The Glasgow Grin (A Stanton Brothers thriller) Read online

  When the operator asked about the service he wanted, Larry said: “The police. I really need to speak to the police.”

  II.

  THE LAST thing Rose Bennett expected to see when she woke up at two in the morning was three masked figures standing at the foot of her bed. For a moment she thought it was a trick of the eyes, but when one of the shadows coughed softly she knew that it was no trick.

  Her first thought was to scream.

  They must have realised this because one of them rushed forward and clamped a large hand over her mouth, while the other two clawed at her arms, making it difficult to struggle. The smell of glove leather and sweat was overpowering, though not as overpowering as the fear she felt for the safety of her little girl, Emily – asleep in a bedroom across the hall.

  The gloved hand also blocked her nose, cutting off the air supply. Panic kicked in and her heart-rate soared, as she bucked and writhed and moaned. Constellations of pale spots danced and popped before her eyes as she came close to passing out. Then the hand moved slightly, allowing her to draw deep breaths through her nose.

  The spots stopped dancing and her vision cleared, but Rose was no clearer on who they were or what they wanted. Her imagination ran riot, conjuring up scenarios so grim they terrified her.

  The man holding Rose’s right arm loosened his grip and studied her for a few moments, cocking his head to one side like a curious dog, then he let go completely. She wanted to move, willing herself to swing the free hand against her attackers, but fear had paralysed her. She watched as the man removed his mask, noticing the small details without processing the bigger picture – the heavy scars that ran across his face and head, the eyes that forever stared in different directions. But it was only when she put all these details together and recognised the face that she knew just how much trouble she was in.

  Eddie Miles.

  He grabbed her arm again and kneeled in close enough that his hot breath tickled her ear. He didn’t speak straight away, but when he did his voice was low and menacing. “Hello, Rosie. I’m rather upset with you.”

  Rose tried to speak through the gloved hand but all she managed were strings of wet vowels. Eddie kissed her ear gently and shushed her. “Rosie, don’t. I’ve heard ‘em all before – the excuses – so don’t waste valuable breath. The whores, the johns, the pimps, they’ve all got tales to tell, but when they’re in the wrong you gotta let ‘em know. And you, whore, are in the fuckin’ wrong and you know it. So here I am to let you know, to put you back on the straight and narrow. You told the Stanton brothers something you shouldn’t have – actually, you told ‘em two things. And in both cases you’ve ruined my fuckin’ day, so now I’m gonna ruin yours. Oh, wait, did I say day? I meant to say life. That’s what I meant to say.

  “This is how it’s gonna go: we’re gonna take you downstairs, we’re gonna fuck you senseless and then slice your face. And if you scream and alert your daughter at any point I guaran-fuckin’-tee you she’ll get the same treatment as you. We clear, cunt?”

  Rose let out some panicky moans into the glove, each one louder than the last. Eddie told her to shush again, hissing violently enough to raise goose bumps. She blinked a couple of times, sending a tear rolling towards her ear. Eddie kissed it away, then ran his tongue along the tear track. “I told you never to tell anyone about it. I told you what I’d do if you did. You had all the facts at your disposal, Rose, yet you opened that big mouth of yours anyway,” he whispered, stroking her face. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself. Your mouth got you in all this trouble Rose, so now I’m gonna make some trouble for your mouth.”

  More whimpers drifted out of Rose and she bucked her body against her captors. Eddie grabbed one of her nipples and twisted, reducing her moans to fast, agonised breaths. “Now don’t make me tell you again,” he said, his lips brushing her ear. “If I have to tell you again I’m gonna go wake up your daughter so she can join the party. We clear?”

  He kept the pressure on her nipple, twisting until she thought it would tear. One of the masked men holding her chuckled. “You keep twisting that dial, Ed, and you’re likely to tune in to TFM.”

  Eddie’s laugh sounded like somebody turning a gas valve on and off. “No, but it will come off if I keep turning. You clear on that, Rosie?”

