Four years earlier, Marcie Quant’s husband, Brendan Quant, thirty-nine years old, had died in a hail of bullets. His torso was shredded by a line of slugs from a machine pistol fired by a screaming young buck balanced on the back seat of a scrambler motorbike as it swerved past.
Brendan had been unfortunate enough to have been negotiating a deal on behalf of Dunster Cosmo in the melting pot of inter-gang violence in Liverpool.
Even though Brendan had not been the target – he was more collateral damage than anything – it didn’t make the pill of his death any easier for Marcie to swallow. She grieved badly, on and off, for a long time. She and Brendan had been childhood sweethearts, married at eighteen, and although their idea of fidelity was fairly loose, they stayed together and built up a thriving criminal enterprise based mostly on investing and looking after the funds of people like Dunster Cosmo, one of London’s wealthiest and most brutal mobsters whose own business incorporating drug and people trafficking generated millions each year, most of which he had, somehow, managed to hide by using the services of folk like Brendan and Marcie.
But the problem was – and this is something that Marcie regretted most on Brendan’s passing, the thing that caused her most grief – Brendan had been the brains of their little outfit, and although she was very much an equal partner, Marcie was content to wallow in the more glamorous side of their lifestyle as opposed to having to do the work to place the funds that came their way for safekeeping from the likes of Cosmo.
The other facet to that problem was that people like Cosmo believed that because Marcie and Brendan were equal partners, each would know as much as the other about the ins and outs of how the business ran.
Which wasn’t quite true.
Throughout their marriage, Marcie had given that impression – but it was all complete bullshit. She was no dizzy blonde, but she knew nothing. Although she was quite happy to perpetuate the illusion to others that she was fully conversant, in reality it did not interest her one jot.
Brendan hadn’t minded. He was besotted by her, she with him, even though both of them had occasional affairs or one-night stands (to keep the marriage alive, they claimed), and the relationship was tempestuous with frequent outrageous arguments that usually ended up in bed and fucking. The thing was that, jointly, they never wavered in their aim to live well, spend hard, avoid the bullets and die happy.
The reality and fragility of her situation hit her hard at and after Brendan’s funeral.
Deeply rooted in the criminal fraternity of north London, it was one of those gatherings the police were reluctant to show their faces at; they kept well out of the way, other than to intrude with very long lenses. This reticence by the cops was due to the fact that in order to honour Brendan, who had been such a likeable rogue, all rivalries between warring factions were suspended for the day (or until the first few pints were sunk), so that Marcie could at least have her husband cremated in peace; if the cops stepped in, there would have been mayhem and a lot of bloodshed. Probably.
It had gone well. The underworld had done him proud.
Brendan’s body, encased in a cushion-lined casket at the chapel of rest, had been transferred on to a carriage pulled by two magnificent shire horses courtesy of a local brewery (part-owned by Dunster Cosmo) which set off for the crematorium some five miles distant, the cortège led by two bowler-hatted undertakers who walked solemnly in front of the horses all the way.
Without any police interference, four cars and two motorcyclists, also provided by Cosmo, formed the equivalent of a security escort, moving ahead and leapfrogging the procession to block junctions to allow unhindered passage for the horses, with Marcie sitting regally and alone in a long black limousine behind, a dark veil pulled dramatically over her face, the epitome of a grieving widow.
The streets were lined with people, mostly curious about what was going on, and their appearance made it seem as if Brendan had been a cherished member of the community (he wasn’t – he was feared by many) and would be missed (he wouldn’t).
Eventually, after many traffic hold-ups, the cortège drew into the crematorium grounds, which were huge and wooded, with many acres of headstones, and although Brendan would have an intricately carved headstone among all these, his ashes would be scattered elsewhere, according to his wishes.
Once the coffin had been slid off the carriage, it was borne into the crematorium by six of his mates acting as pallbearers who made their way through a throng of besuited shitbags and a haze of cannabis smoke, with several spliffs being reverentially flicked on to the coffin as it passed on the last section of its journey. The service inside the packed crematorium was presided over by a humanist preacher, and the curtains finally closed on the coffin to the strains of Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’.
The post-crematorium bash was held at a nearby pub – one of Cosmo’s – which did Marcie proud with a lavish buffet, free drinks for all and even a melancholy violinist who played soft dirges in the background until some drunk snapped her instrument.
