The Dead Man’s Hand was a pub on Halpin Road, a nine-mile section of dual carriageway running between Crowley and Urmston and comprising little more than petrol stations, car dealerships and container parks.
In many ways, the pub’s name and its sign – an Ace of Spades with a bullet hole in the middle – were the most interesting things about it. Aside from that, it was a plain, square, pebble-dashed structure, exuding zero charm. Inside, it was more like a working men’s club than a traditional pub, but a club that had seen better days. Aside from the entry corridor, where the toilets and fruit machines were, it was a single room, big but cluttered with tables and chairs, and with one long bar on the left-hand side. It had a small stage, complete with the obligatory strips of shiny material hanging down the back, but these were tawdry and dingy now, and no one could remember how long it was since anyone had performed there. It was a spacious enough interior, the big row of windows on the right allowing in lots of light, though they only looked down on the concrete steps leading up from the car park, which was almost always empty.
Hardly anyone patronised the Dead Man’s Hand any more, which is why it suited Miles O’Grady, almost guaranteeing privacy, even now at lunchtime. There were no other punters in, and even the obese barmaid, who had been disagreeably surprised to see him and his two cronies enter, had served them a round and promptly disappeared from view, as though to ensure that she wouldn’t be called on to do any more work. Just to be certain, though, O’Grady chose the table farthest from the bar, around which to have his conflab with Stone and Roper.
‘They didn’t just take my Jag for a joy-ride,’ O’Grady said, keeping his voice very low. ‘They smashed it into some innocent bystander and then dumped it back in my garage. That means I can’t even take it to be repaired. Sixty grand’s worth of motor gone, written off, for ever.’
Stone’s eyes bulged over the rim of his beer glass. ‘Christ! Who was the poor sod?’
O’Grady stared at him as if he was an imbecile. ‘What does that matter? Some old bloke past his sell-by date. The main thing is they’re playing for keeps. This is the shit they’ll stoop to, to get what they want.’
Roper hadn’t touched his own drink yet. He listened grimly.
O’Grady leaned forward. ‘So, the situation’s simple. We either up sticks and move … as in relocate to somewhere where we don’t know anyone and would have to start from scratch. Or we resist.’
‘Resist?’ Roper said, baffled.
‘Something wrong with that, Jon?’ O’Grady asked.
‘You said this was the Crew.’
‘Who else? Only Frank McCracken would be capable of that. Walking into the belly of the beast and making fucking ridiculous demands, at the same time as looking suave and managing to sound conciliatory.’
Roper shook his head. ‘Miles … we know McCracken of old. He’s hardcore. A devil in a three-piece suit. And he’s got about twenty other devils on his payroll, if not more.’
‘And what are we … a bunch of pussies who don’t count?’
‘Miles, we can’t fight the Crew. We shouldn’t be fighting anyone. This routine of ours only works if we’re discreet about it.’
‘I went to bed on Sunday night thinking the same thing,’ O’Grady said. ‘That we’re basically screwed. We pay up or we die. Talk about a no-win situation. Except … I’ve been straining the old grey matter since then, and maybe I don’t accept no-win situations.’
‘Why is it no-win?’ Stone asked. ‘I mean paying up?’
The other two looked round at their burly, bearded companion.
‘Would it really be so bad?’ he said.
‘Are you serious?’ O’Grady replied.
Stone shrugged. ‘How much do they want?’
‘It doesn’t matter. They’re not getting a fucking penny. If nothing else, it’s the principle.’
‘That principle’s going to get us killed, Miles,’ Roper said.
O’Grady held his jacket open, exposing a shoulder-holster and the grip of his Taurus. ‘Not if we pop that bastard McCracken first.’
Roper shook his head again. ‘You call that straining the grey matter? For fuck’s sake, put the damn thing away. I mean for good. You never even carried when you were in the job. I doubt you’ve fired more than two or three shots in your entire life, let alone fired them into other people.’
‘So what do you want to do, Jon?’ O’Grady scowled. ‘Surrender? After all that work, after finally getting ourselves an income stream that knows no limits? You want to give it all away to a bunch of scumbag gangsters?’
