The Damage (David Blake 2) (14 page)

I made sure we arrived mob-handed that morning in four cars; Palmer, Kinane, Hunter and Danny were with me in the Range Rover; Kinane’s sons and some of the lads from his gym were in the other cars. It was an inflammatory gesture turning up en masse like that but I wanted Braddock to remember who he was dealing with.

We took the lifts to the top floor. They worked but stank of piss.

‘You’d think he’d sort this out,’ suggested Kinane, wrinkling his nose, ‘he virtually has the place to himself.’

Kinane wasn’t exaggerating. The top two floors had been commandeered by Braddock as his command centre. The residents had been bought out or threatened off and nobody from the council was ever going to have the balls to come down here and look into it.

Braddock greeted us at the door. He was a tall, muscular guy, the right side of thirty, who dressed more smartly than the low-lifes in his crew. With his unscarred face, athletic build and designer clothes he could have passed for a pro-footballer, and he had a reputation for attracting the women. People said he could really smooth-talk them. I heard he kept an apartment in the city just to entertain his women. Braddock was all smiles, but his eyes were darting all over the place as he took in Kinane, Palmer and the rest of the group. A bunch of guys from Braddock’s crew were lounging about the place, drinking beer, smoking dope, watching Sky Sports on a Plasma TV or playing pool on his garish blue-baize table. They all stopped what they were doing when we walked in. I’d counted ten guys hanging out here and they all looked like they’d been fighting every day of their lives. They probably had to if they were brought up on the Sunnydale estate. There was only one girl. She was thin and pretty and dressed in a T-shirt and denim shorts, but she had that pasty, junkie look about her, like she hadn’t seen sunlight in weeks.

His HQ was an odd-looking place. Braddock had even removed some of the walls to turn the top floor into a big open-plan flat that he and his crew could hang out in. He didn’t worry whether they were supporting walls. He just replaced them with heavy metal props to keep the ceiling from falling in. The big open space he’d created was a warren of interconnecting flats. There was crap lying everywhere; empty bottles and cans and containers from last night’s takeaways littered every surface, along with overflowing ash trays.

‘Turn that off!’ barked Braddock and the gangsta rap that was pumping from a pair of enormous speakers ceased abruptly, ‘do the guys want a beer?’ he asked.

I shook my head, ‘we’re not stopping long. I’m just doing the rounds.’

I asked him how business was, and he peddled the same old shit about times being hard, as if the drug-dealing trade was just another victim of the recession.

‘You seem to have this place well under control though,’ I told him.

‘It’s locked down,’ he said, ‘I’m in complete control. A pigeon can’t shit in here without me knowing about it. Isn’t that right boys?’ There were murmurs of agreement and indistinct comments from his group of knuckle draggers. He was deliberately bringing them into the conversation so I could see what a tight group they were, hoping I’d be intimidated by them.

‘That’s good to hear. You’ll know who shot Doyley then.’

‘Doyley? Yeah, well, that didn’t happen here did it? Doyley got shot on the Quayside.’

‘Police weren’t too happy about that,’ I said, ‘makes Newcastle look like the wild west.’

Braddock shrugged, ‘it doesn’t happen every day, but now and then someone gets hosed in Newcastle. The papers bang on about it for a few days, then it’s all forgotten.’

‘Unless it escalates of course, you know, reprisals, tit-for-tat killings, that sort of thing. You weren’t planning any of that?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘how could I when we haven’t a clue who popped him?’

‘Sure you’ve got no idea who was behind it?’ I was looking directly at him.

‘I mean who’d want to shoot Doyley?’ He said it like Jaiden Doyle was a simpleton.

‘Don’t know,’ I admitted, ‘a rival dealer maybe, someone on your patch who’s jealous of Doyley’s position, a complete stranger he pissed off at a drive-though McDonalds. There’s a few theories for you to be going on with; figured you’d like to look into it on our behalf.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I will.’ Was it just me or was Braddock acting like he already knew who’d done it and didn’t give a shit?

‘Then you’ll come and see Joe, yeah? With a name, I mean. I don’t want you to go after someone in the street with an Uzi. We don’t need the heat, especially right now.’

