The Reckoning (Carter Brothers), page 12
Crouching down, Gerry grasped Skinny’s jaw in his fist, his fingernails digging in to the soft flesh. ‘Who have you told about the attempt on Garner’s life?’ he asked.
‘No one,’ Skinny cried, wrenching his jaw out of Joey’s fist and leaning his body as far away as he possibly could. ‘We haven’t told anyone; I swear down, man.’
A wicked glint danced across Gerry’s eyes; it was exactly what he’d hoped to hear. Standing up, he flicked his head in his son’s direction. ‘Finish him,’ he ordered.
‘What?’ Skinny screamed, terror filling every ounce of his being. ‘You can’t do this,’ he begged of them, ‘I won’t say anything, I swear I won’t.’
‘Too fucking late.’ Joey laughed. ‘Did you really think we were going to let you live after that prick had killed his old man? Nah,’ he said, leaning over Skinny’s shaking body, ‘you and your pal were next on our list.’ He made a slicing action across his throat, then shrugged. ‘It was always going to end this way.’
‘Stop toying with him and get it over and done with,’ Gerry snapped, tapping impatiently on his wristwatch.
Tears slipped down Skinny’s cheeks and, as the enormity of the situation hit home, he curled his body into a foetal position, brought his hands protectively up to his face and sobbed. This was it, he thought, this was where his life would come to an end. He didn’t want to die, a month away from his thirtieth birthday; he was too young, he should have had his whole life ahead of him. He could barely breathe, so acute was his fear, and when he opened his mouth to speak, the words caught in the back of his throat. ‘I ain’t done nothing wrong,’ he managed to choke out in a last-ditch attempt to save his life. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’
Joey gave a nonchalant shrug and, lifting the weapon above his head, he gave a sickening grin. ‘Who actually gives a flying fuck?’
As the weapon sliced through the air, Giorgio’s eyes widened and he momentarily froze. Oblivious to the layer of sticky blood that peppered his face and clothes, he slammed his hands over his ears and backed as far away from the horrific scene as he possibly could. In his panic, he fumbled to work the sound system and jabbed frantically at the buttons. Moments later, ‘Zorba’s Dance’ blared out from the speakers, partially drowning out Skinny’s bloodcurdling screams.
Two minutes, that was all it took for Skinny’s life to be extinguished. Joey got to his feet, his laughter ringing out. ‘Good fucking riddance to the ponce,’ he said, wiping his stained hands down his shirt.
‘You did good, lads,’ Gerry said with a nod of his head. ‘I’d say that’s two down and three to go.’ Lighting a cigar, he took several large puffs then, carelessly flicking the ash on to the floor, he turned his head to where Giorgio was standing. ‘And turn that fucking racket off,’ he growled, gesturing to the sound system. ‘I can barely hear myself think over here.’
‘What have you done?’ Switching off the music, Giorgio took a reluctant step towards them. ‘My restaurant,’ he gasped, taking in the blood splatter that coated the starched linen tablecloths, carpet, walls, and ceiling. ‘How am I supposed to explain this to my wife?’
Joey looked around him, as though only just noticing the aftermath of the brutal murder he’d committed. ‘Looks like you’ll have to get the decorators in,’ he sighed.
‘Get the decorators in?’ Giorgio hissed. ‘How am I supposed to explain the fact I have a dead body in my restaurant?’ he asked with a nod of his head in Skinny’s direction.
All four men looked down at the corpse. Underneath the dim lighting, Skinny’s broken and bloodied body was so small and so thin that he looked almost childlike; he hadn’t stood a chance against them.
‘You know a pig farmer, don’t you, Dad?’ Joey tilted his head to one side, then looked casually down at his latest victim. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem, I mean, let’s all be honest here, there’s fuck all there for the pigs to get their teeth into anyway,’ he said, referring to Skinny’s slight frame. ‘He’ll be demolished within a matter of minutes, five tops; who wants to have a bet on it?’ He held out his hand, a wicked glint lighting up his eyes.
‘You’re one sick fuck, do you know that?’ Carlos commented with a wry grin.
