The Damage (David Blake 2) (7 page)

‘Yeah,’ I sighed, ‘I know. I’ve been stalling him. I don’t really want to have a cosy chat with him about the Gladwells.’

‘Can’t say I blame you,’ Kinane admitted, ‘what do you want me to tell him?’

‘Tell him I’ll talk to him when I’m back in the country,’ I conceded, ‘which sounds like it’s not going to be far away. What else have you got for me?’

‘It’s Toddy,’ he said, like he couldn’t quite believe it, ‘it’s not looking good.’

‘You’re kidding me. I thought Fitch was all over it.’ My lady lawyer was the dog’s bollocks and harder than most of the men in our crew.

‘She is, big time. I know she always runs the Police ragged when they drag you in for questioning,’ said Kinane, then he added, ‘but it’s her that’s telling me it’s not looking good.’

I had pinned all of my hopes on our expensive lawyer picking the Police procedure apart on this one, looking for anything that might have made evidence inadmissible or violated Toddy’s human rights in some way. Ever since he had been lifted by the Police on the Sunnydale estate months ago, we had been fighting a losing battle to get our Toddy off the hook. Mainly because he had three kilos of H in the boot of his car.

‘The Polit found a lot of product on him,’ Kinane reminded me, ‘she thinks he’s on for a stretch.’

This hit me hard. I always thought something could be done to get Toddy off, or minimise the sentence if he was sent down. Maybe he’d only get a year or two and he could handle that. We would look after him, take care of his mum and his girlfriend, compensate Toddy for the time served and make sure he had a future when he got out. That way he’d be less likely to cut a deal. If he had any notion his sentence was likely to be a long one he’d be far more open to offers from SOCA, to name names before disappearing into a witness protection scheme.

‘What are we telling Toddy?’

‘Nothing,’ said Kinane, ‘just that it will be alright. He’ll probably get off on a technicality.’

‘He believes you?’

‘Don’t know, yes, at least I think he did.’

‘As long as you’re sure then,’ I told him, but he didn’t seem to detect the sarcasm.

I realised now I’d placed too much faith in the lawyer. Susan Fitch was expensive but she knew her stuff. She was a formidable adversary and had torn more than one Police officer apart in the dock before now. They’d arrive there all brash and cocky, with a notepad full of concrete evidence, just waiting to send a villain down. Then they’d be confronted with a hard-faced analytical mind just waiting to pounce on any tiny little detail, blowing a contradictory or misrepresented piece of evidence out of all proportion until they were dizzy from it. Susan Fitch was known for getting even the most hopeless cases off scot-free. The Police bloody hated her for it. But not this time it seemed, at least according to Kinane.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ Kinane had reason to be disbelieving. We paid good money to ensure the Sunnydale estates were way down the Police’s list of priorities. Like me, they took a realistic view of the heroin trade there. It had been going on for thirty years and was never going to end, so why fight the inevitable? We were the ones who got rid of the low-lives dealing there and replaced them with our men. The estates had become a huge money earner for the firm. Our move into the Sunnydale high-rises was so successful we expanded, branching out into every other estate in the city. Now we were a presence in every run-down hell-hole in Newcastle, but better us than the alternative. Obviously the people who worked for us weren’t saints. How could they be? They dealt drugs and, on occasions, used violence. But we made sure they never went too far. People didn’t get killed on our watch, we didn’t deal to children or get teenage girls high for free then pimp them out so they could pay for their addiction, and the drugs we sold weren’t cut with strychnine, rat poison or household bleach. We cleaned up the trade, ending the tendency to settle every minor dispute with a drive-by killing. Sure we had to get rid of the local hoodlum who ran the patch before we moved in but they usually got the message, eventually, and the short, sharp shock we administered was a small price to pay to bring order where there was chaos. Even the Police understood that. It wasn’t exactly junkie nirvana on the estates now but, in the real world, it was about as good as it gets.