‘It’s not all of it,’ Stone chipped in.
‘It’s too much,’ O’Grady snapped back. ‘And shut up, Bern. You’re here as muscle, not to give fucking opinions.’
‘You said we can’t move locations,’ Roper said. ‘Why not?’
‘For Christ’s sake. We’ve got half a dozen gigs in motion right here, right now. Including Dean Chesham. He’s going to pay us royally for years to come, and likely won’t even notice the loss.’
‘Can’t we manage that from the other end of the country?’
‘The Crew are not stupid. We’d have to cut all ties, we’d have to go abroad.’
‘That’s not a bad shout,’ Stone said, no doubt thinking about the island paradise he’d always envisaged himself retiring to.
‘Damn it!’ O’Grady said heatedly. ‘I’m not just cutting and running. And you two shouldn’t want to either.’
‘It’s about how much you want to live,’ Roper said.
‘And will your life after this really be living?’ O’Grady’s voice became sneery. ‘Remind me what they kicked you out for, Jon? Wasn’t it something inconsequential? Something that wouldn’t matter to anyone outside the job? Oh yeah, I remember … downloading child pornography from a site you were supposed to be monitoring. I mean, you’ll be top of everyone’s list for a job after we pack this racket in, won’t you!’
He lurched around to face Stone. ‘And how about you, Bernie? Battered any suspects recently? Kicked anyone in the nads so hard you’ve induced a hernia? On no … that doesn’t happen any more, does it? Well, not so often … not as often as it used to when you were in uniform, eh?’ O’Grady snorted. ‘You’re another one who’ll easily secure a nice new career, aren’t you?’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Don’t you two cretins get it? Unless we’re prepared to emigrate, which wouldn’t be easy given our track records, we have no choice but to stand up to these animals.’
‘Miles …’ Roper’s voice was almost a plea. ‘The Crew are out of our league. You must accept that.’
‘We’ll see.’ Suddenly, O’Grady seemed calmer. His expression turned crafty. ‘I told you I don’t accept no-win situations. So, instead of them cutting in on our action, how about we cut in on theirs?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘McCracken’s their shakedown merchant, right? Their taxman? He’s the one who collects from those who won’t willingly pay up.’ O’Grady shrugged. ‘We could do that.’
There was a lengthy, uncomprehending silence.
‘Don’t look so bloody gobsmacked,’ he said. ‘We collect already, handsomely.’
‘We pick soft targets,’ Roper said. ‘Daft, spoiled rich men who don’t want it to get out about their secret lives. McCracken goes after the worst of the worst. A team pulls a blag, leaves security men all over the road, walks off with five hundred grand … are you gonna be the one who confronts them in a warehouse somewhere, demanding a fifty per cent share?’
‘We can do that if we’re official,’ O’Grady argued. ‘Look, the Crew don’t give a shit who works for them as long as it pays. There’s no loyalty among these thieving bastards.’ He still sensed that they weren’t on board. ‘Look … we take McCracken out of the frame, and I’ll make a pitch. I’ll go to their top dogs and I’ll say, “I can do that for you. If I can deal with Captain Shakedown, I can deal with anyone … so long as you lot back me up.” Why would they say no?’
Stone gave it some thought, but again Roper shook his head. His long, thin hatchet-face now looked longer and thinner than ever.
‘Miles, you’re not going to take McCracken out. And even if you do, what about his outfit? For God’s sake … he’s only a subdivision of the Crew, but that subdivision’s fifty times bigger than anything we can muster. I’m sorry, mate, but –’ he stood up ‘– you’ve lost it.’
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ O’Grady demanded.
‘I’m out. I’ve had it.’
‘Wait!’ O’Grady growled. ‘Stay where you fucking are!’
Roper backed from the table. ‘I always knew you were a narcissist, Milesey. Always knew you believed this “I should be king of the world, but other people keep cheating me out of it” malarkey. And I don’t know, maybe that makes you just right for the Crew. But the problem is you’ve got to be able to back it up. And … you can’t.’