There was even a private room with a bar set aside for Marcie and a few of her closest friends and relatives.
These people obviously included Cosmo. Although he was generous and gracious on the surface, Marcie could see that this was a veneer masking his eagerness to ask her some very direct questions.
About money.
Marcie was dreading the moment, so she put it off for as long as possible with floods of tears and by mingling with other guests and generally avoiding Cosmo.
Until the moment came when, clearly irritated, Cosmo took her firmly by the elbow, gripping the soft skin at this joint between his finger and thumb, and led her firmly away into the private bar, which suddenly became extra-private when two of his heavies cleared the room and took up positions by the door.
Cosmo sat her down at a zinc-topped table.
Her veil was still down, but Cosmo raised it and pushed it back over her head, smiling sadly at her.
‘Sweetheart,’ he began.
Her stomach tightened.
‘You know how very, very sorry I am about Brendan’s demise. So tragic, but the luck of the draw. He was a good guy and did a lot of good things for this community. And me.’
‘Thank you, Dunster,’ she croaked, trying to force out another flood of tears, but she seemed to have dried up. ‘He always liked you, as I did – do.’
Cosmo held her gaze, and she did her best not to avert her eyes, which was hard because this bastard, in spite of the fact he was in his mid-sixties, was still intimidating. She knew she could not waver.
‘But Brendan’s been dead a month now,’ Cosmo said. It had taken this length of time to get the post-mortem done and for the coroner in Merseyside to release the bullet-ridden body back to Marcie. ‘Things have to move on. So, please don’t think I’m being sexist here, sweetheart, because you know I’m not, but I have to ask: do you know what you’re doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In business is what I mean. Our business. I’d hate to think that you were a hanger-on floozy, living off Brendan’s scraps.’
‘Dunster Cosmo!’
‘Like I said’ – he held up his hands to pacify her – ‘I’d hate to think it.’
‘Well, you don’t have to think it because me and Brendan worked as a team. I know all the ins and outs, so you don’t have to worry about a thing,’ Marcie assured him.
‘That’s good, Marcie.’
‘Not a problem, Dunster.’
‘Good, because I want to continue investing. I got cash coming out of my ears.’
‘Not a problem, Dunster.’ Then Marcie asked coyly, ‘So what does that mean?’
‘At the moment, I’ve got about four mill stashed, burning a hole in my pocket, and I need it putting away for a rainy day, my love.’
One thing was for certain: Marcie Quant had needed the release provided by the three outstanding orgasms delivered to her by Darren McCabe, two from Darren himself up to the point of his first pile-driving climax and the third from Darren’s tongue as Marcie lay back and allowed him to do what he had to do to bring her to another earth-shuddering moment.
Later that evening, when everything inside her had subsided, and she was lying alongside McCabe in the gigantic bed she had previously shared exclusively with the month-long-gone Brendan, smoking, blowing lazy rings up towards the ceiling where they burst like wisps of cloud, and with a large glass of good whisky balanced on her breastbone between her boobs, Marcie said, ‘I’m fucked.’
McCabe – he too was lying on his back, sipping whisky but not smoking – said, ‘I know,’ with a smirk.
‘Not in that sense.’ She blew out smoke down her nostrils. ‘In the sense that I don’t know the first thing about business. I’ll admit it.’ She made a perfect circle with her lips and popped out another smoke ring which rose listlessly above her like a hazy halo before it evaporated. ‘I just let Brendan get on with it and enjoyed the cash, the Botox, a tit lift, the fanny tightener—’
‘And me,’ McCabe interjected.
‘Yeah, yeah, and you on the side, but not seriously.’ She poked the tip of her tongue out at him. He was just a piece on the side, an occasional fuck, but McCabe had worked for Brendan as an enforcer, and anything more while Brendan was alive would have been ludicrously dangerous, although she’d always liked McCabe. ‘As I was saying … this is all very well, but Dunster Cosmo is – was – Bren’s main client, if you will, and since he died, I’ve been through everything. His desk, his computer, his bank statements – everything I can lay my hands on – and I can find no inkling as to what he did with Dunster’s money. Again, fine’ – she swallowed nervously – ‘but when Dunster comes a-knocking and asks for his money, asks where it’s invested or, God forbid, just says, “Give me my money”, I just don’t know where the fuck it is. And then I’ll be a dead widow.’
