The Damage (David Blake 2) (5 page)

This is the bit no one tells you about when you are on the up. Before I started running Newcastle, I assumed my predecessor Bobby Mahoney was absolutely minted. I’d seen the figures; the amount of money coming in was vast and much of it was undeclared income. I knew what he paid out to employees of the firm and how much we spent on the Drop. There should have been plenty left over to live the high life but I’m telling you, lately, the cost of business has gone up and up. The more our empire has expanded in the little over two years since Bobby died, the more I have to pay out to avoid being killed or stuck inside a prison in the UK or Thailand for life, so I am always thinking. Am I paying the right guy the right amount? Should I be paying his boss or some other guy I’m not even aware of? If I fuck up it’s all over for everyone.

I try not to think about that as I surf the main news channels while I drink my coffee; Sky, BBC, CNN, though I don’t bother with Fox obviously. I can’t relax until I’ve surfed them all. Only then, when I am sure that the planet is still rotating safely on its axis, do I feel like I can properly start my day.

I was just about to change the channel when another news item claimed my attention. The trial of Leon Cassidy, aka the Sandyhills Sniper, was about to begin. The Sky News reporter told us earnestly that ‘Cassidy will stand trial on five counts of murder, including the killing of Detective Chief Inspector Robert McGregor.’ I was back in Newcastle when the sniper started picking off his victims and it had been a massive news story at the time. ‘Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the killing,’ the reporter told us, in a poorly-concealed code that was designed to make everybody think ‘they’ve got the bastard.’ So much for innocent until proven guilty, I thought, but they did find the rifle in his flat, so it looked like Cassidy was going down.

I turned off the TV, then changed and went for a swim in the indoor pool. That alerted the stone calm figure of Jagrit to my presence, but he wasn’t the sort to overreact to my sudden arrival. He didn’t even flinch. I could see him standing there through the huge windows that overlooked our grounds. With his olive-skinned face and dark, watchful eyes he looked like he’d been carved out of jade. Jagrit is one of my Gurkhas chosen, like his comrades, because of their innate loyalty and legendary hardness. They were the perfect guys to look after me; honest, decent, honourable men but vicious bastards who could creep up on you and slice your throat open without you hearing a thing. Nobody could get into our compound with them watching out for me. These elite fighting men were probably the only reason Sarah and I got any sleep at all these days.

The water looked inviting enough so I did a few lengths, counting them off each time my hand touched the end of the pool. I did this most mornings to stay in shape, but I also liked the way it cleared my head at the start of the day. I can think in here and not in a way that makes me regret the past or feel anxious about the future. Who needs that? Deal with all of the shit you’ve seen and done and move on, that’s what I say. It’s the only way. Fretting is for old women and fools. Looking back on what might have been just drives you mad in the end.

I felt better after my swim. I dried myself and put on a robe, then made more coffee, before going into my office to check my messages. There was a new one from Kinane and I frowned at the screen as I read it. He wanted me to come back to Newcastle as soon as possible. I didn’t like the sound of that. It must have been something important if he couldn’t handle things with Palmer and my brother Danny. That was the whole point of living out here with Sarah, thousands of miles away from the shitty end of the stick. They were supposed to look after everything. That’s what I paid them to do.

Kinane’s message said he would call me on a web phone later so I went up to check on Sarah. She was still fast asleep, breathing deeply, and I was pleased. She hadn’t been sleeping well for months now. Instead she gets up in the night and goes quietly downstairs. I’m usually relieved when I hear her weight stir on the bed, then listen to her feet pad down the stairs. I sleep lightly these days too, and I get more hours on my own without her tossing and turning next to me and, if I have one of my nightmares, I don’t really want her to know about it. So I usually leave her to it, unless I hear her crying downstairs and, if she sounds worse than normal, I’ll go and see if I can do anything to help, even though I know by now that I can’t. She just has to get through this somehow. She’s not a drama queen, and doesn’t wake me intentionally, but there’s something about the pitch of her weeping that makes me pick it up in my sleep every time.

