Читать книгу The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018 - Marnie Riches, Marnie Riches - Страница 11

‘Another pint, Marcus, kind sir!’ Paddy thrust his glass out towards the craggy-faced landlord, brandishing it beneath the short man’s nose as if it were a broken bottle. His words were slurring – he could hear that much. Had been for the last hour. But with every pint of bitter he drank, the reality of Kenneth Wainwright’s sad, shitty, low-rent world became more blissfully blurred around the edges; the ache of the scar where his body had been opened up with a boning knife by that little arsehole Leviticus Bell, posing as Asaf Smolensky, had dulled … just for a booze-numbed while.

‘You’ve had enough, Ken,’ the landlord said, grabbing Paddy’s wrist with an unforgiving hand. Stronger than he looked. ‘Go home and sleep it off, mate.’

Swaying slightly, Paddy calculated whether he should accept the rejection or square up to this pint-sized hard nut. He slapped several pound coins onto the sticky bar with his free hand. ‘My money not good enough for you?’

The landlord released his wrist. Looked down at the money. ‘Go home. Sleep it off. Come back later. Then I’ll serve you.’ His face softened only slightly, revealing a smile that was like a tight fissure in his bark-like skin. ‘Come on, Ken. You’re not worth much to me as a regular if you get knocked down on the way home cos you’re too pissed to see straight.’

Feeling his pulse thunder with adrenalin, the Paddy of old relished the invincible feeling of The Rage taking over his battered body. But the part of Paddy that was still just about sober dimly acknowledged that he was – for now – no longer the boss of South Manchester. He was not the King. At the insistence of Katrina – the almighty Sister Benedicta – he had taken on the threadbare mantel of Kenneth Wainwright willingly and for a reason. Lie low, Pad. Gather your strength. Sting those plotting, lying bastards when they least expect it. Destroy every last one of them. Tariq, Jonny, Conky, Lev, Gloria and Sheila. Sheila … bring that bitch to heel and reclaim her as your wife. His intentions, not Katrina’s. His sister had hoped he’d use the fresh start to make a new life for himself. But hadn’t she always played the controlling older sibling? Paddy, despite his new-found vulnerability, was in no mood to be ruled by another.

His sluggish, internal debate was interrupted by his phone ringing loudly. Buzzing its way across the beer-splattered mahogany, where it butted up against a washed-out bar towel. Katrina’s name on the display, of course.

‘Oh, bloody hell. Here we go.’

On the other end of the crackling line, Katrina’s voice sounded edged with hellfire and damnation. ‘Patrick! I got your message. You sounded drunk. Please tell me you haven’t burned through your week’s money already. And please tell me you’re not in that crumbling den of iniquity, The Feckless Oik’s Arms again.’

In the background, he could hear the noises of the nursing home that she ran with military bombast – the beeping of residents’ alarms; the monotonous verbal ramblings of old Rose, who tottered up and down the corridors all day long on her zimmer, repeating the same demented shit about needing the toilet, though she wore an inconti-pad so big that it barely fit inside her gusset. Swaying slightly on his bar stool, he imagined he could still smell the stale cabbage and cloying stink of soiled underwear.

He belched down the phone. ‘I can’t live on peanuts, Kat. Drop us hundred quid round, will you? Just til Giro day.’

There was a muffled noise on the other end – his sister, putting her well-scrubbed hand over the mouthpiece, perhaps, to stop the other nuns from eavesdropping. ‘I didn’t commit fraud to get you a new identity just so you could wash your chance of a new life into a barman’s swill bucket, Patrick O’Brien.’

Paddy tugged absently at the wadding that spilled out of the vinyl seat cover. ‘Piss off, Kat. You don’t have the first bloody idea what it’s like for a rich man to need state handouts. Do you know how little a sad bastard like Wainwright—’ In amongst the beer fumes, he realised he had slipped up. Eyed Mark the landlord furtively. ‘I mean, a man like me gets in disability benefit? I spent more on my aftershave than I get to live on for a week now.’ Damn. Another slip-up. Putting his mouth into gear before his brain was switched on. That’s what his Mammy would have said.

‘Patrick!’ The agitation in her voice was clear. Paddy had called the shots for decades. Now, suddenly, the jackboot was on the other foot. ‘I am not giving you extra money out of the nursing home’s coffers to fund death by cirrhosis of the liver. You’re turning into Dad.’

