The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018

She shrugged him off, shuddering at the prospect of being judged by strange men. ‘Sheila talked me into it, and I agreed, in a moment of lunacy.’

‘Get a drink down you, Glo,’ Frank said, nudging her and winking. ‘Bit of Dutch courage, eh? You’ll be sorted. It’s on the house.’

As she descended into the basement bar, she was both thrilled and horrified to see so many others of her age, milling around with drinks in their hands. The women were all dolled up to the nines, of course – the smell of their perfume and hairspray rose up to greet her in a heady fug of optimism and trying too hard. Far too much cleavage and leg on show. But the men … Scanning the men, it was immediately apparent that not a single one of them bore any resemblance to the pastor. In fact, the only black man in the room was at least twenty-five stone in weight and, judging by his leper-like complexion, needed the curing hand of Jesus Christ and a better diet far more than a three-minute mini-date.

Somewhat crestfallen, realising that the notably absent Sheila had cleverly dumped the responsibility for their inaugural speed-dating event onto her by nagging her to take part, she grabbed a flute of prosecco from the bar. Took a sip, followed by a deep breath. The bell rang. Here we go.

Seated at her own numbered table, as were the other women, Gloria felt like livestock at an auction as the men moved around the room, one by one, to vet her. But even as she nodded politely while being spoken at by Steve, the forty-year-old man from Widnes, whose strange, rubbery face looked as though it had been partially melted by a blowtorch, she felt as though she was being watched. You wanna watch your back, Mam. Lev’s words buzzed in her head like unwanted tinnitus.

‘Well, I’d always been interested in ice cream,’ Steve told her breasts. ‘I like the whippy stuff, me. My vans sell a lot of Flake 99s.’ He wiped the sweat from his brow with the napkin from beneath his tumbler of whisky, staining the charcoal tissue black. Gloria noticed then that he had a bogey, suspended on the hairs in his right nostril. ‘I make a packet at the football after a match. Even in winter.’

‘Is visible snot considered acceptable in ice cream retail circles, Steven?’ Gloria asked, pointing to his nose. Irritated. Every pore in her skin and every tiny hair on her body became super-sensitive to her environment. She grabbed the number eight sign in the middle of the table, an anchor to her seat, as anxiety whipped the composure from under her feet.

As Steve poked at his nose with the bitten fingernail of his chubby index finger, wearing a bemused expression, Gloria took the opportunity to scan the room. Everyone was deep in stilted, hopeful conversation, wiping their sweaty hands on their knees beneath the table. Everyone, except the man at the next table to her – an orange man with perfect, gelled white hair, plucked eyebrows and a very smooth face. Though the blonde at his table was speaking, waving her manicured hands animatedly as if what she had to say was hyst-er-i-cal, the man’s bright blue eyes were on Gloria and Gloria alone. He smiled.

The connection sent a shiver down her spine that was not entirely pleasant. She was certain she recognised this over-groomed dandy from somewhere.

The bell rang. No time to scroll through her recent memories in a bid to place him. Gloria’s heartbeat escalated to a thunderous pace as Steve, the ice-cream magnate left and her mystery man moved towards her. He held his hand out and remained standing, expecting her to get out of her seat, clearly.

She stood, shook his hand formally and was surprised when he pulled her into him for a full-on peck on not one but two cheeks.

‘I like to faire les bises,’ he said, pronouncing the French like Spanish, spoken with a Lancashire accent.

‘How sophisticated,’ Gloria said, taking her seat carefully and hooking her hair behind her ear. Coquettishly smiling down at the table-top.

‘My name’s Bob,’ he said, pointing to the name-sticker on his shiny pin-stitched jacket. He peered at her sticker, positioned near her shoulder. ‘Pleased to meet you, Gloria.’