‘Takes one to know one.’ Joey winked, plucking a linen napkin from the table and wiping it over his face. ‘So what shall we do with him then, Dad?’
Thinking the question over, Gerry continued to puff on his cigar. ‘We bury him,’ he finally answered, eyeing the plaster cast. ‘The less people involved, the better. Bag him up and bury him in the woods and make sure that you cut that bastard cast off his leg first,’ he instructed. ‘The last thing we want is for him to be identified. In fact’ – he cocked his head to one side, his beady little eyes narrowed into slits, emphasising the deep lines across his forehead – ‘make that Epping Forest. Believe me, lads, he won’t be the first corpse to end up there, the place is like a fucking cemetery.’
Doing as they were told, Joey set to work hacking off the plaster cast, while Carlos fetched several bin bags from the kitchen. Once the cast had been removed, they then began the monotonous task of wrapping the bloodied body.
Giorgio’s mouth hung slightly open. ‘But what about my restaurant?’ he protested.
Gerry looked up. ‘Little tip for you, son, I suggest you fill a bucket with hot soapy water and, while you’re at it, pour in a bottle of bleach.’ He nodded towards the blood splatter. ‘Claret can be a right bastard to wash out,’ he said with a carefree shrug.
Stunned into silence, Giorgio brought his hands up to his head, wishing more than ever that he hadn’t opened the door to them. Hindsight was a wonderful thing, he decided; he should have ignored the knocking, should have closed his eyes and cuddled up to his Rosita and listened to her soft snores as he drifted off to sleep. But no, here he was, worrying about washing blood out of the carpet before his wife had the chance to ask him what the hell had gone on. At that precise moment, he didn’t think he could despise Gerry or his son any more than he already did.
In his prime, Clifford Evans had been a large man with a muscular frame and a powerful right hook. Nowadays, his muscles ran to fat, and the power he’d once had behind him was all but gone. The fact he had a handful of men or boys, considering the majority of them were barely out of their teenage years, still running around after him and doing his bidding made people naturally wary of him. Dressed in loose tracksuit bottoms and a worn grey t-shirt that exposed a vast amount of hairy flesh, he’d long given up on trying to tug the thin material over his large, flabby belly; instead, he spent his days barking out orders and idly plucking fluff from out of his belly button.
He’d let himself go and was the first to hold his hand up and admit this fact. He wore his greasy, badly dyed hair in the style of a combover and still it did nothing to hide his receding hairline, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he stank to high heaven, a sour stench that radiated out of his pores. It had been many months since he’d had a shower, months since he’d even run a damp cloth over his face or a bar of soap under his armpits, and as for his nether regions, it had been years since he’d seen his penis, not that he had much use for it any more, women weren’t exactly beating a path to his door. His movements were restricted, his swollen joints painful, and on his backside the beginning of a pressure sore was forming, the skin red and weeping.
In recent years, he’d more or less become a hermit. Holed up in his bedroom, everything he could possibly want was within easy reach, he even had a bedpan, and every time he needed to relieve himself, his minions would lift him on to the pan, their faces red and their chests heaving from the exertion of heaving his heavy bulk several inches off the bed. On the over-the-bed table in front of him was a half-bottle of whisky and several betting slips. He’d always loved to have a flutter on the horses and had a tab at the local bookies, not that he had any intentions of ever paying his bill, why should he? As far as he was concerned, he owned the town and expected those around him to not only jump to his attention but to also ask how high. Despite his infirmity, Clifford had eyes everywhere, nothing got past him, and although he might not have stepped foot outside the front door for a number of years, he knew everything that happened out on the streets, he made it his business to know what was going down, the streets were his livelihood, after all.
Situated at the bottom of the bed was a flat-screen television and, thumping his fist down on the bedside table, upsetting the cut glass filled with whisky, he screamed out encouragement as several horses ran around the course. That was the beauty of the sports channel; it didn’t matter what time of day or night it was, there was always a race on somewhere in the world. Within a matter of minutes, the race was over, and with a face set like thunder, he flopped back against the pillows, screwed up his betting slip, and tossed it in the general direction of the overflowing waste basket.