He turned and walked across the room. O’Grady jumped up and followed, catching up with him in the passage where the fruit machines stood.
‘You just going to walk out on us, Jon? You’ve got money coming in weekly. Good amounts too.’
Roper retreated to the pub’s front door. He looked strangely sad. ‘That’s right, Miles. But I always knew it was too good to last.’
‘You walk out now, you don’t get another ha’penny.’
‘I’ve done all right in the brief time we’ve been active. I’ll live.’
‘I’ll tell the world what a nonce you are.’
‘What? A disgraced ex-copper … living on his own … in a crappy backstreet flat … with no job and a wife and kids that won’t talk to him? You think the world’ll care?’
‘You fucking pathetic specimen,’ O’Grady snarled. ‘You’d give it up just like that, at the first sign of trouble.’
‘Not easily. I want it to go on for ever. But I want to live more.’
Jon Roper didn’t wait for another scathing response. He turned and left the pub.
Churning with suppressed anger, O’Grady stomped back down the passage. Stone was waiting for him in the doorway connecting with the tap-room.
‘Looks like it’s just me and you, Bern,’ he said. ‘But that’s all right. Means there’s more to go around.’
‘More of what?’ Stone grunted. ‘The goodies that should rightly be going to Frank McCracken. We can’t take him down, Miles. Even I can see that. Besides, I’m more interested in getting a proper answer to that question I asked you earlier. How much are the Crew into us for? If it’s fifty per cent, why don’t we just say yes? The two of us can live on that cosily.’
‘Jesus, Bernie!’ O’Grady all but threw his arms into the air. ‘Fifty! In your fucking dreams, fifty! The best deal we’re going to get is thirty.’
‘Thirty?’ Stone looked bewildered. ‘They seriously thought you’d go for that?’
‘Who knows what they thought …’
‘But it doesn’t make sense. We stop operating and they get nothing. Surely if we went back to them and tried to negotiate …’
‘The negotiations are over!’ O’Grady didn’t want to admit it, but now felt as if he had no choice. ‘They came in at fifty but ended up knocking me down.’
Stone’s bemused expression slowly changed, became scornful. ‘You mean you tried to play tough with them?’
‘Wouldn’t you have done?’
‘And you’re the bloke who reckons he’s going to go and fight McCracken in the jungle like some wildcat?’
‘Listen, you fucking idiotic gorilla … even if we do get a deal, there’s only two of us now. You think we’ll be able to track bastards like Dean Chesham down and put the knuckle on them? Even if they are spoiled, rich dickheads, two of us alone can’t handle it!’
But Stone’s face was now as blank as the substance he was named after. ‘How much have I got coming to me from the Chesham gig? Now that Roper’s out.’
‘We split it evenly … five hundred large in total.’
Stone pushed past. ‘Just make sure I get it.’
‘Whoa!’ O’Grady tottered out of his way. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Not decided yet. But if you don’t need me any more, what’s the point me hanging round?’
‘Bernie, we have to think this thing through.’
Stone turned in the doorway. ‘You need a gorilla for that?’
‘Come on …’
‘Nah, you’ve got it sorted, Miles. You’re the man with the plan, as you never cease to remind us. Just think on …’ He lumbered back a few yards, squaring up close to his former colleague. ‘I want my money from the Chesham gig. And if I don’t get it, the next pair of nads I’ll be kicking are yours.’
‘Yeah?’ O’Grady reached under his jacket. ‘Any time …’
Stone snorted. ‘You and that fucking toy gun. You’re nobody, mate. When you were back in the job, you spent most of your time pawing the secretaries. When you weren’t doing that, you were investigating white-collar crime. You barely mixed it with the heavy mob. Pull it out if you want. Just make sure you don’t shoot your fucking toes off while you’re doing it.’
Then he too left the building, leaving O’Grady alone amid the ruins of his firm.
‘Nobody, eh?’ the ex-DCI said with cold, tight-mouthed fury. ‘Nobody? We’ll see about that.’