Studying his face, Gloria was transfixed by those piercing blue eyes. She took a sip from her prosecco, then a gulp. Felt a Bible quote about to push its way out of her mouth but inexplicably held back this time. Feeling like this Bob was the best of a bad bunch and that there was some peculiar chemistry between them, Gloria forced herself to delve deep into her long-term memory, to the time of The Wastrel, when talking to men had been easy. The time in her life when she had learned to please men professionally. Young Gloria had been hot stuff. Young Gloria had forgotten most of the Bible quotes drummed into her as a child. She would channel young Gloria now. Just for fun. Jesus could take an evening off.

‘Pleased to meet you, Bob. My, what arresting eyes you have.’

‘You’ve got me banged to rights. I can’t take them off you, love.’ He held his hands up, as if in surrender. ‘I’m under your spell.’

Gloria ran her finger around the rim of her prosecco glass. ‘Are you implying I’m wicked?’ She batted her mascaraed eyelashes. The thrill of flirting after decades of the utilitarian exchange of facts with Sheila or spouting of religious platitudes at church was intoxicating. She felt like an old, neglected engine that was being cleaned of a lifetime’s sludge and lubricated by fresh oil. She bit her lip. Felt the alcohol loosening up her muscles and short-circuiting her inhibitions.

Bob grinned. He had small, clean teeth that shone blue beneath the bar’s lights. His white hair was dazzling. Wondering how it felt, Gloria wanted to reach out and touch it.

‘I think you’ve got a naughty lickle twinkle in your eye, Gloria,’ he said, leaning into her. ‘What do you do?’

‘Me? Oh, I bewitch men with my womanly assets and sparkling conversation.’ She threw back her head and laughed, aware that in doing so, her ample bosom would be more noticeable. The pastor’s handsome face loomed large in her mind’s eye, castigating her for acting like a wanton hussy with a smooth-faced, strange man called Bob, who couldn’t enunciate ‘little’ properly. But then, prosecco-fuelled Gloria of old reminded her that the pastor thought nothing of sizing up a teenaged girl’s lower portions whilst pressing the older flesh of his adoring congregation and his devoted fat wife. ‘And you?’

Bob laughed, running his clean fingers along the edge of the table. ‘When I’m not property-developing, I’m making conversation with beautiful coloured ladies.’

Coloured. Aye, there was the rub.

The Gloria that was a capable entrepreneur and an elder at the Good Life Baptist Church was just about to castigate him for his outdated and racist terminology when she became aware of a ruckus, audible above the distant thump-thump-thump of the sound system in the club’s main area.

Girls, screaming. Shouts for help. The sound of breaking glass.

Watch your back, Mam.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_e1fcacb1-946a-5388-9386-efb2ca1a3cbc)

Frank

‘Keep an eye out for unfamiliar dealers.’ Sheila’s words of warning. ‘Call Conky straight away if you spot anything iffy.’

When Frank had gazed out at the sea of gyrating young people in M1 House from the vantage point of the DJ booth, he had considered the difference between the time when Paddy had ruled and his widow’s fledgling reign.

‘One, two, three … four.’ He had inhaled sharply, counting on his fingers; drinking in the smell of sweat, dry ice and alcohol that had come from the writhing mass on the dance floor. ‘Ten, eleven.’ Ignoring the disapproving looks of the DJ whose concentration he had been interrupting, he’d turned to Degsy, who had been standing just beyond the threshold in the corridor. ‘Eleven. And those are just the ones I can see. I bet there’s more.’ Shaking his head, he had wiped the moisture from his upper lip with a quaking hand. Feeling doubly jittery, thanks to the speed he had taken earlier.

‘This would never have happened when Paddy was still alive,’ Degsy had said.

He’d voiced Frank’s niggling doubts over the new head of the O’Brien empire, but Frank wasn’t about to show disloyalty to Sheila in front of a foot-soldier. And he certainly wasn’t prepared to eulogise over Paddy.

‘My son died thanks to that bastard.’ Stepping down from the DJ booth into the corridor, Frank had slammed a fist into Degsy’s shoulder. ‘Now get out there and earn your money, you useless dick!’

