The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Read online

  “How are the genitals?”

  “They’re none of your business,” he replied, lowering his voice slightly.

  “Must’ve been fun explaining that to the wife.”

  “Not been back home since. Fuckin’ Doc sez Mary damaged some ligaments in me cock and I’m lucky she didn’t give me permanent torsion of the nads.”

  “Sounds nasty.”

  “Whaddayou think? Painful as fuck is what it is. Daren’t even think about dipping me wick until it all heals over. So thanks for that, cunt.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied. “So did you speak to Eddie?”

  Gupta sighed. “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “He bought it,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “Got all radged and demanded to see me, like. He wants to meet tomorrow night at ten.”

  “Where?”

  “You said somewhere quiet. I figured out by Highcliff Road,” Gupta said. “You know the woods behind it? Nice and quiet. The perfect place for a meet.”

  More like the perfect place for an ambush.

  “Just you and Eddie?” I said.

  “Like you asked.”

  “Good man.”

  “Well, I delivered,” he said. “So delete the pics.”

  “Tomorrow. After we’ve dealt with Eddie.”

  “But…”

  “You do right by me and I’ll do right by you,” I said. “If you’re on the level you’ve got nowt to worry about.”

  “I’m not just on the level, I am the fuckin’ level. I’m a fuckin’ spirit level, I’m so straight.”

  I turned and looked at Alan Piper, who was sitting on the sofa drinking coffee with my brother. He raised his cup to my health and winked. I grinned back. “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, Gupta” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I hung up before he could say another word and walked over to sofa, where my brother and Piper chinked prissy coffee cups together. “Where’s my coffee?” I asked.

  My brother pointed towards the kitchen “Through there.”

  I followed the smoky aroma of freshly made coffee. It led me to an empty cafetiere on a breakfast bar. “There’s nothing here,” I said.

  “Your coffee’s still in the cupboard,” my brother replied, trying to sound innocent. “Didn’t I explain that part?”

  “No you fuckin’ didn’t,” I said under my breath.

  When I returned with my coffee, Alan had moved from the sofa to the armchair. The leather squeaked and sighed as he reclined in it. “How youse finding the place?”

  “Very comfy,” I said.

  “Quality as fuck,” my brother added.

  He gave us the Hollywood grin. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Much as we like sharing morning coffees and general shitchat, there was another reason we called you here.”

  He pointed his chin in the direction of the phone. “Figure it’s got summat to do with your call to Gupta.”

  “Sort of.”

  “He’s brokering a meet between you and Eddie? Setting him up?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Why?”

  I threw Piper the handset and told him to visit the photo gallery.

  A few prods of the screen was all it took for Piper to choke on his coffee and spray it all over his nice wool suit. He cursed and brushed himself down with a hanky whilst my brother laughed at his misfortune.

  “His missus’ll string him up by the ballsack for this.”

  “Unless he does what we ask.”

  Piper coughed and brushed repetitively at some imaginary coffee stains. “He still won’t do as he’s told.”

  “It’ll mean half his empire if he doesn’t.”

  “Probably all of it.”

  “Then that’s reason enough for him to behave.”

  Piper shrugged and put down the cup. “Your funeral.”

  “Meaning?”

  Piper sat forward. “Gupta’s the sorta bloke who lies to hisself in the morning about what he’s having for breakfast. I’ve played poker with him a few times, and he always walked away with the cash. That cunt’s poker face’d make Lady Gaga piss in her hot pants. Youse go out there tomorrow and I guarantee the only ones getting dealt with’ll be you. Gupta’s setting youse up.”

  I smiled. “I know. I’m fuckin’ counting on it.”

  Piper’s bushy eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. “Then why?”

  “I need a box man, and fast,” I said. “Can you arrange one?”

  “Define fast?”

  “By tonight.”

  “I know a bloke in London. Solid fella,” he said. “But only if it’s worth his time. There has to be money, real money in it for him.”