  She answered with three brisk nods of the head.

  “Good. Now we’re all gonna get up and go downstairs. And you’re gonna do what we say, when we say it. And if you try any funny business I’ll make sure your little cunt of a daughter gets the same treatment as mummy.”

  They pulled her upright. She felt rough gloved hands on her naked body, fondling her breasts, brushing against her pubic hair, grabbing her butt cheeks, and sensed their eyes exploring every inch. One of the balaclava wearers leaned in to the other and said: “Fuckin’ tidy body, like.”

  Eddie hissed at them to shut the fuck up. They walked her to the door and waited. Eddie opened it a few inches, looked out, and told them the coast was clear. They emerged into the cold, dark corridor and fresh goosebumps prickled her exposed skin. Rose desperately wanted to scratch. In fact, the sensation was so strong that she forgot her fear for a few seconds. But the terror returned with interest as they stepped across the corridor and came to a stop outside Emily’s room. Eddie opened the door and looked inside. Rose held her breath and prayed that her daughter wasn’t awake.

  Emily lay on her side with her back to the door on a big horse and carriage style bed. Eddie let out another rasping chuckle. “Aw, in’t that sweet. Little princess is travelling in style.”

  “Please don’t,” Rose said.

  Eddie turned and his cold gaze settled on her. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Then you gonna behave?”

  Rose nodded.

  Eddie closed the door gently and pointed towards the stairs. “Do what we say, when we say it, and your daughter might just get outta this without a scratch.”

  Rose let them turn her around and march her over to the top of the stairs. They stood in a pale oblong of moonlight that came in from a high window. The light gave her flesh a pale glow. The men stared at her body, lingering at the usual spots. Eddie’s lips tightened and he made fists with his hands in an attempt to suppress his lust. He rubbed a fist across his crotch and breathed heavily.

  Rose knew what was coming, but promised herself she wouldn’t scream. Her daughter was sacrosanct. No matter what happened, Rose would protect her. Whatever they did to her, she’d take it, suffer the consequences in silence, mock them with her stoicism, expose them as the cowards they were. Emily would see only the aftermath.

  Later, she’d make them pay – all of them. They would suffer and scream. She knew how to play their violent games.

  They descended the stairs. Rose’s stomach tightened and fear made her legs shake and wobble. The only thing that prevented her from falling were the hands that grasped her arms. As they approached the dark entrance hall at the bottom of the stairs, Rose told herself again that she’d make them pay for this.

  Then the darkness swallowed them all.

  -------

  Emily’s eyes opened and she blinked at the ceiling for a few seconds. Upon realising where she was, and that she was damp yet again, the blinking stopped and hot tears rolled down her face. She placed her hand against the mattress. It was soaked and still warm to the touch, though it would turn cold soon enough.

  She wanted to cry out for attention, but fear made her bite her bottom lip and pull the duvet around her. The last bad dream had sent Emily hurtling across the hall to the safety of her mam’s bedroom. When she opened the door, her mam was naked, bouncing up and down on a creepy man who liked to call himself Uncle Jimmy. She screamed and grunted as though in pain.

  Emily remembered her own screams and the short, barefooted run back across the hall. She locked her bedroom door in a panic, keeping it closed even when her mam begged her to open it. She screamed louder when Uncle
Jimmy kicked the door off its hinges and waited, cross-armed, in the doorway as her mam tried to calm her down. She only stopped crying when her mam sent the man away. He grumbled as he left and announced that what Emily really needed was a good, hard slap. Her mam told him that if that day ever came, he’d be on the receiving end of a good, hard blade.

  After that, Emily started bed-wetting again. She learned how to use the washing machine, so she didn’t have to explain the mishaps to her mam and Uncle Jimmy. She was six now – too old for bed-wetting, according to the angry foreign women employed to clean the house and wash the sheets. They dried her sheets on the sly, but complained about it afterwards in heavily accented and broken English. Occasionally, Emily understood them and wondered why they hated her so much.