‘Course not. I’ll come to you. I mean I’ll come to Kinane,’ he corrected himself.

‘I must say you’re taking this very well,’ I said, ‘someone’s just shot one of your lads. I thought you’d be bouncing off the walls.’

‘Like I said, I don’t know who did it, so I can’t go off on one, can I?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘suppose not.’ I said nothing for a moment, then continued, ‘like I said, I’m just doing the rounds, checking up on the businesses but, while I’m here, there was one thing.’

‘Go on.’

‘You remember I told you that if you did well here, if you kept order and ran the place like it should, there’d be a bonus in it for you?’

‘Er, yeah,’ that got his interest right enough.

‘How does forty grand sound to you?’

‘It sounds pretty fucking good from here,’ he said, grinning, and there was a bit of laughter from his guys at that.

‘Good,’ I nodded, ‘well I reckon you’ve earned it, don’t you?’

‘Sure have.’

‘Well done,’ and I looked around me as if our business was concluded.

‘So, er,’ he wasn’t sure what was going on, ‘where is it, like?’ and he looked at my boys as if one of them was just about to hand over a briefcase full of cash.

‘I already gave it to you,’ I explained, and he looked bemused, ‘just this minute I gave it to you. By that I mean I’m not going to ask you for the missing money. You can keep it. That’s your bonus for nailing everything down so well here.’

‘Missing money? I don’t get it.’ The smile had vanished.

‘It’s really simple,’ I explained very calmly, ‘the take is forty grand light. That’s the difference between the street value of the last few consignments and the amount you handed over to Kinane’s lads.’

‘Are you saying I’m skimming?’ he flared. I could tell our lads were suddenly more alert, like it was all about to kick off. Around us, Braddock’s lads seemed to stiffen, ready to react to the affront, exuding menace like they would on the street. I ignored them.

‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not that stupid. I’m saying that someone is. Not you, but somebody must be short-changing you or there would be more money in the take.’ He didn’t know how to answer that, ‘now you’ve just told me you’ve got this place nailed down, so when you retrieve the missing money, you can keep it. I can’t say any fairer than that, can I?’

He didn’t say a word. He just looked a little bit sick.

‘Just make sure that whoever is selling you short learns the error of their ways. You need to make an example of them. We can’t let some chiselling, little low-life cunt get away with stealing from us. It would be taking the piss big style and we can’t afford that. Can we?’

Our eyes locked for a long moment. ‘No,’ he agreed eventually.

‘Good. I’ve every faith in you. I know the take will be right next time.’

He mumbled something and looked down as he pulled on the cuffs of his shirt.

‘Sorry?’ I asked.

I was deliberately challenging him now, giving Braddock his opportunity to take me on. There was a moment when I thought he was going to rise to it, then he looked up at me and said, ‘Yeah, got it.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘then I’ll see you around.’

As I made to leave, I stopped and turned towards the young lass who’d been keeping a low profile in the background. ‘And what’s your name, pet?’ I asked her.

‘Suzy,’ she told me, her voice almost a whisper. I reached out a hand and she just blinked at it. Then, slowly, she put out her own cold, pale hand and I shook it like we were in the line-up at a wedding.

‘Very nice to meet you Suzy.’ I said.

When we were back in the car Kinane said, ‘On the one hand I can’t believe you let him keep the forty grand, but on the other, it was worth every penny to see that stupid grin wiped right off his fucking smug face. That moment will stay with me. Oh yes!’ Kinane was jubilant. At least I had his seal of approval, which meant he might stop bitching about Braddock for five whole minutes and I could turn my mind to more important matters.

Danny chipped in with, ‘it was worth the forty grand to keep the peace and remind him of his responsibilities,’ and I appreciated his supportive comment.

‘I don’t know,’ Palmer cautioned, ‘I get the feeling it’s far from over.’ That brought me crashing back down to earth, because I reckoned he was right.

From the tiny balcony, Braddock watched Blake’s convoy pull away from the Sunnydale estate. ‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’ he asked.

‘He thinks he’s the boss,’ answered one of his crew without thinking and Braddock snapped.

‘Well he isn’t, is he?’ Braddock rounded on Dwayne Fletcher.

