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Turns out, marking your territory wasn’t the sole preserve of spraying tom cats with big balls. Sheila smiled at the thought as she prowled around the basement bar of M1 House in her Louboutins.
‘I’d like you to rearrange the seating down here,’ she told Frank, describing the space in the bowels of the super-club with a wave of her arm. Her Tiffany bangles jangled merrily, audible above the thub, thub, thub of the bass from upstairs, as the DJ and sound engineers performed the soundcheck ahead of an evening of revelry.
Frank was nodding like one of those toy dogs you got in the rear window of crappy cars. Jumpy, as usual. Her brother-in-law had never been anything but.
‘Yeah. Yeah, Sheila, love. Mint. But what do you mean?’
‘Get one of the staff to move the furniture, Frank. Set up single tables and two chairs.’ Visualising how the space would ideally work in this debut foray into the world of speed-dating, Sheila stalked over to one of the tables in the subterranean bar, recently redubbed, ‘Jack’s bar’. On the wall hung a neon sign, styled from a lyric her nephew had apparently written on one of the toilet doors.
In the beginning, there was Jack.
She glanced momentarily at it. Reminded of how much Frank had lost. Grabbing the sleeve of Frank’s baggy top – an old James long-sleeved T from the band’s Gold Mother heyday – she changed tack. ‘Are you eating?’ Through the cotton fabric, worn soft and thin with use, she could feel that his forearms, always wiry at the best of times, were mere bone and sinew now, covered with skin.
Frank cocked his head to one side. Entirely grey-white, though he’d always boasted the best head of hair out of the two O’Brien brothers. Paddy had had only a ring of shorn fluff around a shining freckled pate, by the end. The fiery ginger of his youth had dulled in later years to a dirty strawberry blond. But Frank had inherited different genes entirely. And not just follically. ‘Course,’ he said. ‘I had a lovely kebab on Tuesday. It had sauce and everything.’
‘That’s two days ago. Have you eaten since?’ Sheila asked, pondering the shadows that the basement bar’s mood-lighting cast along the gaunt furrows either side of his mouth.
He grinned at her. Narrowed his eyes. Wagging his finger, as if he’d just sussed some sister-in-lawly subterfuge. ‘I see what you’re doing. You’re checking up on me, aren’t you?’ He pulled his sleeve gently out of reach, ramming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘It’s nice of you but—’
‘Come round for dinner with me and Conks tonight. I’ll make a curry.’ Sheila knew what an overgrown boy like Frank needed. Mothering. Perhaps she could find him a woman through her speed-dating venture.
‘Aw, She. I’m busy actually. I’ve got this—’
‘Now. Tables and chairs,’ Sheila said, assuming that the dinner was a done deal and turning her attention to the layout of the bar area. ‘Me and Gloria went to another speed-dating night, run as a franchise by some big company that covers the north. They had the same set-up. A number on each table. You ring the bell. The men move round after three minutes to sit with a new woman. So the seating’s really important.’
Scratching at his ear, Frank frowned. ‘Sheila, I hope you don’t think I’m a cheeky sod, but you’re the head of the O’Briens, now. You’re the boss-lady. What the hell are you doing, messing around with lonely hearts crap?’
Sheila moved over to the bar where she had left her laptop in its bag. Beckoned Frank to follow her. She could barely contain her excitement as it effervesced like Cristal champagne inside her. Several months ago, Paddy would have popped those bubbles for her with a verbal put-down or a physical slap.
‘This is my latest entrepreneurial vision, Frank. And you’re helping me do it. Come and look.’
Opening the laptop on the bar, she brought up a brightly coloured website. Photo after photo of beaming, attractive, wholesome-looking couples holding hands, kissing, embracing … ‘Online dating.’
Slack-jawed, Frank stared at the web page’s masthead. True Love Dates.
‘It’s a play on words,’ Sheila said. ‘True Love Dates instead of True Love Waits. Get it?’
Frank nodded, clearly not getting it at all.