Some people don’t look too good when they are sleeping but Sarah looks like a Princess from a fairy tale; like Cinderella or, well, Sleeping Beauty. Right now she looks so peaceful, if I took her picture it’d be like one of those adverts for a restful foreign holiday.

I should have been getting on with stuff but I didn’t move. Instead I took a moment to look at my girl, to actually see her. She looked so lovely that, just for a moment, I completely forgot all of the doubts and negative thoughts that have been plaguing me lately. The sun was beginning to stream through the thin material of the linen curtains. In a little while it would wake her but, right now, it was putting colour in her face, painting her with its glow, making her seem even more young and beautiful than normal and that’s some achievement. I thought that I might just be with the most beautiful girl in the world.

Glancing down at Sarah, seeing her there, looking so calm and peaceful and lovely, like the world could never harm her, I could hardly believe it was almost two years since I blew her father’s head off.

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P
eter Dean thought long and hard about who he could use to get at David Blake. He finally settled on Billy Warren, who may not have been the first choice of many, but Peter had his own reasons for selecting him to arrange the hit.

Billy Warren was a slippery little fucker who’d been with Mahoney’s crew for more than a decade, starting out as a young thug stealing cars to order. As he grew older he started breaking into houses, taking everything that wasn’t too big to carry. If it looked like you were on holiday when Billy called round, he’d come back with a van and take your furniture – earning him the nickname ‘Pickfords’ which stuck, right up until the day he was finally caught. The lad did his bird in the right manner, head down, mentioning no names, like a proper, honest crook.

‘No, your honour I do not remember the name of the man I sold the stolen goods to. It was just some bloke I met down the pub. No, I do not have his address,’ Billy went on to deny there was any truth in the rumour that he was allowed to operate on his turf in return for a substantial kick-back to bent Police officers and further tribute money paid to an anonymous local crime lord, rumoured to be a certain Mister B. Mahoney of Gosforth, Newcastle. The judge quickly lost patience and Billy got three years, served two in Durham jail, then was released back into the community as a completely reformed man. As a reward for his loyalty, Billy was given the option of a career change by the aforementioned Mister B. Mahoney of Gosforth, Newcastle, who persuaded him that there was no real future in house breaking.

‘I’m offering you a new job, Billy, as “a vendor of class-A substances”,’ Bobby told him.

Billy Warren’s face creased into a confused frown. ‘Eh?’ he said.

‘I want you to sell some Blow, Billy,’ Mahoney clarified, ‘because I think you’d be good at it.’

And he was. It all went swimmingly at first. In fact for a few years Billy Warren enjoyed the good life. He never got nicked because half of the law tasked with putting him inside was already in Bobby Mahoney’s back pocket and though the other, more honest, half didn’t like what they saw, it didn’t mean they were going to shop their mates. Billy had never met a copper yet who wanted to put his colleagues inside for corruption.

So life was sweet. Billy had enough to rent a decent flat, get the car he needed to impress the birds and more than enough cash to go out on the town with his mates whenever he wanted. That’s pretty much as good as it needs to be for a man in his early twenties but, over time, his outlook began to change. It’s amazing what you can get used to. Billy went from being a man who never had enough; enough money, enough food, enough booze, enough dope, to a man who had all of that and still wanted more. In fact Billy started to question whether he was really getting his fair share. A lot of money passed through his fingers. He was building up contacts, selling a lot of blow and it wasn’t just the coke that he was flogging. Billy could get you ketamine, meth amphetamine, crack, he could even get you a bit of ‘H’, just don’t tell Bobby, who had a big time downer on heroin. Bobby thought heroin would damage the community. Ha, as if there was such a thing as ‘community’.

Like everyone in Bobby’s crew, Billy Warren had a few things going on the side. It was known, accepted even and everybody did it, they just didn’t talk about it, especially in front of the boss.

‘The secret is not to be too greedy,’ Geordie Cartwright told him, ‘you can rip off the big man just a little bit and he’ll let you get away with it, as long as the major part gets kicked upstairs to him.’ That was the one big, unwritten rule. But Billy had started to think about the future and things didn’t look quite as rosy as he would have liked. Sure, he had money, but not big money, and certainly not the wedge required to live like a ‘face’ in this city – but it wasn’t just that. There was one other thing Billy lacked, something that had been eating away at him for months. Nobody respected Billy Warren. The guys in Bobby’s crew took the piss out of him constantly. Billy knew he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree but, nonetheless, he did know what he was doing.