‘So Brendan’s been stealing it?’ McCabe asked incredulously.
‘I don’t know, I just don’t know. I have no idea who he’s been dealing with, I don’t know his contacts. Essentially – and you’ll get the drift here – I know fuck all … and now Dunster wants me to keep investing for him!’ She paused. ‘I’d run, but I haven’t got any money to do that with. I’ve maxed out all six of my credit cards since Bren got shot, so I’d get as far as Dover ferry terminal. Might make it to Calais at a pinch.’
She went silent, staring at her reflection in the mirror on the ceiling.
‘Cosmo was right, even though he doesn’t know it yet. I am a hanger-on floozy.’
‘He’s got four million in cash – euros and sterling – that he wants me to take care of,’ Marcie said to McCabe. They had made love in the shower, a continuation of her night of ecstasy, and now they were sitting on opposite sides of the bed. It was the morning after. She had a bath towel wrapped around her. McCabe was naked, just starting to get dressed.
‘Run with it,’ he suggested. ‘Take it. Disappear.’
She snorted a laugh of derision before firing up her hairdryer.
McCabe eased himself into his boxer shorts as he thought about Marcie’s predicament.
‘How often does Dunster ask for any money?’
‘As far as I know, not often, but don’t quote me. I think he gets a chunk back every year in interest, but I’m not certain. All I do know is that the money he gave Brendan to invest was only a small proportion of what he actually makes, so he makes tons. He lives off cash, mostly, and what he gave to Brendan was old-age money – his pension pot.’
McCabe arched his eyebrows as he considered the sums involved, then said, ‘And you have no idea what Brendan has done with the money, where it is and who it’s invested with?’
‘Nope. As long as I got a diamond necklace now and again, got swished around in that Roller that’s parked on the driveway, I didn’t give a flying fuck. I can’t believe I’m even saying that now. If I was a bloke, I’d be a dickhead.’
‘Hey!’ McCabe walked around the bed and stood in front of her, pulling on his shirt. She switched off the hairdryer. ‘Brendan looked after you. That’s what matters.’
She screwed up her face. ‘Yeah, right. I am so fucking annoyed with myself.’
‘How much do you think there was? How much did Brendan actually invest?’
Marcie shook her head. ‘Untold millions.’ Off McCabe’s look of disbelief, she said, ‘No, honestly. Lots and lots and lots and lots and …’
‘I get the picture.’ McCabe knelt down in front of her, pulling the towel away. ‘What about … what if Dunster didn’t know you didn’t know … what if he thought you were just continuing the business as normal?’
Marcie gave him a blank look. ‘You’ll have to run that one past me.’
McCabe narrowed his eyes. ‘I might know someone who could help us out.’ He pushed her gently backwards on to the bed and lowered his head between her legs.
It worked – until it didn’t work.
Which is why, some four years later, Darren McCabe was sitting, waiting for Jack Carter to put in an appearance.
Looking back, McCabe half wished he had done a runner when he’d had the chance – that is, after he’d fucked Marcie Quant a few times and then learned she had no business acumen whatsoever. He could have found gainful employment anywhere – he was good at breaking fingers and, if necessary, pulling triggers.
But this was only half a wish because of several factors that ambushed and surprised him.
First one was that he was basically an animal, and Marcie Quant, he discovered, was phenomenal in bed and exhausted him like no other woman ever had; second one was that he fell in love with her, and the third one was a child.
The latter was the thing that completely screwed up his whole world, and Marcie’s too if she was honest.
A baby boy called Arthur.
Arthur McCabe. Had a great ring to it.
And despite himself, McCabe loved what he had accidentally created, which was one thing he had never really had before – a family.
And now he was acting to protect that entity, because life had become very complex and dangerous indeed.
To begin with, the idea – though fraught with danger – had been simple: fool Dunster Cosmo into thinking that all was well with the world of high finance, his money was safe and secure, earning just enough interest to keep him happy, and keep up this pretence until Marcie and McCabe and, subsequently, little Arthur were in a position to back out and flee.
Which is where Jack Carter came in.
