Insider (The Glass Family)

  Insider

  Owen Mullen

  To Christine

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part II

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part III

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part IV

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Postscript

  Read on

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  More from Owen Mullen

  Also by Owen Mullen

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  Prologue

  Holiday Inn, Lime Street, Liverpool

  James Stevens – Jazzer to his friends – ducked into the hotel doorway, ran a wet hand over his face and shook water from his hair; ‘a drowned rat’ was the cliché in his head. That didn’t matter; he wasn’t here for his good looks. On the phone, the woman with the New York accent had told him he’d been recommended – she didn’t say who by – outlined the job and asked if he was interested. Yes or no? Jazzer sensed if he hesitated, the conversation would be over, the opportunity gone. He’d said yes and was glad, because, as the details emerged, what she wanted was a nice little earner: nothing he hadn’t done before. Too bloody right he was interested.

  They’d arranged to meet in the hotel on Lime Street. Before the call ended, he’d asked, ‘How will I recognise you?’

  The reply was strange, maybe a joke. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that.’

  ‘What should I call you?’

  ‘Why do you need to call me anything?’

  ‘I like to know who I’m working for.’

  ‘You’re not working for anybody yet.’

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘It’s Charley.’

  Jazzer clocked her immediately at a table near the back of the bar, and understood why she’d been confident about being recognised. The bar wasn’t busy but if it had been he would’ve still been able to pick her out: mid-thirties, long red hair, red lips and a full figure only a real man would take on; a 1950s movie-star type, striking and challenging, even from a distance. They didn’t shake hands. No small talk or would-you-like-a-drink malarkey. And Jazzer quickly realised two things: his wasn’t the only name on her list – maybe not even her first choice – and the lady languidly crossing her legs was no ordinary female.

  The money she was offering was impressive, generous even. It soon became clear why. It wasn’t just one job. She gave him an envelope, soiled at the edges as if it had been carried in a pocket until she found the right person to give it to.

  ‘Any questions?’

  ‘No, no questions.’

  ‘You’re straight about what’s required?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Who you use and how many will be your decision. Don’t be greedy; to make it work will need a minimum of three. Any less increases the risk.’

  Jazzer knew a dozen guys who’d fit the bill. ‘We won’t fuck it up.’

  Her reply confirmed his assessment. ‘If I believed there was the slightest chance of that, I wouldn’t be sitting here. A word of warning: these aren’t boys you’ll be going against. The plan’s simple. Stick to it and it’ll be all right. We won’t talk again until London. I’ll meet you at the flat the next morning with the rest of the money. Are we clear?’

  Jazzer weighed the envelope in his hand. Foolishly, he made a joke. ‘Tempted to get a taxi out to John Lennon Airport and disappear. Somewhere sunny would be nice.’

  She smiled, a lipstick smear like blood on her teeth. ‘I’d find you. No matter where you went, I’d find you.’

  Jazzer believed her.

  Part I

  1

  River Cars, Lambeth, South London

  Friday 8.57 p.m.

  Ethel brushed a strand of stray hair from her eyes, wedged the little that was left of the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, and kept the oranges in the air with the deftness of a piano virtuoso. Her voice was an emotionless monotone her ex-husband would have no trouble recognising. Ethel was thirty-three years old, brunette, hard-faced and divorced with two kids. A lot of people would struggle with the job she did – the controller at River Cars – especially on Friday nights when everybody in Lambeth and their granny wanted a taxi. She chain-smoked Benson & Hedges, sipped a cold coffee that hadn’t been over-warm to begin with, and matched the requests for taxis to the nearest available cars.

  It was still early. She was in a dull-yellow monstrosity of a portacabin on an unlit piece of spare ground behind a Spar food store. Ten vehicles, left by guys out on the road, were parked on the uneven earth. When the shifts changed at six in the morning, they’d disappear; others would take their place; she would go home and fall into bed.

  The taxi game was a twenty-four-seven operation – drivers coming and going until the clubs and late-night pubs finally closed. Ethel wasn’t alone. Winston, her boyfriend, an unemployed painter and decorator from Jamaica who occasionally drove part-time for the firm, was with her, stretched out on a busted sofa, flicking through an old newspaper somebody had left behind.

  Ethel put a fresh cigarette in her mouth and lit it off the one between her fingers.

  ‘Car for Victoria Mansions, South Lambeth Road. Going up West. Who’s nearest?’

  A tinny voice replied through the static. ‘I’ll get it. Be there in six minutes.’

  Winston looked up from his paper. ‘Sort us an E, will you, love?’

  Ethel ignored him. He tried again. ‘C’mon, sort us.’

