’s why it’s called a habit. You would expect the revenue from heroin or crack cocaine to be, at the very least, static, with possible growth potential, as new customers discovered the joys of drug-induced oblivion. Not so, on Braddock’s watch. He would explain to Kinane and his sons that times were difficult, that some junkies had gone into rehab, others were in jail and still more had died, but he was always a little vague when it came to actual names. He’d tell us the product he was expected to sell was too pure or not pure enough, it was the wrong drug at the wrong time and his customers didn’t want it as much as the same shit being sold on the estate next door by another gang of dealers we also controlled. Braddock would explain that deals had to be done cheaply in order to dispose of the stash before a new consignment arrived. His evidence of a sales slump was vague and anecdotal but to hear him talk he couldn’t give the stuff away.

We all knew this was bullshit. He was stealing from us because he thought he was in an untouchable position. In a way he was, but I couldn’t have him keeping all of the profits. I would be expected to come down on him hard. That, of course, was easier said than done when he manned his territory with the nastiest fuckers in the city and was never on his own. In fact he left the estate less and less these days, despite his comparative wealth, except to visit his old mum. He might pick a woman up in the city from time to time but more and more he seemed to prefer to live like a king on a mountain of shit than move out like a normal person. Instead he sat in his flat at the top of the high-rise that gave him the best view of the whole estate. As we drove in there for an unannounced meeting, I knew Braddock’s look-outs would have tagged us before we’d gone ten yards.