The door to the bedroom creaked open and, as he looked up, ice-cold fear ran down the length of Clifford’s spine.
‘Sorry, boss,’ one of his foot soldiers said sheepishly. ‘I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ Dressed in a badly-fitting dark coloured suit that Clifford insisted his workforce wear, Taylor Reynolds was young, and as yet hadn’t even reached his eighteenth birthday. His cheeks were flushed pink, and he rubbed at a series of red marks across his neck, where moments earlier Danny had slammed him up against the wall when he’d opened the front door.
Clifford’s startled gaze went from Danny McKay to Moray Garner. Just one of them alone turning up on his doorstep would have been bad enough, but together the two men were terrifying, their combined presence enough to concern the most hardened of men.
‘Fuck me,’ Danny exclaimed, slamming the crook of his elbow over his nose, ‘it’s about time you let some air in here, ain’t it?’
Clifford’s gaze went to the closed windows, then back to Danny, an embarrassed chuckle escaping from his lips. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t come all this way just to tell me to throw open the windows,’ he rightly guessed, his chest rattling as he spoke.
Danny and Moray shared a glance. On the drive over to Clifford’s house, they had barely said more than two words to each other, the uncomfortable silence between them growing more and more oppressive as the minutes ticked by, not that anyone else needed to pick up on this little nugget of information. United, they were a force to be reckoned with; alone, and at each other’s throats, the vultures would soon begin to circle and do their utmost to pick them apart.
As they stalked towards him, Clifford felt his bowels inadvertently loosen and he gave his foot soldiers a sidelong glance, hoping by some miracle that the only reason for their visit was because of something one of his minions had said or done. ‘Well,’ he snapped with as much strength as he could muster; he couldn’t show his fear, couldn’t let the men in his employment become aware of the fact that he was nothing more than a dried-up old has-been who was scared of his own shadow. ‘What the fuck do you two fuckers want?’
Moray looked around him and, wrinkling his nose at the sour stench that emanated from Clifford’s direction, he answered. ‘You like to keep your ears to the ground,’ he stated matter-of-factly, ‘you make it your business to know what’s going down.’
Clifford’s forehead furrowed. ‘Yeah and so fucking what, this is my turf, ain’t no law against that, is there?’
Danny laughed out loud. The only reason Clifford was even in the position of running the streets was because they had allowed him to take them. Back in the day, this would have been their patch, their turf. ‘Cut the crap,’ Danny barked out, ‘what do you know about the shooting that took place in my club?’
Clifford’s mouth fell slightly open; he should have known that they would turn up at some point to question him, it had been inevitable, he supposed; after all, they’d said it themselves, he knew everything that went down on the streets. Composing himself, he shook his head, his expression becoming one of mock sorrow. ‘A sorry state of affairs,’ he said, spreading open his arms, a crafty twinkle in his eyes, ‘and I sincerely hope that you catch the bastard responsible.’
As far as Danny was concerned, Clifford’s show of mock concern was the equivalent of a red flag to a bull, and bounding forward, he grasped a handful of Clifford’s t-shirt in his fist and yanked the startled man towards him. Considering the bulk Clifford had behind him, it was no mean feat, reinforcing not only to Clifford but also to his foot soldiers that Danny hadn’t lost his touch. He may have been older and greyer, may have been out of the life for a long time, but he was still capable of causing a man some considerable harm.
‘What have I said?’ Clifford wheezed, fear radiating in his eyes. ‘If I knew who was responsible, I would have told you.’
Danny twisted the threadbare material in his fist, almost cutting off Clifford’s air supply in the process. ‘Don’t give me that old bollocks. Do I look like I was born yesterday?’ he snarled. ‘Now start fucking talking before I end up losing my rag and, believe me,’ he said, his twisted expression just inches away from Clifford’s, ‘you really don’t want me to do that.’
Clifford’s whimpers reached a crescendo. ‘Moray,’ he shrieked, ‘help me out here, I don’t know anything, I swear I don’t.’
Rolling his eyes, Moray gave a long theatrical sigh. ‘You never learn, do you?’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten our last meeting already?’