‘What do you mean?’ Hurt in Degsy’s spotty, junkie-thin face.

Frank had reached up and had grabbed him by the collar of his Lacoste shirt, pulling him close. Without Paddy around as the unassailable enforcer, he’d had no option but to play the alpha with the likes of Degsy. Stepping up had been hard, but he’d done it. ‘I mean, Sheila’s paying you to run the drugs in my club. You’d have been well sacked by now if it wasn’t for the run on shifty arseholes, thanks to the war with the Boddlingtons. I wasn’t keen to have any drugs in here at all after what went on, but I said yous could still deal in M1 out of family loyalty. So, don’t be pissing my sister-in-law about.’

‘Hey! No need to slag us off, Frank. I run a tight ship, me.’

‘Oh yeah? Then who the hell are them dickheads out there? It’s not the first time I’ve seen them. There’s two black fellers – one with dreads, one’s wearing a red T-shirt. Asian lad in a denim jacket. Three or four white guys with tramlines cut in their heads. Dealers, Degsy. And not Sheila’s fucking dealers.’

‘I don’t know who you mean.’ Degsy’s small, bloodshot eyes, with their pin-prick pupils that said he consumed as much gear as he sold, had darted towards the dark corridor of the backstage area, as if he had been hoping for some way out of this awkward confrontation. He’d picked at one of the scabs around his mouth. All receding gums, when he spoke, and teeth that looked like he gargled in strong urine. That much had been visible, even in the crappy light. ‘I’m telling you Frank. I swear on my nan’s life. I haven’t seen nowt. It’s just O’Brien lads working the club. As far as I know.’

‘You don’t know your arse from your elbow, you!’ Frank had let go of Degsy’s collar, contemplating his next move. He hadn’t wanted to call Conky for backup. Not again. Every time he’d dialled the henchman’s number, he had felt like one of his balls had been snipped loose. ‘Get them dealers out of my club. Get the bouncers to help you. Find out who they’re working for. Report back to me. Right?’

‘Chill out, man.’

‘Don’t chill out, man me, you twat. Get out there and earn your cash. Or would you prefer to explain this to the Loss Adjuster? Don’t make me call Conky.’

Degsy had held his hands up. ‘All right, all right. Keep your wig on.’

As he’d accompanied the hapless Degsy to the edge of the dance floor, the reverberation of the bass and beat had felt like warning tremors beneath Frank’s feet, heralding a seismic shift of the club’s karma in the wrong direction. The atmosphere in M1 House that Saturday night was distinctly off.

He’d grabbed Degsy by his shoulder. ‘Be careful. Right? You’re not packing are you? I said no more guns or knives.’

The memory of his son, Jack, already growing cold and bleeding out on an empty dance floor, had hovered like an unwelcome spectre above the reality of hot, hedonistic youngsters having the time of their lives. It had been joined by the recollection of Asaf Smolensky, creeping in through the open back door, bearing a Bren gun and the bloodlusty intentions of criminal-insanity-on-the-payroll. For a peace-loving temple to dance and music, M1 House had seen more than its fair share of violent death back in the spring. Frank had been keen not to let the grim reaper defile his altar to the beat ever again.

The crowd had parted reluctantly to absorb Degsy. Frank had watched as the other O’Brien muscle had appeared from the sidelines, all given the order. The spotlights had shone on the bouncers’ bald pates as they too merged with the revellers from front of house.

‘I can’t see a bleeding thing,’ Frank had muttered, wringing his hands.

He’d shooed some kids off a sofa in one of the seating areas then, scrambling onto the sticky leatherette seating to see what was going on.

Degsy had made for the black guys. The entry-fee-paying clubbers had scattered around them, sensing danger like a herd of antelope at the water’s edge where hyenas lurk in the tall reeds. The bouncers had rounded on the white guys.