  “This’ll be worth his time.”

  Piper paused with his mouth open, as though thinking carefully about what he wanted to say. “What are you planning?”

  “Mischief.”

  “My bloke won’t be cheap.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Whatever you’ve got planned, I want no part of it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” I replied. “If anybody asks, we were never here.”

  36. – Owden

  THE PHONE rang loudly and vibrated across the bedside table. Bob opened his eyes and watched the thing quiver from one side to the other. He realised that he’d finally managed to get a couple of hours sleep. For all the good it had done his aching body, he shouldn’t have bothered. He caught the phone just as it dropped off the edge and looked at the display before he answered.

  “Gupta?”

  “It’s sorted.”

  “What is?”

  “Eric S phoned this morning,” he said. “It’s all arranged.”

  “For when?”

  “Tomorrow night at ten. Out by Highcliff Road. There’s a clearing.”

  “Who arranged it?”

  Gupta paused. “Eddie. Why?”

  Bob smiled. “No reason.”

  It was the ideal place for an ambush. Densely wooded, lots of places to hide, the nearest houses were too far away to see anything, and the perfect place to dispose of a body afterwards. The Stanton’s would turn up around nine, expecting Eddie to blunder into their trap, and Eddie would be there at eight, waiting for them. Bob would make sure he was there at seven, to catch them all out.

  “And when this is done we’re good?” Gupta asked, his voice trembling slightly. “My debt is repaid?”

  Bob’s mind drifted for a second. Thinking about the future, an idea came to him: Gupta would be the perfect front for Hollis Haulage 2.0. His fear would make him malleable and easier to control than John Hollis. He wouldn’t attempt his own dangerous freelance jobs. He wouldn’t let his own murderous urges get in the way of a profitable business. His ethnicity and working class background would make him ideal to parade before the press. He could see the headlines already:

  Local Asian businessman takes over Stokesley Slaughterhouse firm: Vows to run it clean.

  Just thinking about it made him grin.

  “Not quite.”

  “But…”

  “I’ve got plans for you, lad.”

  The only sound was the sibilance of Gupta’s breathing as it came down the line.

  “Don’t worry so much. If I were gonna kill you, you’d already be dead.”

  37. – Owden

  BOB DROVE away the morning cobwebs with an icy cold shower, then he dressed and went downstairs. He brewed several cups of thick black coffee strong enough to melt the enamel off the inside of the mug and made a few phone calls.

  Most of them weren’t answered, and the few people that did pick up had nothing to say about Jimmy Raffin or came up with convoluted excuses for not being able to talk. He stopped working the phone, brewed another coffee, and did some thinking.

  The phone calls were getting no results. It was easy for people to make excuses to the other end of a line. But Bob knew that nobody would attempt those same excuses when he was standing
on their doorstep. It was time to take a field trip.

  He drove to an estate just off Newport Road and parked his Mercedes next to a double row of scruffy, identikit Sixties terraces decked out in grey and beige. Tall wood fences surrounded the back gardens and graffiti covered garages jutted out from area that the fences didn’t cover. A group of scrawny, pasty-faced children lurked in front of the garage nearest to Bob’s car, which they eyed with suspicion.

  As Bob was locking the door, one of the boys stepped forward. He wore a hand-me-down tracksuit, fake Adidas trainers, and had fashionably messy hair that jutted and swiped in several directions at once. Smears of chocolate ice cream ringed the boy’s mouth, which he wiped with a tracksuit sleeve.

  “Ow, Mister?”

  “What?”

  “Nice car.”

  Bob looked down at him. “Thanks?”

  The boy turned and looked at his friends, who nodded silently, then approached the car and brushed his fingers along the silver paintwork, leaving greasy stains.

  “I’ll look after your car for a fiver.”

  “Will you now?”

  “People is scum round here. They likes keying and scratching shit up round here.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Soz, mister,” he said, sniffing loudly. “But they is, like. Proper scum round here. Can’t be too careful.”