Clifford swallowed deeply, sweat rolling down his face as he opened his mouth to answer. The fear he felt was so strong that it radiated out of his pores. It was because of Danny that he’d become a recluse in the first place. It had been Danny who’d stamped on his back, snapping two of the bones in his lumbar region almost clean in half. Long after the bones had healed, the trauma he’d suffered had stayed with him and he’d been in pain for so long that he hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. With Danny’s threat to kill him the next time he laid his eyes upon him still ringing in his ears, he hadn’t wanted to venture outside the house, just in case he bumped into the lunatic a second time.
As the years had passed, he’d sought comfort from staying at home; this was where he felt safe, and as it turned out, it hadn’t been that difficult to run his business from the comfort of his bed, after all. It hadn’t even been that difficult to recruit his soldiers; they’d come to him, expecting his name, and his reputation, to bring them power and notoriety. Of course, they all left him once they were old enough to realise he was nothing other than a fat bastard who was too scared to leave the house, not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things, there was always some spotty kid waiting to take their place.
‘Come on,’ Danny urged, tightening his grip.
Blinking rapidly, Clifford glanced in the direction of his foot soldiers. He could sense their disappointment, could see it in their eyes that they thought he was a coward, and, even worse, that they knew he was about to break the number one rule and become a grass. ‘All right,’ he choked out, fear getting the better of him, ‘all right, I’ll tell you everything I know.’
Ever so slightly, Danny released his grip.
‘I have heard one or two rumours’ – he paused to catch his breath, his chest heaving – ‘that someone has been asking around, that they wanted to buy a shooter.’
As he and Moray looked at one another, Danny lifted his fist in the air, ready and more than willing to smash it into Clifford’s face if he didn’t tell them everything they wanted to know. ‘Who?’ he demanded.
Debating just how much information he should divulge, Clifford faltered. Gerry and his son Joey were not the type of men to be messed with. It was no secret that they had a vicious streak, that they liked to see people suffer, yet in Clifford’s eyes, there was no contest, Danny McKay made the Manns look like pussycats in comparison. McKay was a complete and utter nutcase, and that was him on a good day.
‘Answer the fucking question,’ Danny growled, pulling back his fist. ‘Who wanted to buy a shooter?’
‘I told them to go and see Robbie Groves.’ Preparing himself for Danny’s fist to crash into his face, Clifford slammed his eyes shut and leant his head back as far as he possibly could.
As Danny narrowed his eyes, Clifford instantly realised his slip-up and gingerly opened one eye. ‘I mean, I presumed they would go and visit Robbie; he is the best in the business, after all. He really knows his stuff.’
‘Did,’ Moray interjected. ‘Robbie is dead; the no-good bastards murdered him.’
Clifford’s eyes widened and his face paled that little bit further.
‘Stop with the bullshit,’ Danny said, yanking Clifford towards him, one meaty fist still grasping on to the front of Clifford’s shirt just below his double chin. ‘Give me a name.’
Clifford sighed; he knew when he was beaten and, as the fight left him, his bottom lip wobbled. ‘Gerry Mann. He’s out for revenge, something to do with what happened to his best mate years back.’
Throwing Clifford away from him, Danny straightened up and turned to look over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised. ‘Who the fuck is Gerry Mann when he’s at home?’
Moray gave a slight shrug, racking his brain as to who Clifford could be referring to. Mann, he’d heard the name before, he just couldn’t put his finger on where. As far as he was aware, they’d had no dealings with a Gerry in the past, not that he’d actively been keeping track.
‘Years ago, his pal was murdered.’ Leaning back against the pillows, Clifford shifted his weight slightly, trying to make himself more comfortable. ‘It was a big thing at the time, made the national papers and everything. Well, he and Gerry were more like brothers than mates; it’s sickening what they did to him, barbaric, and Gerry, well,’ he sighed, ‘he’s never got over it. I mean, how could he? Like I said, they were best mates, he always vowed he would one day have his revenge and I suppose this is it.’ He shrugged.
The tiny hairs at the back of Danny’s neck stood to attention. ‘What’s the name of this friend?’