If you wanted someone to persuade a young, flash business type to part with way too much of his salary on far too much cocaine, then Billy was definitely your man. But despite the money coming in to him, Bobby Mahoney treated Billy like he was some sort of court jester. As soon as Billy walked into a room the jokes and the sledging would start. They’d question his short stature and slim build, call him ‘Shortarse’ and ‘Sammy Shrink’; they’d take the piss out of his low-slung jeans and hooded tops, labelling him ‘Gangsta’; they’d ask him when he last got laid, knowing it was likely to have been a while back, because Billy wasn’t that great with the ladies, unless he paid them, so they’d call him ‘Virge’, short for Virgin.

Worst of them all was Jerry Lemon, a tattooed armed robber turned Mahoney lieutenant who tormented Billy in a way that thoroughly disturbed him. Lemon would call him ‘the little queer boy’, even though Billy wasn’t a homo, or he’d insist on naming him ‘Bunny’ Warren, which made Billy sound like a total queen. Lemon would blow kisses at him in front of the rest of the crew and, when he looked freaked out by this, would ask ‘what’s a matter Bunny, gone off me, have you? Don’t you like a bit of boy no more? That’s not what I’ve heard. They say you was everybody’s best bitch in Durham.’ And the whole crew would laugh at him then and the shame would burn into Billy’s face.

He was pretty sure that it was actually Jerry who ‘liked a bit of boy’ as there was something bordering on the sexual in the way he taunted the younger man, but Billy would never dare say anything back to him. Jerry was an out-and-out hard case who would have killed Billy for fun, then shrugged an apology at Bobby, merely for inconveniencing him.

There was another reason why Billy wouldn’t dare challenge what was said; because he was worried that Jerry really did know something. Billy was no queer but he had been forced into doing some stuff by a cellmate in Durham that he definitely did not want to do, or be reminded of, ever again. The shame of that memory had led him to snort a good deal of his own product. But what could Billy do? Refusal was not an option at that point and the alternatives would have been far worse, so Billy had done what he had always done; he’d survived.

Did Jerry know about this or did he just guess it had happened? Could he read it in Billy’s eyes? If Jerry did know there were two worrying possibilities. One; he would tell everybody in Mahoney’s crew what had happened and Billy would be even more of a laughing stock for blowing a murderer in Durham jail. Two; Jerry was keeping the information to himself, so he could use it against Billy, most likely by making him repeat the act on Jerry – and that was an even worse prospect.

The day someone chose to blow Jerry Lemon’s head off was one of the best days of Billy Warren’s life. His tormentor had finally got what he deserved. Life might have been sweet but Bobby’s head of security, David Blake, discovered that Billy had done a coke deal without Bobby’s knowledge. This meant Billy Warren now owed his life and continued livelihood to Blake, and he began to hate the man.

‘I can’t take a piss in Newcastle without this fucker’s permission,’ he told Kinane.

Kinane looked hard at Billy through narrowed eyes. ‘You’re lucky Blake lets you carry on breathing, Billy. If it was me you’d tried to rip off like that, I’d have taken you ten miles out into the North Sea on a fishing boat and thrown you overboard.’

‘I never meant nothing by it man, honest like,’ Billy stammered.

‘I’ll do it too,’ Kinane told him, ‘if I ever hear you say another bad word about David Blake. You got that Billy?’ and Billy nodded, as if his life depended on it, which of course it did.

In the scheme of things, that exchange might not have been too significant at the time but Peter Dean had been in the bar that day and his ears pricked up. He loved a bit of gossip, did Peter and, if Kinane was taking the trouble to terrify people on his behalf, it showed just how far up Bobby Mahoney’s organisation Blake had travelled. Peter recalled that conversation before he decided who he was going to approach for money for his internet venture. He remembered it again now, as he eased his car into one of the communal parking spaces beneath Billy’s flat.