  As much as Emily wanted to remain beneath the sheets, she felt the wet patch spreading across the mattress, getting colder. She realised that she wanted her mam to comfort her, especially as Uncle Jimmy wasn’t around to get in the way – they had been arguing a lot over the last few days.

  Emily pulled back the duvet. The room was chilly, and her wet pyjama bottoms were uncomfortable. She wanted to have her head stroked, to be told that everything would be fine. She made a run for her mam’s bedroom, fumbled with the door handle and slipped inside.

  The room was empty. The bed nothing more than a pile of bunched up sheets. Her mam’s floral scent still lingered in the air.

  Emily decided to wait.

  A groan emanated from downstairs, followed by a couple of softer moans.

  Frightened, Emily thought about climbing into the unmade bed, but wondered if maybe her mam was downstairs and needed her help. She wasn’t strong, but always liked helping because it made her feel needed.

  She crept downstairs, slowly, her bare feet sticking to the cold wood, and padded through the hall and living room, following the grunts and moans, until she reached the kitchen. She waited and listened.

  Her mam made pained guttural sounds, like choking, and beneath that was the mocking laughter of men, though they said nothing. Fear tightened Emily’s stomach and made her heart slam against her chest.

  She opened the door.

  A heavily scarred man was bending her naked mam over a worktop, aided by two men in balaclavas who pulled at her arms. The man struggled with his trousers, trying to pull them down, and tried to push forward.

  Emily shrieked.

  They all turned in her direction.

  Something was very wrong with her mam’s face. Her mouth was unnaturally wide and bloody and when she screamed at Emily to run, she realised that she could see all of her teeth.

  So much blood.

  Emily screamed again. Then ran.

  III.

  ERIC STANTON sat in the solicitor’s chair in his dark suit and white shirt and played with the powder blue tie that felt too tight around his neck. He placed a finger between his flesh and shirt collar and pulled to alleviate the pressure – the fucking thing felt like a noose. It didn’t help that the room was hot and humid. Sweat collected in every fold of flesh, increasing his discomfort, and made the fabric feel damp against his skin. He let out a loud sigh and shuffled in his seat.

  The fat, middle-aged solicitor on the other side of the desk noticed his distress and offered him a friendly smile and a slight shake of the head, as if to suggest that he knew how he felt. He really didn’t; it was obvious that this man had been wearing suits for the last twenty years of his life, getting used to how they felt, and would have felt naked without one.

  Eric was more of a jeans and t-shirt man. Suits felt wrong, too constricting. He didn’t want to be in the suit, nor in this stifling office, but what he wanted didn’t come into the equation. He needed to be here.

  “So why have you hired me, Mister Stanton?”

  “Call me Eric.”

  “Okay,” the solicitor said uncertainly. “Eric.”

  Eric slid a completed will document across the desk. “I want you to look over this, make sure that everything’s in order, and act as my solicitor in the event of my death.”

  The man put on a pair of reading glasses and gave the document a cursory glance. “First impressions look good,” he said, running his finger across the lines. He stopped reading and looked up. “Is there any particular reason you’ve come to me? Considering we’re a long way from the home address you’ve provided.”

  Eric shook his head. “You came first in the online search.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it beat trying to explain the truth, and the reasons behind it.

  The man nodded and gave a humourless smile. “Good to know the money we spend on search engine optimisation has come in handy.”

  Eric’s eyes went down to the document. “Are we good?”

  The solicitor pushed his chair back from the desk and drummed his fingers on the document pages, tapping out a military tattoo. “It looks fine. Do you have much in the way of assets?”

  “Just a safety deposit box,” Eric replied. A safety deposit box he’d hired that morning. It contained nothing more than an envelope full of money, along with four smaller envelopes that each contained an SD memory card. On each of the cards were photographs and videos of the murder and dismemberment of Gerald Maxwell (or G-Max to his friends).

  The solicitor gave the piece of paper another glance. “And the names on the will are to be the recipient of its contents?”