‘It’s me and Gloria’s new venture. We’re gonna do speed-dating to draw people in, and I’ve just had this website designed. There’s millions of subscribers to some of the bigger online-dating sites. We get their credit card details and bam! You slap on an admin charge and you’re making a fortune from sod all. Algorithms do the work. And once I’ve got a stack of subscribers, I’m going to do a big phishing scam that can’t be traced. I’ve got this speccy computer geek from UMIST reckons he can cream millions off the top, straight into an offshore account.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s the darknet, or some shit, Frank,’ she said, savouring the thrill of her racing pulse and the endorphins that momentarily almost snuffed out the stress of Ellis James and the tax and annoying CCTV cameras that saw everything. ‘This is the future. It’s so good, because it’s almost legal!’ She tapped her nail extensions on the gleaming reinforced glass bar for emphasis. ‘And sophisticated. The set-up costs are sod all. And me and Gloria get to spread a little love into the bargain. We’ve already got fifty sign-ups for tomorrow night’s speed-dating and a couple of thousand on this dating website.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much,’ Frank said, leaning over the bar to pour himself half a lager from the tap. His T-shirt riding up to reveal an emaciated, concave stomach.
Sheila looked away abruptly, stroking the web page that glowed lovingly out at her from the laptop’s screen. ‘Give it a couple of months and it will,’ she said, somewhat irritated that her enthusiasm wasn’t as contagious as she’d hoped. Remembering the way Paddy had ridiculed her idea to start up a cleaning agency all those years ago. Bastard. But now he was dead, and the cleaning agency, staffed by women they’d rescued from scumbag traffickers, had a turnover of a couple of million a year and was growing month on month. Income she could spend, however circuitously it made its way to her current account … unlike Paddy’s dirty cash that sat in rubble sacks beneath the tiled floor of her guest en-suite. ‘I know what I’m doing, you know. Same as you knew what you were doing when you bought this place, Frank.’
‘I’ve had nothing but aggro since I bought this club,’ Frank said, opening an old-fashioned pill box and dropping a small tablet into his drink. ‘My son was murdered on my dance floor, and then, that twat, the Fish Man killed a load of kids. Our Jack’s dead. My reputation’s hanging by a thread. Some savvy businessman I am.’
‘But that was all down to Paddy,’ Sheila said, rubbing Frank’s bony shoulder as a gesture of solidarity, though he shrugged away from her touch. ‘And he’s gone. You’ve done well to get this place open again. Sod that bullying arsehole. He’s just a memory. To hell with the past, Frank. You own one of the country’s biggest super-clubs and you do it well. All the outrage in the papers from worried middle-class parents made kids who were desperate for a walk on the wild side wanna come back! M1 House is edgy and cool. You’re cool! Have faith in yourself, chuck.’
Sighing heavily, the crow’s feet around Frank’s eyes seemed to deepen. The shadows on his face seemed to lengthen. The Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, sticking out of his scrawny neck as though a malign spirit had taken up residence in his throat and was trying to punch its way out.
‘I’m not so sure,’ he said. ‘Just when I got the Boddlingtons off my back, and I’m getting back on my feet with the club, there’s been a few new faces around. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.’
Sheila snapped the lid of the laptop shut. ‘New faces? How do you mean?’ She studied Frank’s face for signs of drug-fuelled paranoia and hippy bullshit.
‘You got new lads working for you? Dealing in here?’
‘A couple of temporary workers, doing a bit of this and that. We’re struggling to find the staff since Paddy got stabbed. A couple of the lads got caught in the crossfire when the Boddlingtons did over the cannabis farm. Quite a few have just lost their nerve and said they were going straight. I can’t exactly stop them. Or blame them.’
‘Paddy would have had them killed before he’d let them go,’ Frank said, running a thin finger around and around the rim of his half-pint glass.
