The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018

Peering over his Ray-Bans, Conky smiled. Continually surprised that Sheila should ever question her own beauty.

‘Those cherries fairly do enclose

Of orient pearl a double row,

Which when her lovely laughter shows,

They look like rosebuds fill’d with snow.’

He finished his recital with a grin, ignoring the sniggers from two teenaged girls who passed by on their way to the lifts.

Sheila frowned at him uncertainly. Touching her incisors with her index finger. ‘What?’

‘It’s a poem from the seventeenth century.’

‘So, have I got lippy on my teeth?’

‘No, darling. You’re grand.’ He touched his own carefully arranged hair ensemble, hoping that the wind wouldn’t be blowing stiffly along the waterway. It wouldn’t do to show weakness to a man like Nigel Bancroft.

Silence in the lift with the genuine punters hoping to nab a bargain in the M&S clearance section. Conky reached out in the squash of the stuffed metal box for Sheila’s hand but was disappointed. Her stern expression was all business. She clutched her Hermès handbag, holding it against her stomach as though it provided a force field protecting her from the unwashed mortals and whatever was to come.

He noticed people staring up at him as the lift travelled downwards; turning away abruptly as they suspected they had just made eye contact with the ominous-looking wall of man, clad all in black like a funeral director. They were lucky he was wearing sunglasses. Poor wee bastards would have a heart attack if he treated them to The Eyes.

‘Come on. We’re late,’ Sheila said, dragging him through the depressing upper mall of the shopping centre, where half the units were still unoccupied, post-recession.

She took a step onto the escalator down, checking her watch again. Her shoulders were so hunched up inside her cashmere coat, Conky was tempted to reach down and smooth them out.

‘He can fuck away off. Make him wait!’ he said, catching the reflection of the two of them standing together in a shopfront window. Still disbelieving that this doll was his lover. Paddy O’Brien would be spinning in his grave. But he now knew the truth of how Paddy had treated his wife behind closed doors. Screw him, the wife-beating bastard.

‘Tell me again what you found out about this Bancroft?’ She fixed him with those cobalt blue eyes, the crow’s feet crinkling around them like an elegant, ageing frame around crisp, perfectly composed photography.

Marching past the brightly lit shops to the exit, he explained. ‘Nigel Bancroft runs Birmingham, basically. He’s big in commercial property. He owns a chain of restaurants – tapas, burgers, Tex-Mex: places where you can eat and drink. Backs small business start-ups. But naturally, that’s all bullshit.’

Outside in the gusting wind, Sheila click-clacked ahead of him to the stone stairs that led down to the Lowry Theatre. The giant silver structure, comprising several bold shapes lumped together, always put Conky in mind of the old metal storage tins that knocked around the kitchen of his childhood home, into which his Mammy had stashed food and cash for the bills, lest his father fritter it away down the bookies.

Today, as with most other days in Manchester, the cloud cover was heavy, lending the deserted paved plaza and the hulking grey structure that sat beside it an oppressive Soviet air.

Sheila was struggling on the steps in those shoes.

‘Give me your hand?’ he offered.

‘I’m fine. I’m not a cripple.’

She shooed him away, but even after months as a couple, it felt more like he’d taken a hefty right hook.

Approaching the bridge by the dull grey-brown snake of the River Irwell, he spotted an average-sized man, standing by the rail. Expensively dressed, the man wore a camel overcoat with a grey suit underneath. A big bruiser with close-cropped hair, standing some ten feet away, clad in dark jeans and a leather donkey jacket. Muscle. More muscle – a big black guy with dreads, wearing a parka – standing further down. The well-dressed man glanced towards them, smiling expansively at Sheila. Conky was careful to make a show of touching the place where the gun bulged, not quite hidden beneath the fabric of his coat.

‘Wait here,’ Sheila said, squeezing his arm but not taking her eyes from the man.

‘No. I’m coming with you. You’re exposed.’

Sheila shot him a narrow-eyed glance. Lips thinned to a line. ‘You’re not the only one who’s packing, Conky. I’m not an amateur.’ Her features softened. ‘At least hang back a bit. Give us a bit of distance, yeah?’

Conky halted. Exhaled heavily, chewing over his lover’s stubborn streak like a piece of unpalatable gristle.

‘Nigel?’ Sheila asked, marching forwards with her hand held out.

‘Sheila O’Brien,’ Bancroft said, flashing a dazzling dentist’s-dream smile that almost lit up the dank quayside scene. He clasped Sheila’s hand between his, leaning attentively in for an air kiss on both cheeks, which Sheila reciprocated.