The idea was mooted by McCabe at his and Marcie’s first breakfast together after her husband’s funeral four years ago, at a fast-food place in Tottenham, where they’d feasted ravenously on sausage and eggs after their night of passion. It was the only food that seemed just right after a cremation, alcohol, sex and the realization that if things went wrong, the biggest, meanest gangster in north London would be after spilling your blood.
McCabe said, ‘You know I once worked as muscle for a haulier up in Lancashire?’
Marcie nodded. She recalled, ‘After you came out of the army. You told Brendan once.’
McCabe said, ‘Dishonourably discharged … but I’ll never regret putting that drill sergeant’s fingers down the toaster.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘Lucky not to get clink. Anyway, I did a lot of labouring jobs all over the place and, just by luck, I met this guy who was having some problems with contractors at the building site I worked on.’
‘What sorta problems?’ Marcie bit into a hash brown which tasted much, much better than it should have done.
‘Intimidation stuff, threats – nasty ones – damage, that kind of thing.’
‘Did you put fingers into toasters?’
He smirked. ‘I put people into crushers … in fact, I’m pretty sure there’s one body in the hardcore underneath the Broughton bypass,’ he said. Marcie scowled. He explained, ‘It’s a new road just north of Preston.’
She had no idea where Preston was and said, ‘Um.’
Nor was she concerned by the revelation, which suited McCabe, and he wasn’t even sure of his claim either, but he definitely had fed a guy into a stone-crushing machine and he did end up as hardcore, but he wasn’t completely certain which road he was supporting.
They drank their coffee, then McCabe said, ‘We need to travel north.’
He made a call and not long after the pair were cruising north in the Rolls-Royce with McCabe driving. A smooth, fast journey, one stop for a piss and a brew on the way at some services near Birmingham, then back on to the M6, leaving that motorway at junction thirty-five and driving towards the picturesque, affluent area around Warton, then to Jack Carter’s house in a village called Silverdale.
It was set in its own grounds, stone built, huge and with a curving driveway. McCabe parked the Rolls outside the front door.
‘Nice pad,’ Marcie commented. She’d slept most of the way, reclining as far back as the passenger seat would allow, and McCabe had constantly eyed her, liking more and more of what he saw.
The front door opened, and Jack Carter stepped out to greet them.
He was a small, slightly rotund man, blond, ruffled hair, who looked affable with a broad smile but suspicious eyes.
A few minutes later they were in the lounge, drinking coffee.
‘Yeah, well, nice to see you, McCabe, but what do you want of me?’ Carter asked directly.
‘Heard you sold up, lock, stock.’
‘Pretty much. Business was losing money hand over fist and had to get out. Plus the whole shebang’s full of scammers and non-payers which drags you down, you know? Took a rotten loss on the sale,’ he said.
‘Not what I heard,’ McCabe said.
Carter’s affable veneer tightened up. ‘What did you hear?’
‘That you sold up for a good profit …’
‘Who told you that?’ Carter demanded.
‘Grapevine.’
‘It’s not right,’ Carter snapped. ‘Anyway, how’s it your business? You traipsed all the way up here for this?’
McCabe and Marcie exchanged glances, then Marcie, who had hardly spoken up to this point, said, ‘Mr Carter, it doesn’t matter to us what you did with your money. We wish you the best, and you’re right, it ain’t our business, but the fact is we’re in a bit of a predicament and we need some help—’
‘I’m not in the lending business,’ Carter interrupted sharply.
‘We don’t want to borrow money,’ she said.
‘What do you want, then?’
‘Darren has it on good authority that you invested the money you made from the sale of your business,’ she said, then paused.
Carter said cagily, ‘Go on.’
‘We want to know who you invested with, which company dealt with it, because Darren also has it on good authority that your money got invested without recourse to the taxman.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘No, but we have money to move and we need someone to move it for us,’ McCabe said impatiently.
‘Oh, I don’t know …’
‘Please, Mr Carter, we’re not here to cause you problems. We just want to know of someone trustworthy who will invest some money that has … er … come my way,’ Marcie said.
‘How much are you talking?’
‘Initially, four million.’
This caused Carter to put down his mug. ‘Initially, you say?’
Marcie nodded. McCabe nodded.
‘With the prospect of much, much more,’ Marcie added.