  Something about the boy amused Bob. He’d never pulled car minding trick as a child, but knew a few kids who had. They were always the fun kids, the kind you wanted as your friends, the ones who always got what they wanted. At least, until life took it back as adults, usually with interest.

  “Tell you what, I’ll give you a fiver on the condition that my car looks exactly like it does now when I come back to it.”

  The boy put his hand out, palm up.

  “After I come back.”

  The boy stuck out his bottom lip to indicate unhappiness.

  “I’m known round these parts,” Bob said. “My word is gold.”

  “Who is you, then?”

  Bob gave him his widest grin.

  “Bob Owden.”

  The boy sniffed. “Never heard of you.”

  Bob’s smile faltered.

  “I run this area.”

  “Does you? Thought the Stantons ran this area, like.”

  Bob tried to ignore the slight and resume smiling, but his heart was no longer in it and his face became impassive. Just hearing that surname made his stomach acid bubble.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’s done in a few families round here, like. Dealers, druggies, bookies and whatnot, every fucker’s terrified.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Soz, mister.”

  Bob didn’t make many mistakes, at least none he would admit to, but he knew a serious error when he looked one in the face. Letting the Stantons live all those years ago was one of them. He had tried to appear magnanimous and forgiving at the time by letting them off with a beating. His hope was that the brothers would go and tell others what had happened, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

  The Stantons never said a word about the incident. They kept it to themselves, and the point of letting them live was lost. They went from being a cautionary tale of what happens when you cross Robert Owden to a couple of bogeymen who scared the local scumbags into investing in better door locks and floor safes. They never hit any of Bob’s businesses again, at least not until Hollis, but those who didn’t fall under Bob’s protection weren’t quite so lucky.

  “You’ll get the money when I get back.”

  The kid shrugged his shoulders.

  “Furry muff.”

  He considered telling the boy to mind his mouth again, but didn’t see the point. The boy wasn’t likely to listen to an old fogey that he didn’t know. Instead, Bob made his way to one of the end terraces and stopped before a tall fence.

  A nailed up sign warned him to Bewere of the dog. Through the gaps in the gate, he saw a Rottweiler patrolling from left to right and back again. The dog’s body stiffened as Bob approached and it emitted a low growl. When he crouched down for a closer look, the dog’s lips drew back, revealing sharp, yellow teeth. The beast pressed its face against a gap in the fence, so that he got a full whiff of rancid tuna breath.

  Bob pulled a switchblade from an inside jacket pocket and hit the button. The blade snapped upright. He pushed the knife between two fence beams, just out of the dog’s reach, and waited. The Rottweiler snarled and pushed its snout towards the object. Bob thrust the point into its nose and twisted the handle. The dog yelped and ran in fast circles, as if trying to outrun the pain. Eventually it stopped running and dived into a doghouse.

  As Bob was entering the garden, the back door opened, and an old man with an asymmetrical face, a shock of silver hair and a grey bird’s nest beard limped outside. His eyes were fixed on the doghouse.

  “Fuck’s up wi’ you, Juninho?” he said to the whimpering dog.

  Then he noticed Bob and his body went tense. “You fuck wi’ me dog?”

  “You mean copulate or mess with, Andy?”

  Andy ‘Pandy’ Packham didn’t know how to respond to that, so didn’t respond at all. He rubbed at his massive belly through the stretched blue fabric of his t-shirt and looked at Bob with calm grey eyes. The legend on his t-shirt read: Born to f*ck.

  It should have read: Born to fuck over.

  For forty years as a career criminal, Andy Packham had fucked over anybody who had ever cared for him, took pity on him, loved him, or hated him. He’d started out as a pimp in the late sixties, pandering teenagers to pervs who drove Over The Border especially to defile them. Back then he’d been pretty enough to convince young girls that their futures lay in letting men old enough to be their fathers and grandfathers shoot their loads into any orifice they paid for. He plied them with enough narcotics to smooth away the guilt and disgust. In the pubs and clubs, pandering got shortened to Pandy. And as his first name was Andy it seemed like fate that the two names should be conjoined.