Because the Police knew we were the best-worst option they left us to it. So at first we couldn’t work out why Toddy had been lifted. Panicked phone calls were made, as we demanded to know what the hell had gone wrong. It was only then we realised just how unlucky Toddy had been.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I tried not to show my exasperation but this wasn’t going to be an easy one to fix, if Susan Fitch couldn’t pick holes in the arrest then no one could, ‘this is all we need.’

‘Tell that to Toddy,’ said Kinane.

I ignored him, ‘you said there was more bad news.’

‘You could call it that. Doyley has been shot.’

‘What?’ This, if anything, was even more startling news, ‘Jaiden Doyle? Where?’

‘Outside the hotel and in the back – right after the usual meeting with Palmer and me.’

This one I just didn’t get. Doyle was a low-level operative in our firm. He ran a team of dealers for Braddock in some of the high-rises on the Sunnydale Estate, but that didn’t make him a target for anyone. This didn’t make any sense.

‘Is he dead?’

‘He’ll live. The bullets went through him, just missed his lung and his heart, assuming he’s got one. To be honest, I don’t give a fuck about his well-being. His sort are ten a penny. What worries me is that someone had the balls to have a go at him. Everybody knows he’s on our payroll, so he was protected.’

Kinane was taking this like a personal affront and well he might. If you took a pot shot at one of our lads you were basically giving Joe Kinane the finger. You were saying you didn’t give a fuck about our enforcer coming after you – and Kinane wouldn’t take kindly to that attitude from anyone. He had been right to call me. Right now it was hard to imagine anything worse than Toddy facing a stretch and someone having the nerve to shoot one of our guys on our own doorstep. Even so, the last thing I needed right now was another long-haul flight back to the UK, with a load of shit to deal with at the end of it. I’d always thought that, as time went by, I’d be able to delegate more and more of the day-to-day business but it seemed that there would always be some things in our world that only the boss could sort.

I sighed, ‘I’ll take a flight in the morning.’

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

S
arah put her book down and asked ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go back to Newcastle though.’

‘When?’

I shrugged, ‘May as well be tomorrow. The sooner I sort things out, the quicker I’ll be home again.’

‘Doesn’t sound like nothing,’ her voice was calm but I could tell she was worried. We were both playing the same game, assuring each other that we weren’t really concerned about anything; that my short-notice business trip to Tyneside was a routine one and she was merely taking a passing interest.

‘It’s just stuff,’ I managed, ‘you know.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I know. Stuff…’

‘Make sure you eat properly while I’m away,’ Sarah had a bad habit of not bothering to eat if I wasn’t there to share it. Like a lot of girls, she thought toast was a meal.

‘I will.’

‘Five a day,’ I reminded her.

‘Is wine part of my five a day?’

‘It’s made of grapes, so I’ll let you have that.’

‘You’re the expert on matching it with food, which wine goes best with Maltesers?’

‘Hey, I mean it. Eat proper food or you’ll waste away. Then you’ll lose that great figure of yours and I’ll go off you completely.’

‘Thanks. I’m getting fat anyway,’ and she surveyed her impossibly flat stomach for the umpteenth time that week, scrutinising it critically.

From where I was standing she looked good. Very good in fact. And it was a shame she wasn’t feeling well at the moment because I was about to fly off for a few days and I quite fancied a going-away present. Fat chance of that though. In fact, about the only time I got to see her body these days was when she was wearing a bikini. It was strange, I’d seen Sarah naked dozens of times but when she stepped from the shower that morning and saw me, she immediately covered up before I got so much as a glimpse of her. I didn’t understand what that was all about, but I’d come to the conclusion there was a great deal I’d never understand about women.

‘Be a good girl while I’m away,’ I told her as I bent to kiss her on the forehead, ‘try not to sleep with the Gurkhas.’

‘I’ll try,’ she smiled sweetly back up at me, ‘but I can’t promise. I get so bored and what’s a girl to do?’ This time I bent lower and kissed her on the lips.

‘Thanks for that comforting thought.’