‘I want an introduction fee,’ Carter said immediately.
John York had been handling the legitimate side of Jack Carter’s business accounts for many years, as well as the shadier aspects. There had to be a legitimate front to Carter’s haulage company because it was too risky to run trucks on UK roads without all the necessary documentation and licences. If the authorities – specifically VOSA, the Vehicle and Operator Service Agency – got their teeth into you, they were like a Jack Russell terrier with a rat and rarely let go. So Carter’s dozen or so vehicles were duly licensed and he worked hard above the radar and twice as hard under it, filling his trucks with illegal loads and dumping them in places where they shouldn’t have been dumped.
But his legitimate contracts were good and formed the basis of his company’s sale which grossed him close to two million as a going concern when he eventually sold up. What bothered him was that if he legitimately took this money and declared it to the tax authorities, he would probably have to share, even with expenses, far too much with the government.
Carter wasn’t prepared to do that.
So he asked John York if there was any way this sort of generosity could be avoided.
York said yes.
He handled the sale of the business, hid the cost, falsified accounts, and by declaring the business had netted (not grossed) £150,000 (instead of the two million), he kept Carter’s tax bill down to less than a third of that, leaving him with about £1.9 million, which York then – literally – took abroad. Through a Russian company based in Cyprus, he invested in new-build housing around the Paphos and Coral Bay area of the island, which soon doubled the investment, thank you very much.
To Marcie and McCabe, Carter said, ‘For fifty K I’ll put you in touch with the man who looked after me.’
Marcie didn’t flinch. Instead, she nodded.
And the first four million belonging to Dunster Cosmo was handed over to John York in a suitcase to be invested wisely.
Over the next four years a further nine million went in the same direction … plus a couple of bodies for onward disposal.
The request – nay, demand – came out of the blue.
It had all been going well. John York had – certainly on the face of it – delivered on his promises. He had taken Cosmo’s money and supposedly invested it through Russian and Chinese companies in Cyprus and the Canary Islands, providing a healthy income for the London gangster. That income was paid into offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands, from which fat fees were extracted by Marcie as she and McCabe began to build a sort of life together, at first just themselves and then with little Arthur McCabe, a very fast-growing baby.
Cosmo seemed content to take the benefits of the interest payments coming his way without too much direct interest in the Yorks. He did meet them once, visiting their renovated farmhouse in Lancashire, which terrified the couple, particularly when Cosmo informed them, with one of his nice smiles, that if they ever cheated on him in any way, they would end up dead.
They promised everlasting loyalty as they showed Cosmo around. During the course of the tour of their house, they pointed out the large field at the rear of the farmhouse which belonged to them. Cosmo had regarded this area thoughtfully but said nothing.
A couple of days later Cosmo turned up at Marcie Quant’s flat in Greenwich, accompanied by two of his heavies.
She was still in bed, revelling in an hour of ‘me’ time while McCabe took Arthur up to Greenwich Park in the pram, and the knocking on the front door made her jump from her light snooze and swear heavily as she rolled out of bed, grabbing a soft dressing gown and sliding her feet into slippers with floppy bunny ears.
‘I’m coming, for God’s sake,’ she bellowed, staggering into the living room. She and McCabe now lived in a ground-floor flat, which was a very big comedown from her days with Brendan, but needs must. It was spacious, had a bit of a front garden and rear yard, and was worth almost half a million. She peeked through the drawn curtains and saw, parked on the road, a scruffy van that she did not recognize.
The knocking continued, and Marcie went into the hallway and put an eye to the peephole. What she saw through the fish-eye lens was a grossly distorted image of Dunster Cosmo’s face and extra-large nose as he peered into the lens from the opposite side. He now pounded on the door.
As he stood back, Marcie could see he was accompanied by two of his heavies, and she didn’t like the fact that, somehow, they had managed to get into the foyer through the front door, which meant that one of the other tenants in the block must have buzzed them in. Cunts.
‘Marcie, Marcie, open the fuck up, bitch! I know you’re in there, so come on.’
‘Wait a second,’ she called through the door.
She had no idea why he was here, especially with the two goons, but she didn’t want to take any chances by being only in her night things. She wanted to be fully dressed and ready to run, because she didn’t trust him not to try anything dirty with her. She ran back to the bedroom and quickly pulled on jeans and a hoodie, and put her mini-Taser, which looked like a mobile phone, into a pocket. Just in case.