‘No,’ Dwayne agreed hastily, ‘not round here. That’s you, isn’t it? You’re the real general on this estate,’ Dwayne assured him, ‘the only boss down here, where it counts, on the streets.’

Braddock knew Dwayne was laying it on thick, kissing his arse because he feared a kicking, but ‘the General’ was a nickname Braddock liked. And Braddock
was
a general. He was the only one round here with the brains to keep a lid on the Sunnydale estate, a living, breathing, self-contained world cut off from the rest of the city, filled with dealers, users, foot soldiers and civilians and every one of them under his command. Braddock knew things, he read books, unlike the Muppets who worked for him; biographies of real generals, histories of the Third Reich and the Roman Empire and he knew he was destined to be more than just one of David Blake’s minions. Braddock knew Blake slapped him down in front of his men like that to remind him who was in charge, but Braddock didn’t really need Blake. As far as Braddock could make out, David Blake had never earned the right to be Top Boy in Newcastle. He might be able to hold his own in a hotel meeting room but what had he ever done on the streets? Braddock knew how to make moves on the streets and, one day soon, he was going to make a very big move against David Blake.

.......................

I
was sitting at one of the tables outside Chi-Chi. The weather was nice for once and there were a couple of other people enjoying a rare chance to drink their coffee in the open air. Peter Dean was late, but I wasn’t too bothered. I figured he’d show up eventually and I was glad of a few moments to myself. Palmer had driven me into the city and he’d been sitting next to me reading the paper when the waiter walked up and gave him a message. Apparently Kinane had called the place and needed his help with something. I wondered what description Kinane had given to help the waiter find Palmer. He had once described our former soldier as, ‘a short, squat, muscly bloke who looks like SpongeBob SquarePants.’

‘How do you know what SpongeBob SquarePants looks like?’ I asked him.

‘I’ve got grandkids,’ he told me, ‘my daughter’s bairns. So I’m familiar with Bob’s work.’

I had forgotten Kinane had a daughter. I knew he had three sons; Kevin, Chris and Peter, all born in the 1980s and each named after a Newcastle player; Keegan, Waddle and Beardsley. ‘I almost changed our Chris’ name by deed poll when Waddle signed for Sunderland, fucking Judas,’ he told me.

When the waiter left, Palmer reached into his jacket pocket for his phone. ‘It must be serious if Kinane is admitting he needs help,’ he said.

‘Particularly from you,’ I agreed, ‘why didn’t he just phone you?’

He frowned at his mobile, ‘bloody signal’s always shit down here.’

‘Go on,’ I told him, ‘I’ll be fine. I don’t need a bodyguard to meet Peter Dean, do I? An immunisation of some sort perhaps, but not a bodyguard.’

I watched Palmer leave, and when he’d gone I turned my attention to the people passing by and did a bit of human-watching, wondering who they were and what they did for a living. What did they think when they saw me I wondered; businessman, marketeer, entrepreneur, killer? Take your pick, I thought. I’m a little bit of each. I watched as a bloke ambled towards me. He wore a pair of Morrissey-style glasses and he was carrying a battered, brown leather satchel on his shoulder that looked suitably studenty and weather worn. Doubtless there would be a copy of Jean Paul Sartre or Proust in there to compound the image of the right-on intellectual. He was a walking cliché. I would have paid him a little more attention if I hadn’t been distracted by something behind him.

There were two guys on a motorbike and they just didn’t look right. Not at all. Fucking amateurs, I thought, getting out of my seat without taking my eyes off them. They were wrong on just about every level. Here were two big blokes sharing one motorbike, both dressed in full leathers and black helmets with mirrored visors pulled down, but the gear they were wearing looked brand new, like it had been bought that morning. It was too hot for leathers and the bike was one of those high-powered bits of kit designed for a fast getaway, but it was dawdling along towards me, like they were trying not to draw attention to themselves. A man with a bike like that usually knows how to handle it and rides accordingly. This guy looked unsteady, like he’d never ridden the thing before. Why was he going so slowly? So the passenger riding pillion could scan the road ahead looking for someone and, like as not, that someone was me.