‘I’m not Paddy,’ Sheila said, pressing her lips together tightly. Stifling an outburst. ‘And that’s precisely why I’m trying to build up me and Gloria’s cleaning business and do these new start-ups. White-collar crime, Frank. It’s less risky. It’s more forward-thinking. It’s how the rich get richer. All that gun-toting bad-boy crap is Paddy’s legacy. I’ve got a functioning brain and a beating heart, Frank. I can’t fill my days, sitting on my backside, sewing a fine seam like some merry widow. My Amy and Dahlia have grown up and flown the nest. One at uni. One a lawyer in the City. I need something more than nail bars and chardonnay and I don’t want my daughters having their inheritance seized by the coppers and dying of shame if I go down. Now, who were these new faces? You got any security footage of them?’
Taking her laptop bag with her, Sheila followed Frank up the winding staircase to the echoing vastness of the main club. Here, the house music that the DJ played reverberated off the empty, gleaming dance floor – sanded down and refinished not once, but twice, to remove the life’s blood of those who had fallen at the hand of that slippery eel of a Fish Man, the Boddlington gang enforcer, Asaf Smolensky. Glancing at the DJ booth, she expected to see her nephew standing there, all muscles and bronzed-Adonis-handsome, with his cans pressed to his ear. Young Jack, Manchester’s golden boy, waving at his Aunty Sheila. In his stead, there was just some young, trendy-looking black guy she didn’t recognise – up from London no doubt – and the chubby, middle-aged sound engineer, perched behind a mixing console on the other side of the club.
As Frank disappeared through to the backstage area, Sheila noticed the tanned man in overalls, marking a spot on the wall with a pencil. He wore a baseball cap at a ridiculous angle for a middle-aged man. Wielded a measuring tape with clean hands that looked out of place on a manual labourer. The thought that he was somewhat familiar drifted in and out of her head so rapidly that it left no trace whatsoever. Her brother-in-law was always having work done to a building that was now tantamount to a memorial to Jack.
‘Here we go,’ Frank said in his office, pulling several sheets of paper out of his desk drawer. ‘I had Otis, the security feller, come up with these. Pictures from the footage.’ He pushed them across the desk towards Sheila. Tapped on the heads of two men – one black with dreads, one white with a crew cut, both man-mountains – who, even given the poor quality of the CCTV stills, clearly stuck out as far older interlopers among the firm, lithe bodies of the partying youngsters.
Sheila noted a shiftiness to the men’s eyes – perhaps imagined, given how grainy the images were. But the tense way that they held their bodies gave them away as dealers, not dancers. And who the hell wore quilted bomber jackets on a sweaty dance floor?
‘They’re not any of my temps,’ she said, digging at the back of her molars with her tongue, feeling some kale left behind from the badly blended smoothie that Conky had made her. A for effort. C for execution. ‘Give them to me. I’ll see what Conks thinks. He knows everyone. If it’s a rival crew, he’ll be on it like flies on dog shit.’
Click-clacking her way across the dance floor, clutching her fur gilet close around her slender body against the cold air of the vast unheated super-club, Sheila pondered how she might offload the responsibility of the dirtier side to the business elsewhere. Heading into the triple-height vestibule, she contemplated the meeting she had yet to attend that day at the head office of a commercial airline. Ably assisted by Gloria, she would deliver a pitch to the airline’s board members for the contract to clean European-bound aircraft at several airports in the north. She imagined speaking authoritatively, dressed just on the business side of provocatively. She would use a breathy, sexy, irresistible voice. She was sure that flashing a little titty, in addition to their competitive rates and immaculate reputation, would land the lucrative deal.
In fact, Sheila was so caught up in her fantasies of success and the residual enthusiasm over her speed-dating venture that she only barely registered the white van parked outside M1 House. Nor did she realise that the man in the overalls with the stupid baseball cap was following her onto the street. And when her phone rang out with the full-bodied Pop Queen warble of Adele, Sheila was so baffled by the Brummie accent of the unfamiliar caller at the other end, she failed to notice that the man in the overalls, who did in fact own the white van, was standing right behind her.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_c72c7618-3967-5fb4-a739-2e898f8816ae)
Gloria
‘Is he looking?’ Gloria asked Winnie, who, as usual, was sitting to her right at the end of the pew. No response. She elbowed the old woman gently. Whispering loud enough so that a couple of the elderly men in front turned around and grimaced at her disapprovingly. ‘Is he looking?’