An unexpected visit from Dunster Cosmo could never bode well.
Pushing her hair into place, she opened the door and three jumpy men swarmed in.
In fact, she had never seen Cosmo look so worried – shitting himself, she thought.
He launched into the reason for the visit immediately. ‘You an’ McCabe, I want you to do something for me. Where is he?’
‘He’s out … and … OK, what?’
‘I mean, you’ve basically scavenged off me these last few years,’ he said. He was red-faced and out of breath, wearing a zip-up jacket which made Marcie swallow when she saw what she thought was blood splattered up the right-hand side of it.
‘I think you’ll find it’s called commission, not scavenging.’
‘OK, parasite, then … anyway, whatever … I call it living off my money.’
‘It’s business,’ she insisted.
‘Whatever, whatever … anyway, you’re going to earn it now. I need you to do something for me.’
‘Fuck would that be, then?’
‘Here, come here.’
Cosmo led her outside, his two men following, one of them eyeing her with undisguised lust. She sneered at him, tempted to zap him.
Cosmo hustled towards the parked van on the road outside and he went to the back doors. Marcie followed. He stopped, turned sharply and said, ‘Van’s clean, but you’re gonna have to torch it after.’
‘After what?’
‘Stand back,’ he said dramatically, and opened the van doors with both hands.
‘I can’t believe I’m taking a baby with us to dispose of two bodies and some guns.’
They were on the M6, heading north.
McCabe was at the wheel of the van, his jaw rotating furiously, just as it had done for the past twelve hours. He was keeping the speed to sixty miles per hour, to comply with the sticker on the back, which said the vehicle wasn’t permitted to travel above that speed. It was hard but necessary; the last thing they needed was to get pulled over by the cops even though the bodies in the back had been hidden under tarpaulin and a few sacks of horse carrots.
Marcie glanced over her shoulder into the rear.
In fact, the bodies were not that well concealed, and a half-blind copper could have found them, so she hoped the van was as clean as Cosmo claimed, because if they activated an ANPR checkpoint on the way, they were doomed, even if McCabe was armed with a handgun.
She looked forward again, resting her right hand on the rear-facing baby seat they’d had to quickly install in the middle of the bench seat so that Arthur was secured between them. At the moment the little lad was sleeping soundly to the rhythm of the engine, but that state of affairs wouldn’t last for much longer, and when those beautiful brown eyes flickered open, he would demand to be fed. That meant a pit stop because Marcie didn’t want to chance breastfeeding in a van on the motorway with dead people in the back.
‘Why us, why us?’ McCabe had chuntered remorselessly.
Marcie was a bit more philosophical now, even though she did not like the situation one little bit. ‘It’s academic now. It is us, and he wants to get rid of the two lads he’s shot in the face as far away from London as possible. Which is why we’re off to see Mr and Mrs York who, Dunster noted on his visit to see them, have lots and lots of land where these two unlucky sods can get buried and become actual sods.’
‘Why did he kill them in the first place?’
‘Because he’s at war with a bunch of uppity gyppos trying to muscle in on his county lines business, is what I’m hearing … the name Costain rings a bell. Big, big fallout.’
‘Fuckin’ big fallout,’ McCabe muttered. ‘Two dead guys.’
‘Probably best we don’t know – that way we can claim innocence.’
At least that made them chuckle – the thought of them being innocent – and they were still chuckling when they came off the motorway on to a service area north of Birmingham, where Marcie scooped up Arthur who had just woken and said, ‘Time to eat and change that shitty nappy.’
They left the van locked and went to eat.
John York’s meltdown was almost catastrophic as he watched McCabe heave out the bags of vegetables and drag the tarpaulin sheet off the two bodies that had begun to reek as they decomposed.
John backed away, terrified, pinching his nose from the disgusting stench. ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ he gabbled. ‘This is not going to happen. You need to go, get away now. I won’t say a word but we – I – can’t be involved in this level of criminality.’
Marcie had Arthur cradled in a baby sling to her bosom. He was sleeping contentedly again.
McCabe grabbed York by his shirt front and slammed him hard up against the side of the van, making one of the panels bow inwards. He slapped him hard and growled menacingly into his face. ‘Oh yes, you can, you spineless piece of shit.’
