trust and being known by the man who employs you. No one in London knew or gave a fuck about me.
That idea I used to have about owning a restaurant? I knew nothing about restaurants except how to eat in them. It was a load of shite, a dream no more realistic than the one I’d had about playing for Newcastle when I was a kid. Face facts. It was never going to happen. I was going to be nothing in London, a nobody. The money I’d get from selling my flat wouldn’t get me a cupboard down there. I’d end up pulling pints behind a bar or washing dishes in a hotel. Shit job, shit pay, shit life, might as well be dead, which was something I hadn’t thought about when they were pointing a gun at my head.
The train pulled away once more and something began to happen to me. Somehow the fear I felt when I thought I was going to be killed or tortured started to recede. It had become more like a distant feeling and was slowly being replaced by something else. Anger.
We’d been sloppy, we’d taken our eye off the ball, we’d thought we could go on like this forever. Like every top champion that has ever lived, there came a day when we were knocked off our perch by someone else but that wasn’t the only thing burning into my brain. We had been out-thought and out-fought by wee Tommy Gladwell, the unproven, first born son of Arthur Gladwell. I told myself if it had been anybody else, someone more worthy of respect, then I could have accepted it but this just wasn’t right. I knew a bit about Tommy Gladwell and if he ran Newcastle there’d be no hope for anyone. Bobby knew how to be Top Boy. Hell, even I knew how to be Top Boy. I’d watched Bobby do it for years, learned it from him, given him new ideas that helped him to be the successful boss that he so obviously was. Together we knew how to keep order, we helped to keep the city ticking over. His other lieutenants weren’t there to advise him, give him big ideas, work out the strategy and the tactics needed to run an empire. I was the only one who could do that for him. I’d watched him for so long. It was always just a question of judgement. You had to say the right things to the right people at the right time, keep the wheels oiled, control the men who work for you and never give them an excuse to turn against you. Easy, except I still wouldn’t trust anybody from our crew, alive or dead, to do the job after Bobby. There was nobody I could work for without the risk of ending up in prison or the mortuary being way too high. I wouldn’t trust anybody.
Not one.
Well, maybe one.
Jesus, after all,
And there was one more thing that clinched it. I’d tried hard not to think about her. I’d told myself there was nothing I could do, no way I could help. It was somebody else’s problem now but I knew that wasn’t going to work. There was no way I could just ignore it. I’d been so damn scared, I wanted to banish any thought that kept me from putting at least three hundred long miles between myself and Vitaly but I couldn’t help myself because I knew I had to help her.
I got off the train at Darlington.
THIRTY-ONE
It was starting to rain. There were some young lads standing around outside the station trying to look hard. I walked straight up to them,
‘I’ll give you a tenner for a use of your phone.’ The lad looked at me like I was mental. I stuffed the note into his shirt pocket and I must have looked as if I’d had a very bad night because, without a word, he handed me his mobile. They all eyed me suspiciously, as if I was going to run off with his precious Nokia, ‘don’t worry,’ I told him, ‘you’ll get it back.’ And I turned away as I dialled Palmer.
‘Jesus,’ he hissed, ‘where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing you for ages.’
‘My phone’s gone but don’t worry about that. Get in your car and drive. I need you to pick me up, now.’
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘where are you?’
‘Standing outside Darlington station.’
‘Darlington?’ he asked, ‘what are you doing there?’
‘Just get here,’ I snapped, ‘on your way down I need you to make sure I have a car, a phone and a few hundred quid waiting for me when we get back to Newcastle. Get one of your boys to meet you with that outside my brother’s place.’
‘No problem,’
‘And I want you to bring something with you now.’
‘What?’
I kept my voice low as I told him then I rang off and threw the phone back to the young lad. I walked out of the station and down the ramp, turning the collar of my jacket up against the rain.
Palmer didn’t say anything when I climbed into the car. There was plenty of time for explanations on the drive back to Newcastle. I waited till we were on the main road before I asked him.
‘Did you bring it?’
‘Glove compartment.’
I opened the glove box and took it out, weighed it in my hand but kept it low, out of sight, ‘loaded?’
“Course,’ then he gave me a look, ‘not taking the piss, but have you ever fired a gun before?’
‘Yep,’ I told him casually, not adding how recently.
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
I put the Glock back in the glove compartment and closed it.
‘I need to tell you what’s been going on,’ I told him, ‘I am going to be relying on you, so you’d better be on your game.’
‘Right,’ he said simply. What I liked about Palmer was that he never seemed fazed about anything. It was hard to imagine a jeep through some plate glass doors. He didn’t look like that sort of guy – but then I probably didn’t look like a murderer.
‘Tommy Gladwell and his Russians are trying to take over the city tonight,’ I said.
He nodded sagely, ‘and we are going to stop them?’
‘Yeah,’ I said resisting the temptation to add, ‘we are going to try.’
‘There’s just one thing,’ I told him, ‘you know that Tommy is Arthur’s boy and you know all about Arthur Gladwell?’
‘That scussy wee shite. Aye, I’ve heard of him but he doesn’t scare me if that’s what’s worrying you?’
‘It’s not that,’ I said, ‘it’s just, you’re both from Glasgow so, if that’s going to be a problem, I need to know it now.’
‘If it’s a question of loyalty,’ he said, ‘Tommy Gladwell didn’t put food on my table when I was cashiered out of the army. You did.’
I wasn’t expecting a big speech and I didn’t get one but what he’d said was good enough for me.
‘In any case, Arthur Gladwell is a boil on Glasgow’s arse, always has been. He won’t be winning any popularity contests up there.’
Palmer had a couple of questions but it didn’t take long to put him in the picture. He’d already tortured most of the story out of grey-hair, whose real name turned out to be Terry apparently, but there was one last piece of the jigsaw that I still didn’t have.
‘Did you get that name for me?’
‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I did.’
And when he told me who had been selling us out, I have to say that, for some reason I still can’t fathom, I wasn’t even a bit surprised.
I’d never been happier to experience the unmistakeable smell of tobacco and stale piss outside the flats, especially when I noticed there was a light on in Our-young-un’s window. I left Palmer in the car to watch my back and wait for his man to show up with the cash, the phones and the car. I went to collect Danny. I didn’t want to hang about. We needed to be gone from there as soon as. I couldn’t afford to be caught in the city by Vitaly and his thugs.