‘No, dear.’ Winnie shook her head, tickling Gloria’s ears with a flurry of petrol-coloured feathers. Waving a lace fan slowly up and down in the stuffy place.
It was a wonder she could see anything from under that hat. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m old, dear. Not blind. Hush! Pastor’s speaking.’
Irritated that her studied cool and feigned disinterest wasn’t working, Gloria faced forward again. Trying desperately to catch the pastor’s eye once more by pushing out her chest and batting her eyelashes.
No response.
The fine man standing in the pulpit, preaching to the swollen ranks of the congregation with vim, vigour and pleasantly developed triceps when he raised his hands to praise Jesus, had not cast so much as a glance her way since the start of the Sunday morning service. And there was Kitty Fried Chicken, still sitting at the front in the spousal hot-seat, wearing a beret, looking like some cross between Jabba the Hut and a black Che Guevara in BHS’ best. Still clinging on to that fine man of God like the oniony stink of sweat clinging to that ghastly polyester ensemble she was wearing.
Smoothing down her own pure silk Hobbs dress, Gloria wondered what had gone wrong in her grand plan. The pastor, by rights, should have been hers now. She’d been giving it her best shot for years, praying to the good Lord that fate would finally bring her the true love with this wonderful man that she so needed and deserved. But despite her best efforts, his marriage to a woman who smelled of four-day-old chicken was no closer to disintegration, and Gloria was no closer to the union of holy souls with the pastor that she desired.
‘Praise Jesus!’ the congregation intoned. ‘Praise him. Oh yes!’
Amid much fervour and hubbub, singing started up. ‘Father Can You Hear Me?’ Naturally, Kitty Fried Chicken was out of her seat, clutching a microphone, her chins wobbling and a sweat breaking out on her forehead as she worked her way up from a delicate soulful whisper to a growling fever pitch. Belting the hymn out, with the choir answering her every worshipful stanza in glorious harmony; the band playing along with enough skilful dynamism to usher a host of angels into the church. The hall was thrumming with love for the Lord Jesus Christ, but Gloria felt only cold and loneliness and bitterness inside, for she saw the truth.
At that moment, the adoration visibly poured out of the pastor, directed not at Gloria but at his dumpy, fugly wife who sang better than any soprano in the Royal Opera House, and who had more soul than any two-bit R&B singer on the television. Gloria realised the game was up.
‘I’m wasting my time,’ she told Winnie.
Winnie popped a mint on the end of her tongue and fanned herself nonchalantly. ‘You give it a good go,’ she said, squeezing Gloria’s arm, like the mother she wished she’d had. ‘But it is time to move on, love.’
‘But she stinks of stale chicken, Win.’ Gloria could feel tears prick the backs of her eyes. ‘I smell of Christian Dior.’
‘Some men just don’t have a very good sense of smell, darling.’ There was sympathy in the milky-ringed irises of Winnie’s brown eyes. ‘He might have blocked sinuses.’
‘But she’s boring!’
Winnie offered her a mint. Speaking the quiet wisdom of the elderly, just audible above the jubilant singing, she said: ‘The only difference between her and you, Gloria, is that she got there first. And he obviously needs his eyes testing, because Kitty has got a face like tripe and beans gone wrong. Or maybe she’s got a diamond-encrusted tutu hidden in those big knickers of hers. Who knows? You can do better, love. Honestly. Pastor’s not all that. He had bad breath last Sunday.’
With the service over, Gloria’s heart thumped insistently inside her ribcage. Time to get face-to-face with the pastor and see for certain, now that the filter of hope had been removed from her sight, if there was any longing for Gloria Bell in his eyes. Just one last double-check. Maybe she could even whisper in his ear that she loved him, just in case he was too stupid to have sussed it after all these years. She knew men were often slow on the uptake like that. But the realisation that her dream was dying settled in her stomach like an accumulation of heavy metal, rendering her optimism nothing more than a giant, unwanted malignancy.
Gloria filed out into the cold vestibule with the other worshippers, buffeted along by her ever-thankful trafficked workers, looking like jewel-coloured parrots in their Nigerian wraps and skirts.