  She turned emotionless eyes on him. ‘Got any money? ’Cause if you haven’t, forget it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Yeah… that’s what I thought.’

  Ethel swore under her breath and brought her attention back to the phones. Winston was a freeloader, a loser she should never have got involved with. The reason he was here instead of with his pals in the pub was in the two black bin bags at her feet. While she worked her arse off, his plan was to get out of his head for fuck all, but she’d had it with him; he was on his way out. Winston had been a drunken error made one night when she’d still believed every black man was a stud – a mistake she’d kept repeating even after he’d proved it was a myth. What did she need him for, anyway? This job paid well – great, actually – Ethel could afford the life she wanted. All she needed from a bloke was sex, and Winston was no Idris Elba in that department.

  Her voice bounced off the portacabin walls. ‘Car for Black Prince Road. Any takers?’

  Ronnie hurried along the pavement, one hand in his pocket, the other carrying a sports bag with Nike on the side. When he reached his destination, he left the street, ducked into the shadow of the cars parked on the waste ground and hunkered down in the darkness. Jazzer had recko
ned a couple, maybe three at the most, but a Scouser, especially one with a shooter, could handle three London lads any day of the week, no problem.

  Ronnie rubbed his fingers together, feeling the sweat on them, unzipped the sports bag, drew a balaclava over his head and ran to the portacabin door. A flat female voice drifted outside. For a minute he paused, listening, hearing nothing but her nasal drawl and male south London accents through the static. He threw the door back and charged in, levelling the gun at the people inside. The surprised man and woman raised their hands on a reflex; Ethel’s cigarette fell from her fingers and smouldered on the carpet that hadn’t been cleaned since the day it had been tacked to the floor.

  ‘Give us what you’ve got and you won’t get hurt.’

  Ronnie pronounced it ‘heert’.

  She answered defiantly. ‘There’s no money until the shifts finish.’

  Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t I just blow you and your shite chat away? I admire your bottle, Mrs, but save it. This is the wrong time to be a smart-arse. It isn’t appreciated. I’ll take whatever cash you’ve got but I’m not after money. So, don’t fuck me about!’

  Winston said, ‘Give him what he wants – the money, the dope – give him all of it. It isn’t ours.’

  Ethel pushed a bin bag along the floor with her foot.

  Ronnie said, ‘Now the other one.’

  Her lip curled in a sneer. ‘I feel sorry for you.’

  ‘Really, why’s that?’

  ‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life and don’t even know it. If I were you, I’d drop those bags and start running.’

  At the door, he stopped. ‘And if I were you, I’d think before I called the police. “They stole our drugs” won’t play well.’

  He dipped his hand into one of the bags, brought out two blue pills and tossed them on the filthy carpet. ‘Enjoy the rest of your night.’

  Eamon Durham, Independent Bookmakers, Lewisham, South London

  Friday 9.00 p.m.

  They moved swiftly, confidently, shotguns raised, their faces hidden by balaclavas. Tosh stayed by the door. Jazzer walked to the middle of the floor littered with discarded pink betting slips. On a television mounted above their heads, the runners and riders were under starter’s orders for the last race of the day at Newmarket. Die-hards gathered to watch their four-legged addiction play out. Hungry for fresh failure, the rest studied the racing pages tacked to the walls, convinced the evening meet at Uttoxeter would change their luck.

  Behind the screen, the manager and a woman counted cash. Neither noticed the stranger until he fired into the ceiling, bringing down tiles in an explosion of noise and a cloud of dust. His second shot silenced the TV, the shell casing fell to the ground and he had their attention. He stood with his feet apart, surveying their fear through the eye-holes of his bally, the gun comfortably resting against his shoulder, fingers on the stock behind the trigger guard. His mate rotated his weapon in the general direction of everyone. Without the masks they would’ve been alarming, with them, the robbers were terrifying.

  The voice wasn’t London. ‘Hands in the air. It’s a lovely night. Don’t spoil it by being stupid, eh?’

  He lobbed a canvas holdall over the Perspex and trained the shotgun on the nearest cashier, a blonde, overweight woman in her forties with a film of sweat on her top lip.

  ‘Fill it up before Eamon gets here.’

  Behind the bally, he chuckled at his joke.

  The manager took half a step forward, his face tight with anger. ‘Do you idiots know what you’re doing? Who you’re ripping off? There is no Eamon. Never was.’

  ‘Fill the fucking thing and shut it!’

  Not London: Liverpool.

  ‘Listen, lads, this isn’t wise.’

  ‘Told you to shut it, didn’t I?’