  “Correct.”

  “Anything else?”

  Eric slid another piece of paper across the desk. A phone number and email address was written on it, and beneath those were a few short and carefully worded messages written in capital letters. The solicitor eyes angled towards the document and he frowned. “And this is?”

  “I’ll either phone or email your office from these contact points on a monthly basis, on the first business day of the month,” Eric replied, tapping the area he’d written on. “If I get your secretary, I’ll leave her a message with that exact wording. If I email, you’ll receive the message written beneath, again with that exact wording.”

  “Why?”

  “To prove that I’m alive.”

  The solicitor shaped up to say something, but Eric got there first. “If I don’t contact you, or if you receive a message that deviates considerably from what’s written on that page, I want you to consider me dead and set my will in motion.”

  The solicitor cocked a thin eyebrow. “This is highly irregular.”

  “I’m a highly irregular person.”

  The eyebrow went higher. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Always.”

  “Legal trouble?”

  Eric smiled. “The kind that might make me disappear at short notice.”

  “Willingly?”

  Eric shook his head. He rummaged around in his pocket, pulled out a key and placed it on the piece of paper. “That’s the key to the safety deposit box.”

  The solicitor lifted the will for a closer inspection. “And the recipients of the contents… of the will… a Mister Toby McAllister?”

  “A friend.”

  “And the other… er, a Mister Jack Samson… is he also a close acquaintance?”

  Eric chuckled. “He hates my guts.”

  The solicitor screwed up his face into a puzzled frown. “So what makes you think he’ll accept the contents?”

  “Because you’re to tell him that the contents relate to his good friend Robert Owden. That’ll get him interested.”

  “Those words exactly?”

  “Or as near as.”

  “Do I need to know who Robert Owden is?”

  Eric shrugged. “Not really. Samson will know what to do.”

  The solicitor looked uncertain, but Eric knew better. He was going back up north, to deal with Eddie Miles and anybody else who was working with him. The contents of the safe, and the final memory card in his phone, were the only things that might protect him if things went wrong. Eric knew that Robert Owden would investigate the trouble at Hollis Haulage, and if J
immy Raffin couldn’t convince him that the shooting was about revenge, then it would help to have insurance. But if that insurance didn’t help him stay alive, then he wanted to make sure that Samson had what he needed to destroy Owden once-and-for-all.

  He’d have to work hard and smart to stay alive, and make his enemies suffer. But he knew how to work hard, how to work smart, and he sure as hell knew how to make people suffer.

  Teesside wouldn’t know what hit it.

  1. – Stanton

  GUPTA PATEL turned left and parked his dented Audi in a lay-by. We already knew where he was going, so continued up Ferry Road, turned right and pulled in next to a scrapyard. We made our way back on foot. It didn’t take long.

  The street consisted of a crescent of houses on one side of the road and a small park of shrubs and overgrown grass on the other. We hid within the shadows of several gnarled trees that bordered the park. Most of the streetlights didn’t work and the nearest working light was too far away to do any good. The only illumination came from the windows of nearby homes, leaving the area dark and menacing. Once night fell, nobody wanted to be out on these streets. We had them to ourselves. It was quiet enough to hear the patter of distant footsteps.

  Patel was in a little redbrick semi at the end of the street, next door to a boarded-up house that looked like it would collapse in a light breeze. Patel owned both buildings, and kept the second so that nobody would disturb his girlfriend. A big green sign on the front of the neighbouring property warned that the derelict was Protected by MMPW Security and trespassers would be dealt with forcefully. There were several other run-down properties in close proximity, all with distinctive green metal covers and MMPW signs, which made me wonder just how many of these buildings Patel also owned.

  A nice set-up, if you could afford it.

  Every now and again a figure passed behind the living room curtain, but otherwise there was very little action. Occasionally one of us would move away from the other to piss in the shade of a tree, but most of the time we just stared at the house without speaking, waiting for the moment they went to bed.