‘Hello, Aunty Gloria! Blessings to you!’
‘Coming for cake, Aunty G?’
‘Loving your dress, Mrs Gloria!’
Kind words from her cleaners. At least somebody loved her, even if their love had been bought by offering them slave labour and free cramped living conditions as an alternative to prostitution in Benin City or destitution in the DRC.
‘Greetings and blessings, ladies!’ Gloria could hear that her voice was tremulous. It didn’t do to appear weak in front of her employees. She opted not to say anything more.
But her legs almost buckled with adrenalin as she caught sight of the pastor’s handsome face in amongst the crowd. Clyde, who owned the soul food takeout, was shaking his hand by the large, arched doorway. Was Pastor alone? No. Clyde stepped aside to reveal the short, squat Kitty Fried Chicken by the pastor’s side. Fleetingly, Gloria wondered if there was a passage in the Bible that would excuse ramming a ricin patty into Kitty’s fat face at the next church mingle.
She muttered under her breath. ‘Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior!” If it’s good enough for Joel, it’s good enough for me.’
By the time Gloria had reached the vestibule to be thanked by the pastor, her anger had started to morph into sadness. She could see the lumpy bad skin of Kitty’s cheeks, yet still the pastor had his arm around her. Rubbing her shoulder encouragingly, as the churchgoers heaped praise on her for her soulful singing.
Stepping forwards, Gloria held her hand out to the handsome man who had taken up residence in her heart with his flirtation and mixed messages. My, how he looked like Luther Vandross in his thin days. Even now, he caused the butterflies in her stomach to take flight. But as this heavenly man reached out to reciprocate her greeting, Gloria realised the pastor was not looking into her eyes at all. His radiant smile was not for her. She followed his gaze, glancing over her shoulder, whereupon it dawned on her that he was ogling fresh meat. Pat Nicholas’ girl, Kendra. Wearing a miniskirt and stilettos, though she couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
Gloria gripped the pastor’s hand so tightly, he had no option but to make eye contact with her, finally. In a strong voice, she said, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith – 2 Timothy 4:7,’ and walked briskly out onto the street, before he had chance to see her first tear fall.
Making haste along the high street of Parson’s Croft before the affable gang of illicit cleaners had the chance to sweep her up into their ranks and into the cake shop, as was the usual post-church arrangement, Gloria eventually came to a halt outside the Western Union money shop. She looked around the busy, scruffy street through blurred, watery eyes. Disoriented by the traffic that whipped past and the group of youths that were pushing by her, five abreast, one doing wheelies on his mountain bike on the pavement. Ordinarily, she’d have shouted after him to get on the road where he belonged. But now …
‘Are you okay, Mrs Bell?’ one of the boys asked her. ‘Are you crying?’
Gloria shook her head vociferously, treating the lad to a hard stare. Who was he? She didn’t recognise him. He looked like a younger Leviticus. She didn’t need sympathy from a little toerag like him. ‘Conjunctivitis,’ she said, aggressively wiping the tears away with the back of her hand. Clutching her coat close and her handbag closer. ‘And tell your mate to get off his bike. Pavements are for pedestrians.’
Where had she left her Mazda? There it was, on Samuel Street. Had she had any breakfast? She couldn’t remember. Get yourself together, Gloria Bell, she chided herself. Right, where am I going? Where are my car keys? She turned over the engine. Why has Jesus forsaken me and made a barren wasteland of my heart yet again?
Driving away from the city, she found herself bypassing the quiet cul-de-sac on which she was living with her son and grandson. She continued on through the shower of falling golden leaves to Bramshott. Pulled up outside the high gates of Sheila’s sprawling house, where she spotted the dogged detective, Ellis James, ensconced on the opposite side of the road in his foetid Ford – a sinner’s vehicle, if ever there was one. He was clearly staking out the place. She paid no heed to the white van that was parked yet again outside the neighbour’s pile.
‘Let me in,’ she shouted through the intercom through tears that simply wouldn’t let up.