‘Thanks a bundle. Is that a no, then?’

The line went dead. Paddy smashed his phone onto the bar top, cracking the screen.

‘Right!’ the landlord shouted. ‘That’s it, Ken. Out!’

Surprised to find himself deftly manhandled by the landlord towards the door, Paddy pointed confusedly at him. ‘How did you get over the bar? Fucking … Spiderman!’

The other drinkers barely looked up from their pints, sitting as they were, in silence around three or four old tables that were dark-stained with ages-old stout spillage and nicotine from a bygone era. Cracked and dirty single-glazed windows barely shed light on the dump, with its swirling brown and lime carpet.

‘Shithole!’ Paddy shouted, shrugging the landlord off. Searching for words that came only reluctantly through the hoppy fog of beer-thoughts. ‘Shitty carpet.’

‘See you later, Ken,’ the landlord said, pushing him gently onto the street. ‘Go home and eat something.’ The door was closed firmly behind him.

Stumbling into the street, Paddy clutched at his stomach. Even now, after six pints, he could feel the ache of a body healing reluctantly.

A horn honked, loud and long. Then, an angry voice.

‘Get out of the way, wanker!’

Paddy jerked himself backwards onto the kerb, surprised that he had veered into the road and the path of a white van without realising. The driver had stopped abruptly, his passenger hanging out of the cab window, screaming at him with an angry red face, peeping out from a plaster-encrusted beany.

Not registering the words but understanding their sentiment, Paddy stuck his middle finger up at the man. ‘Shove it up your arse!’

The passenger opened the van door and got out. He was tall too, seeming larger in a hi-vis donkey jacket with baggy plaster-spattered cargo trousers and elephantine steel-toecap workmen’s boots.

‘Come on, you big bastard,’ Paddy slurred, holding his fists aloft. Squaring up to the far younger man. Couldn’t have been more than thirty. But even in his early sixties, Paddy was certain he was more than a match for this prick. He swung a punch. Missed.

The enraged plasterer, now accompanied by the van’s driver – a giant of a man who looked like a brickie, judging by his physique – raised his fist.

‘Leave him be! He’s an invalid! Leave it, lads. No harm done, right?’

A woman’s voice to Paddy’s left. He felt someone link him and drag him across the road. With sluggish eyes, he registered that it was Brenda. He grinned.

‘Hiya, Brenda, love! I thought you was at work.’ Lunging for her, he planted a wet kiss on her cheek and squeezed her breast through her bright green liveried work fleece. ‘C’mere gorgeous. Give Pad— Kenny a kiss.’

Brenda giggled girlishly and blushed. Swiped his hand away delicately. ‘Not in public, Kenneth. Come on. I’ll walk you home. I’m not due back off my dinner for half an hour. I’ll microwave you something to soak up the booze. Have you got anything in?’

Paddy grabbed at his crotch. ‘I’ve always got something in for you, Brenda!’ The polar opposite of Sheila, he thought, eyeing up this new easy lay that he’d met during the pub’s quiz night. All pillowy breasts and a nice big fat arse. He had never thought that would be his thing, but Brenda – recently abandoned by her ex and desperately needing a man to bestow her womanly love on – was comforting and obliging. She made good stew and cleaned his house for him. A man like him shouldn’t go without.

Sturdy, reliable Brenda steered him along the road towards the purgatorial two-up, two-down that he had rented in Kenneth Wainwright’s name. Rent paid by the dole. Furnished sparsely with MDF shit from the catalogue.

‘Right, let’s get you a nice, strong cup of tea,’ Brenda said, rummaging in his trouser pocket and finding his keys.

Paddy stumbled through the door, making a beeline for the old-fashioned sofa – a British Heart Foundation shop classic in threadbare wine jacquard. The cig burns were all his. As the institutional magnolia-painted walls spun around him, he took out his phone. Realised Brenda was otherwise occupied, clattering around in the kitchen – no doubt looking for something edible among the empties and the mouldy takeout leftovers. He dialled the number that appeared most frequently in his call log, apart from Katrina’s and Brenda’s.

The familiar gravelly voice at the other end: ‘All right, Paddy? How’s it going?’

‘Don’t use my bleeding name!’ he said, checking over his shoulder. No sign of Brenda. The room continued to spin. He drowned out the profuse apologies with his reason for calling. ‘What have you found out? Anything?’

