‘How have you been?’ Laura said, but she seemed distant and distracted.
Well you dumped me by text with no explanation. It broke my heart and made me cry in my bedroom. You didn’t return texts or voicemail messages after that. So, I’m pretty shit, actually.
‘Yeah. Okay. You back at your parents for Christmas?’ Nick asked.
‘Yes. Just for a day or two,’ Laura explained as she looked over her shoulder. It was as if she was waiting for someone.
‘Your Mum said you’ve dropped out of University?’ Nick said. It had been a surprise as Laura had been excited about the course she was doing.
‘I’m gonna defer for a year. I’m doing a few things in Liverpool, so I thought I’d have a year out,’ Laura said.
Something about the way she looked and sounded was completely different. It was as if she was pretending to be someone else. Nick felt like he was talking to a stranger and it made him sad to see her like that.
‘I heard you’re working in a club?’ Nick asked.
‘Yeah,’ Laura said, looking over her shoulder again.
‘What club’s that then?’ Nick said.
‘You wouldn’t know it. The Sugar Cane Club. Not really your kind of scene,’ Laura said.
Nick didn’t know the club but her comment sounded patronising.
What’s happened to you? Nick thought for a second.
‘I hear you’re joining the police next year?’ Laura said. She looked restless as though she couldn’t wait to get away.
‘Yeah. Need to pass the tests, but fingers crossed,’ Nick said, but Laura wasn’t really listening.
‘I’m pleased for you. It’s what you wanted to do, isn’t it? And you can stay in Llancastell, can’t you?’ Laura said.
At that moment, a black Cherokee Jeep with tinted windows drew up on the other side of the road.
Laura looked over and then at Nick. ‘I’ve got to go. Have a good Christmas, Nick.’
‘You too,’ Nick said, but Laura had already turned to go.
Nick watched as she hurried across the road and waved at the driver of the Jeep. The snow was falling and swirling in the air. She opened the passenger door, got in and the Jeep pulled away.
Liverpool Crown Court
March 2001
It was mid-afternoon and Curtis and Shaun had been sitting in Court No 1 all day. Curtis looked down at his handmade Italian loafers and grey Armani suit trousers that had been neatly pressed. He and Shaun copied their look from their favourite film, ‘Goodfellas’. Some of the Italian mafia slang had even slipped into their own Scouse vernacular. If Shaun referred to someone as ‘a friend of ours’ it meant he was to be trusted. Curtis now referred to having someone murdered as ‘clipped’.
You think I’m funny? You think I’m here to amuse you?
The Blake brothers were facing charges of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs into Liverpool, mainly heroin, crack cocaine and ecstasy. They had been on remand for nearly two months. According to their brief and counsel, they were both looking at a hefty jail sentence. Curtis didn’t care. It was never going to happen. He knew that they were on their way to the big league, so going to court was part of the territory. He and Shaun had started to cut out the middlemen and were buying directly from the sources of supply. At the beginning of the year they had been over to Amsterdam where they had negotiated with a Turkish gang to import a variety of drugs hidden on container ships into Liverpool. The trip to Holland had widened Curtis’ horizons and he loved it. They had drunk and snorted coke with ‘faces’ from across the drug dealing top table. Moroccans, Spanish, Turks and Joey Rodriquez, a Columbian who claimed to have worked for Medellin. The Snow King. Curtis knew Rodriguez was worth a fortune, but he dressed like an unmade bed and had bad breath. It was a lifestyle that Curtis and his brother could have only dreamed of when they used to steal car stereos in Toxteth. They were only a step away from the yachts, the private planes, $1000-a-night hookers and champagne on tap. And those from Croxteth and further afield who called him and Shaun ‘scallies’ or ‘scum’ could go and fuck themselves for all he cared. They were just jealous that they hadn’t the balls or the nouse to go and get what they wanted. So they could carry on working twelve hours a day in some shitty factory trying to get enough money to put food on the table. They were fucking mugs.
Curtis wasn’t worried about how the trial was going to go. They’d been here before. He had good reason to believe that he and Shaun would be celebrating that evening. It had been six months since Peter Costa, a known associate of theirs, had walked into a central Liverpool police station and offered to turn evidence against the Blake brothers. Costa had effectively turned ‘supergrass’ and was taken into the Witness Protection Scheme. However hard they tried, no amount of bribes, threats or string-pulling could reveal Costa’s whereabouts. And Shaun failed in his promise that he would make Costa ‘disappear’.
The two brothers had used their time on reprimand to study and learn every detail of the surveillance operation that the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit had undertaken against them. They spent their spare time in the evenings at Frankland Prison reading over the depositions. The police hated the fact that the details of their operations had been made available. Basically, it gave the Blake brothers a crash course in police procedure and surveillance techniques.
Curtis sat back, crossed his legs and looked up to the public gallery. Fat Tony was looking down with a grin. He gave Curtis the finger. Curtis chuckled audibly which seemed to annoy the prosecution and the QC.
I’m going home today, Curtis thought to himself, aware that he was smirking.
That morning it had become clear that Costa had his own side-line in dealing cocaine and the case for the