Being the boss has its advantages. Wherever I go these days I get treated like the head of any decent-size corporation, which of course I am, and I’m shown straight into the first class lounge before I board the plane. It’s fine in its own way but I am getting a bit too used to this sort of thing to really enjoy it.

A pretty young thing appeared from nowhere and gave me a smile like I was the centre of her universe, but it was all in the lips, her eyes were expressionless. I wondered how many fat, bald chief executives fall for this and try it on with her.

‘Champagne or orange juice, Sir?’ she asked me, and her ruby-red, heavily-glossed lips formed themselves into an inviting ‘O’ as she said ‘orange’ and, for a moment, I wondered what those lips would be like around me and if her blonde, tied-back hair would stay in place while she moved her head up and down. Christ, I am going to have to do something about the drought I’m in. It’s not Sarah’s fault that’s she’s suffering from depression. I understand, I really do, but this no-sex thing is turning me into a dirty old man.

‘Champagne,’ I answered, and she took a long glass by the stem and handed it to me. It’s daft really. I’ve got cases of the stuff back at the house in Hua Hin and all of it better than this bought-in-bulk inferior fizz the airline offers, but there’s still a poor, Northern boy trapped inside me somewhere who would shout ‘don’t be daft man, it’s free!’ if I refused it. I don’t think my mother ever had a glass of champagne in her life, except maybe at a wedding.

I sat for a while waiting for my flight to be called and tried to read a book. Somewhere there’s a serial killer on the loose and a maverick detective with a liking for hard drink is tracking him down. Years ago I could have read the whole thing on my flight home and enjoyed it for what it was, but I just can’t get into it. I’ve got a lot on my mind, what with Sarah not doing so well. Then there’s Toddy’s case and now even Jaiden Doyle has given me something to think about. Who would want to shoot one of my men? Lots of people probably, for a whole variety of reasons, but I have to work out who stood to gain most from the act and actually had the balls to go ahead and do it.

*

I glanced out of the window and watched as the large black Lexus pulled up outside the café. The driver parallel-parked it, taking a moment to get the vehicle straight against the kerb. There wasn’t much room between the two vans but he rocked it quickly back and forth until it was slap bang in the centre of the space. The car came to a halt, the driver’s door swung open and out stepped the hardest man in the north-east of England.

Joe Kinane was so big he made every car he drove look like a toy. He reminded me of Noddy in fact, always out of scale, far too large for the car he drove around in. Kinane stretched like he’d been cooped up in the car for too long, then he glanced towards the window, saw me sitting there, nodded and walked up to the café, frowning all the way.

The door swung open like someone had just kicked it but that wasn’t misplaced aggression, it was just Kinane’s natural awkwardness. Here was a bloke who really didn’t know his own strength. Joe Kinane was around six-four in his socks and weighed in at about two hundred and forty pounds. He was in his early fifties but remained undiminished for it. There was no sense that Kinane had seen his better years and was on the wane. Certainly no one was brave enough to suggest this to him. Pride alone would have forced him to knock them into a different post code.

Kinane had been talent-spotted by Bobby Mahoney while still a young man. Back then Bobby hadn’t been the top dog. He was still an emerging force, carving out a name and a reputation for himself. He had reached the stage where he had earned respect from those within his profession, but there were a number of candidates who could just as easily have taken on the role of Top Boy in the city and he was merely one of them. Another candidate was Alex Clarke who, along with his two brothers, came from a long line of criminal stock. They were hardened villains whose father and uncles had been frightening people for two decades before they came along. The rise of the Clarkes seemed almost pre-ordained in those days. Certainly Bobby was aware of them and would have been wary of their reputation, which involved a ruthless and enthusiastic use of violence.

The Clarke brothers decided to take over a pub they’d taken a liking to. It was on the outskirts of town but doing well because it was right opposite a thriving club they also had their eye on. The brothers gave the owner an ultimatum; sell to them for way below market value or stay put and have the place burned down around him, but the owner refused, so they decided to pay him a visit. They didn’t realise that a new man had started on the door that night. That man was Joe Kinane.