There was a brief pause. Squeaking – perhaps the sound of a window being wound up on a vehicle. ‘That detective has been sat outside your old house day and night, from what I can tell,’ his oldest school friend and now paid ally said. ‘It’s hard to say without getting inside the property. I followed her into town this morning though. She took a big sack of something into a safety deposit facility.’

‘And? Have you seen her with any men?’

There was another pause. The sound of a cigarette being lit, inhaled, exhaled. ‘The only one she knocks around with is Conky McFadden. I’ve seen them together in her car, coming out of her drive.’

Paddy scratched at his four-day-old stubble, mulling over the news. Was it unreasonable that Sheila would have retained Conky’s services? No. And it was highly unlikely that she’d be shagging the big, ugly bastard. Not after she’d had Paddy O’Brien giving it to her for all those years like a proper man.

‘Try to get closer,’ he said. ‘Keep an eye on that cow, Gloria Bell, too. And I want to know where she lives. I’ve got a bone to pick with that lump of shit she calls a son.’

‘The black woman? She’s a crafty bastard, that one. Slippery, like. I can never keep tabs on her. I’ve tried following her, like you asked, but she always does a bloody Houdini.’

‘Try harder, then,’ Paddy said, thinking of Sheila and reaching into his jogging bottoms to grab his erect penis. He started to massage himself rhythmically. ‘That’s what I’m paying you for, isn’t it? I want information, not a damned sightseeing tour!’

Ending the call, he withdrew his hand from his jogging bottoms and hurled the phone onto the sofa. Hauled himself to his feet, swaying slightly, watching the scuffed skirting board move upwards, upwards, downwards, rising and falling in waves like a heat shimmer created from alcohol fumes. Brenda.

Weaving his way to the kitchen at the back of the terrace, he found his humble, willing shelf-stacker checking on the progress of a pie through the greasy oven door. He started to yank his jogging bottoms and underpants down, eyeing Brenda’s ample bottom as she knelt down.

‘Brenda, love,’ he said. ‘Grab the worktop. I’ve got something to give you.’

Glancing over her shoulder with a watery smile on her unadorned lips, she stood up, and turning, caught sight of Paddy’s erection. Baulked.

‘Oh, Kenneth. I’ve got to be back in work in five minutes.’ She pointed to the clock. ‘I’m already running late. I’ll get told off by the manager.’

But Paddy wasn’t interested in Brenda’s work concerns or tardiness. He wanted what he wanted.

‘Don’t come all coy with me,’ he said, advancing towards her. Grabbing her around her stout middle and pressing her large breasts against him. Grinding his penis into her stomach. ‘You love giving me the runaround, don’t you?’ He reached behind her and hitched up her frowsy skirt. Yanked at her knickers and stuck his finger inside her, enjoying the feel of her struggling against him.

‘I’m going to be late, Ken!’ She giggled nervously, clearly unsure as to whether she should be flattered or affronted. ‘We can do this properly later when you’ve slept the booze off. You’re hurting me! The drawer handle’s digging in my bum.’

‘I’m going to fuck you through to the other side of Christmas,’ he said. ‘Your arse will be hurting from more than a frigging handle when I’ve finished with you.’

She tried to push him away. ‘No, Ken! I need the work!’

‘My chunky monkey.’ He could feel she was dry and unyielding. It didn’t matter. In fact, that was better. Made him feel like a triumphant Viking, claiming his spoils.

The fingernails digging in his neck and the knee in his inner thigh, however, were unexpected.

‘No, Ken! No!’ Anger contorted Brenda’s smooth moon-face into something unfamiliar and unwelcome.

When he brought his fist down on her defiant face, he was pleased to see that it knocked the rebellion and fire out of her immediately.

He stood back to admire his work. completely unaware of Brenda’s teenaged son, Kyle, who should have been at school but who had bunked off straight after chemistry, following his mother to her boyfriend’s house. Now, stealthy, keen-eyed Kyle was lurking in the doorway, watching this domestic noir unfold.

Deciding the thump was assault enough, Paddy put his deflating penis – unreliable thanks to the alcohol slopping around inside him – back inside his pants.

Brenda cowered before him, sobbing, with hurt in her eyes that he found almost delicious. She pulled her skirt back down. ‘Your pie’s ready.’ She wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her supermarket fleece.

Paddy said the words he knew would be balm for the bruise. They worked every time on women like her. ‘You know I love you, don’t you, Bren?’