Bastard. Couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, unless he’d had work done. Conky mused that he had the kind of face you saw on tired catalogue models. Starting to go at the jawline and underneath the eyes. A vain man, for sure with that fecking hair gel in his hair. A wedding ring on his finger though. Not that that ever stopped men like Nigel Bancroft. His words were being whipped away by a fickle breeze. What was he saying, with that grin plastered all over his nipped-and-tucked bake? There sure as hell was a lot of laughing going on.

Conky moved a little closer so that he was within earshot of the two once more.

‘You’re even more beautiful than they say,’ Bancroft said in that Brummie accent of his.

‘Who says that then?’ There was a sceptical edge to Sheila’s voice, despite the coquettish giggle.

‘The great and the good of the criminal underworld, Sheila. You and I mix in the same esteemed circles, after all.’

It sounded like the prick had rehearsed his lines. Ma gavte la nata, Conky said to himself, musing on the classic line delivered by Jacopo Belbo in Foucault’s Pendulum. Take the cork out of his arse and let some of that hot air out. Prick.

The two started to walk towards the footbridge that spanned the river. Conky followed, straining to catch their conversation.

‘I can tell you now,’ Bancroft said, ‘when it’s just between lads, the hardest nuts from Portsmouth to Glasgow all say they admire your assets, and I’m not just talking what you’ve inherited from Paddy.’ Wink.

Sheila came to a halt, clutching her bag close. ‘Flattery’s all very well, Nigel, but I can’t bank it, and there’s more to me than a pair of tits, son.’ The mirth had evaporated from her voice, leaving only a sour residue behind, Conky noted with some satisfaction. ‘Now what did you come up here to say?’

‘I hear you’re looking to offload your traditional business interests to a third party.’

‘Who the bloody hell told you that?’ Sheila raised an eyebrow. ‘I certainly never told anyone that.’

Bancroft’s men had moved from their positions by the river’s guardrail and were now also trailing the couple. Conky studied them surreptitiously through the dark lenses of his Ray-Bans, checking for sudden movements. These tossers had been at Paddy’s funeral. Casting his mind back to some of the lesser-known mourners gathered at the back of the throng, he recalled the black feller. Those dreadlocks, tied in a fat ponytail and that acne scarring that covered his forehead and cheeks were a dead giveaway. He had been standing at the side of your Man-at-Burton Bancroft. And now they were in Manchester, thinking they could simply swoop down and pick over the O’Brien empire’s carcass.

‘Let’s just say, I’ve got my sources of reliable information,’ Bancroft told Sheila. ‘News travels fast in our world, and I can help you get on with the things that are more in your comfort zone.’

Conky noticed that the veins on the backs of Sheila’s hands were standing proud. She appeared taut from her feet to her face, like a gymnast holding her body before executing a finale on the beam.

She poked Bancroft in the shoulder. ‘You can take that shit-eating grin off your face for a start, mister.’ Taking a step towards him. Matching his height in those heels. ‘Now, first, I want to know which double-crossing little shit you’ve got working for me, earwigging and then mouthing off about my business. And second, cut the flirtatious crap and tell me what you’re proposing. South Manchester’s mine. All mine. I’m a businesswoman, Nigel. Not a bleeding hobbyist or the show pony you seem to be mistaking me for.’

Bancroft’s muscle marched towards her, puffing themselves up like peacocks, squaring for a fight over a hen.

Conky withdrew his weapon, pointing it at them but still keeping it for the most part concealed up his overcoat sleeve. ‘Back off, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Or you’ll have more holes in you than Emmental cheese, before you can shout croque-fucking-monsieur.’

The Midlander muscle looked to their boss for a signal.

Holding his hand aloft, Bancroft’s smile no longer reached his eyes. ‘Easy, lads. We’re just talking shop here, aren’t we, Sheila?’ He glanced at Conky’s gun, blinking too hard and fast. ‘No need for any nastiness. Call your dog off, will you?’ He turned his attention back to Sheila. His puffed-up ego seemed to have deflated somewhat, making that camel coat look a size too big.

‘Dog?’ Conky took a step towards him. ‘Catch yourself on, you cheeky wee bastard. You call me a dog again, I’ll show you the ferocity of my bite.’ He caught sight of Sheila’s steely glare and flinching jaw. Took a step back again and put the gun away. Satisfied that he had set his stall out for this posing ponce.