  The bullet shattered the screen of the pay-out window and blew a hole in the counter, sending Formica and jagged shards of wood into the air. One barbed fragment, seven inches long, pierced the manager’s shoulder, passing through the flesh and out the other side. Instantly, his white shirt turned red. The woman saw it and fainted.

  Suddenly, it was going wrong.

  The guy at the door loaded a cartridge into the chamber and levelled the gun on the crowd underneath the shattered TV, more nervous than he’d been a minute ago.

  ‘Hurry it up, Jazzer. Let’s get out of here.’

  They’d seen Reservoir Dogs and agreed not to speak their names. ‘Jazzer’ was a mistake.

  Jazzer shouted, ‘Give me the bag! Now!’

  The manager gripped his arm with his other hand; lifting the holdall was a non-starter. The thief reached over and grabbed it. Inside was filled with fivers and tenners and twenties – more money than he’d ever seen. He smiled. The plan had worked – they were going to get away with it.

  ‘Good doing business with you.’

  The injured man was losing a lot of blood; his next stop would be Accident and Emergency. He gritted his teeth and screwed his eyes up against the pain – there was pity in them.

  ‘You bloody fools. Nobody steals from the family.’

  Jazzer had the last word. ‘Says who? Tell Luke, Charley was asking for him.’

  2

  The steps to the basement flat in Moscow Road were worn smooth from a century’s worth of wear; weeds that would die in the summer heat sprouted between the stones. In his tiny room, George Ritchie picked the final chips off a plate and drained his mug; the tea had gone cold, but it didn’t matter, he’d enjoyed it well enough. After almost thirty years in the south, the abiding memory, the thing he missed most about Newcastle, was a decent fish supper on a Friday night.

  In many respects he wasn’t so different from the young George who’d stepped off the train at King’s Cross station with the clothes on his back, twenty pounds in his pocket, and a deserved reputation as a hard man. He remembered that morning well: scraps of paper blown along the platform by a cold wind at the beginning of another grey day in the north; his mother clutching her heavy skirt beside Hannah, both pretending to be happy as they saw him away on his great adventure. Ritchie could still picture them, the old lady, especially, waving a frail arm in the air, until they were out of sight.

  He would never see her alive again.

  In close on three decades, apart from for her funeral, he’d been back less than half a dozen times. When Hannah’s much-loved idiot son, Jonjo, had insisted on following his uncle south and got himself killed, Ritchie’s sister had cut him out of her life, severing the only remaining connection with what had been. George had warned him; Jonjo wouldn’t listen. Telling her that wouldn’t bring her boy back to her or change her opinion of George.

  Newcastle was the past. London was home.

  Money and what it could buy had lost its power to impress George Ritchie long ago – if, indeed, it ever had that power. Seeing people relentlessly wage war against each other when they already had more of everything than they needed made not joining in an easy decision. One he hadn’t regretted.

  He could easily have afforded some flash gaff. But what was the point? He’d better things to do with his cash, like funnelling it into rehabilitation programmes that used money raised from charities and social investment groups to help ex-cons rebuild their lives, giving young fools the chance he’d never had. Ritchie was a career criminal: the irony didn’t escape him. His life of crime had been inevitable. That didn’t mean it was all he was capable of. Unlike almost everyone in the game, he wasn’t in it for the money, the power or the women. He was here because he was great at this; the mistake he’d made was not realising it sooner, and taking crap from ignorant lowlifes.

  Thanks to Luke Glass, that was behind him.

  But Luke had a vision, a vision George didn’t share. Laundering money through real estate, construction and LBC, the private members’ club in Central London, no doubt, made business sense. George Ritchie wanted no part of it: the old dog had no use for new tricks. He’d swapped the st
reets of Newcastle for the streets of London – streets were what he knew. Luke realised he wouldn’t back down and let him have it his way. Now, Ritchie ran everything south of the river, leaving him free to build his new empire.

  Of course, with the idiots who crossed Ritchie’s path, violence was a necessary part of business. But, in the grand scheme, it was a minor part.

  If the offer to join the firm had come from Luke’s older brother Danny Glass, he would’ve turned it down on the spot. Danny was exactly the type of boss he’d needed to shuck off – a thug who thought fear was the key to loyalty, and breaking bones the answer to every situation; a psycho, thick as shit, who, in the end, lived a violent life and probably died a violent death.

  Depending on the day of the week, urban myth had Danny on a beach in Spain, South Africa or Brazil, drinking Cuba libre or twelve-year-old Glenfiddich over ice, with a blonde, a brunette, or a couple of teenage black chicks: fairy tales to help others like him sleep at night.

  Ritchie believed he was a lot closer to home – under the abandoned warehouse in Fulton Street where he’d tortured so many unfortunates, or at the bottom of the river. Put there by his brother.