‘Hey! Hey! What’s all this for?’ Sheila asked, ushering her through to the kitchen, draping a comforting arm around her shoulders.
Unable to stem the flow of heartbreak, Gloria sobbed openly, stumbling across the marble floor and throwing herself onto a bar stool.
‘I’ll put the kettle on and rustle up some cheese toasties,’ Conky said, donning an apron as though he wasn’t a murdering henchman at all but rather some Northern Irish alternative to Paul Hollywood. He wasn’t wearing his hairpiece or sunglasses today. If anything, his kindness made Gloria sob harder. ‘Let you ladies talk. Don’t mind me.’ He chuckled.
Five minutes and half a kitchen roll later, the tears were replaced by hiccoughs and fatigue. Running her work-worn fingers along the gleaming granite worktop of the island, Gloria sighed heavily. Turned to Sheila. ‘I give up, Sheila. The pastor, I mean. He’s a cad. Nothing but a broken, unhappy man with bad breath and an eye for the ladies.’
Sheila’s carefully plucked brows furrowed. She squeezed Gloria’s hand in solidarity. ‘You’ll get over it. Honest.’
Conky set a coffee down before her on a coaster, leaning in to offer her the dubious wisdom and sincerity behind those bulbous thyroid eyes. ‘You’ve got to find someone new, Gloria. Someone better. Sure, I don’t know what you saw in some attention-seeking Bible-basher anyway!’
‘Man shall not live by bread alone, Conky, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God – Matthew 4:4.’ She tried to treat him to a disapproving scowl but hadn’t the energy to screw her features into the correct shape.
‘Aye. Oh, well,’ he simply said. ‘Some things just aren’t meant to be.’
Feeling her resolve weaken and her lip tremble, Gloria whispered. ‘He was the love of my life. I’ll never be able to rid myself of these feelings. I know it.’
‘Bullshit!’ Sheila said, smiling encouragingly. Glancing at the clock. Clearly, her sisterly support was on a time limit. How very Sheila. ‘You’re a fighter and a survivor, Gloria Bell. A successful entrepreneur! You’re worth more.’
Conky set a plate full of perfect golden cheese toasties onto the worktop. Fidgeting at their side, as though he were waiting to hatch some nugget of manly advice. Sure enough …
‘You have to push your feelings aside for this eejit and start again, Gloria,’ he said, waving a well-meaning spatula in her direction. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself over a man that has the glad eye for every bit of skirt that comes his way.’
At her side, Sheila suddenly started to clap her hands like an excited seal. She encircled Gloria’s wrist in a cage made from those shellac talons. ‘You, my dear, are going speed-dating!’
‘What?’ Gloria said, biting into a triangle of toastie. Noticing Sheila’s plate remained empty.
‘You’ll be a guinea pig for our first speed-dating night!’
‘Beezer!’ Conky said, grinning. ‘Sure, you’ll find yourself a nice man that way. An emotionally available man, for a start.’
‘I am not going speed-dating!’ Gloria slapped her snack onto her plate in disgust.
‘Yes you bloody well are,’ Sheila said. All smiles. Eye on the clock. ‘Now, get your skates on with that cuppa because I’ve got a meeting with a Brummie who reckons he’s got the answer to all my problems.’
Chapter 3 (#ulink_7ae9b685-2a95-5c1d-8ecf-d7318a0b5c82)
Conky
‘Whereabouts are we meeting this Nigel Bancroft?’ Conky asked, shoving his handgun further into his waistband, turning his back to the grey-faced shoppers in the Lowry Centre’s multi-storey car park so that they couldn’t see what he was about. The cold metal dug uncomfortably into the overhang of his burgeoning belly. Sheila’s cooking was too good. He prayed he wouldn’t inadvertently shoot his own testicles off.
‘Near the bridge,’ Sheila said, slamming the car door. ‘Just by the water’s edge. He didn’t want anyone earwigging.’ She examined her reflection in the Panamera’s gleaming tinted window. Smoothed the tresses of her hair. Bared her white teeth at him across the roof of the car. ‘Have I got lipstick on my teeth?’