  Once upon a time, he’d been King Pimp. The Cock of the Walk.

  Until the day he dissed Bob Owden.

  Back then, Bob was still a bouncer, working night shifts in grotty bars and clubs across Teesside, breaking pissheads’ jaws with aplomb, but he was blessed with vision and ruthless ambition. Most of the bouncers in the area worked doors for perks: a bit of cash in hand from the proprietors and favoured dealers, who paid to trade; blowjobs and toilet fucks from female clientele and barstaff who appreciated alpha male muscles; and the ability to lounge around during the days and work out in quiet gyms. Bob didn’t want perks, he wanted cash and lots of it, he craved respect, and more than that he demanded to be feared.

  Bob gathered these disparate bouncers together and turned them into a collective, bartering and finagling better deals from establishment owners, taking profit cuts from dealers, and scaring establishments and bouncers who weren’t part of the collective into joining the team. Those who didn’t join lived to regret it, and dealers who didn’t pay their dues were made an example of. Andy Packham was just such an example.

  When he wasn’t pimping, Andy liked to ply weed and pills to folks who enjoyed partying on something a bit more exotic than McEwan’s and Newcastle Brown. He made good money from it and didn’t take kindly when asked to share the wealth by the collective. He decided to sell his wares under the radar instead. And for a while he got away with it.

  Then Andy made the mistake of getting caught one night. He made a second mistake by believing he could talk his way out of the situation. And when talking didn’t work, he tried shouting abuse instead. And when that didn’t work, he made his third mistake by throwing a few badly aimed right hooks in order to make his escape.

  The man he tried to punch was Bob Owden, who didn’t take kindly to the show of aggression. He decided to show some aggression of his own, by performing plastic surgery on Andy with his fists.

  After that
day, he wasn’t pretty any more. Young girls couldn’t see past the crooked nose, the scarred eyebrows, the badly healed jawline, and the missing teeth. His days of using the velvet hammer to procure girls were over, so he used drugs and force instead. Then Bob took over that turf completely and drove him into other businesses.

  Andy ran girls for men’s stag and strip shows, then moved into slot machines and sold them to most of the arcades in Redcar – until Bob took over that trade as well. Then he smuggled in hard-core pornography back in the golden era of the eighties video boom. But at every step he left behind unhappy business partners: leaving them out of pocket, out of stock, out of time, and out of luck.

  Then one day Andy’s good fortune ran out, too.

  A couple of warehouses stacked with uncut sex videos, back in the days when you weren’t allowed to sell such filth (unless you kicked back to The Filth), were raided by the authorities. Andy rolled over on his partners in exchange for a lighter sentence.

  He tried to convince them that it was the system to blame, not him, that they were all victims, but his partners didn’t quite see it that way. They saw him doing months when they were doing years. They saw behind the scenes shenanigans with cops that wanted to make careers and solicitors who wanted to make money. They saw betrayal and set their revenge in motion.

  A few weeks after his release, a couple of hitmen took Andy out to the Moors and blew off his kneecaps with shotguns. It took several painful operations and a lot of physical therapy for him to walk again, and even then it was with a pronounced limp.

  But he learned his lesson. Never snitch your partners.

  Nowadays, he ran medium and high stakes games in boarded-up properties, offering protection from robbery and a cheating-free environment for discerning villains to lose their money at the tables.

  Andy noticed Bob looking at his legs and coughed a couple of times to get his attention.

  “Whaddaya want, Bob?”

  “To talk.”

  “Got nowt to talk about,” Andy replied. “Remember saying as much on the phone.”

  “So you did.”

  “Then it was a wasted trip, weren’t it?”

  Bob stared at Andy silently, until the ex-pimp trembled and waved a hand in the direction of the back door. “Come on in, if you must.”