York whimpered but tore himself free from McCabe’s grip, gasping, ‘You’re asking me to hide or dispose of two dead bodies and some guns! Yes – I’m fucking spineless …’
‘Not asking – telling,’ McCabe corrected him.
‘Hey, keep it quiet, you’ll wake the baby,’ Marcie said.
John York’s head snapped towards her in disbelief. ‘You’ve brought a fucking baby with you? What sort of people are you?’
‘Hey, if you didn’t already know, John,’ Marcie said, ‘we’re people just like you. People who are in with the big boys.’
They dragged the two bodies out of the van and laid them side by side on the tarpaulin with the weapons. McCabe helped John York to pull the bodies up the side of the farmhouse and across to one of the doors of the four-car garage where he stood back and said, ‘Leave ’em with you.’
‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ York panted. He looked desperately at Isobel, who had watched the whole thing in a catatonic state.
‘Nope.’ McCabe looked around and saw a hose pipe on a reel connected to an outside tap. He drew the hose to the back of the van and swilled out the floor pan. A few minutes later, he and Marcie and Arthur were driving away, leaving the stunned couple and their Great Dane standing over two dead bodies and wondering what the hell they were going to do with them.
The next couple of days were relatively chilled.
Marcie and McCabe were ensconced in their pleasant but dreary domesticity in Greenwich, although McCabe did have to leave the flat one morning to do a job from which he later returned with £5,000 stuffed in an envelope and a few bags of good-quality weed.
Marcie asked no questions but kept an eye on local news coverage on TV and tried not to sit forward when an item came on about a shooting in central London where the body of a man with ‘underworld connections’ had been found, shot twice in the back of the head in what the police called ‘a targeted attack’.
She was sitting on the sofa at the time, curled up with McCabe, who had not even reacted to the news. Her smartphone beeped and she answered a call from an unknown number. It was Dunster Cosmo, probably calling from one of his pay-as-you-go disposable phones.
‘Is it done?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause. Marcie wanted to hang up but didn’t. She mouthed, ‘It’s Cosmo,’ to McCabe.
‘I need some money,’ Cosmo told her.
‘OK.’ Marcie closed her eyes.
‘Ten million. Cash.’
Another pause as it sank in. Then Marcie said, ‘What the fuck?’
‘Liquidate some of my assets. One week.’
The phone call ended.
Marcie looked at McCabe. She grabbed the spliff he’d just lit and took a long, deep drag of it into her lungs, blowing the smoke out, feeling light-headed and instantly under pressure.
There is a huge element of human nature which often tells people that by ignoring a problem it might go away. The head-in-the-sand mentality.
It is rarely true.
Marcie had allowed herself to believe that having invested Dunster Cosmo’s most recent money through John York’s overseas contacts, it was possible that if interest from that money kept rolling in, then Cosmo would be a happy teddy and would never get to know that he would never ever again see the hard-earned cash that Brendan – her dead husband – had supposedly invested for him before his untimely death on Merseyside.
But at least she knew where the money Cosmo had continued to entrust to her had gone over the last four years.
‘He needs the money as soon as possible,’ Marcie told John York over the phone. ‘Ten million in his hand.’
‘He can’t have it.’ York sounded as if he was trying to be forceful, but his voice was still wavy from having had to deal with two dead bodies dumped on his doorstep. ‘It’s not like it’s in a cupboard in the kitchen, is it? It’s invested.’
‘And your point is?’
‘The money is abroad. It’s with financial institutions. It’s with building companies. It’s in land purchases. You’ve seen the paperwork. I always send you the paperwork. You can’t just go to a cash machine and ask for it back. It doesn’t work that way. These are long-term investments. It takes years for these things to mature. He needs to understand that, so you can tell him he’s not having it.’
That phone call left Marcie Quant with several issues.
First, you didn’t make Dunster Cosmo understand something if he didn’t want to understand something, and it was unlikely he would want to understand the basics of investment: he wanted his money and he wanted it now. And he wanted more money back than he had given Marcie to invest since Brendan’s demise (he was now becoming ‘that fucking Brendan’) because Cosmo was still under the impression that she knew exactly where Brendan had put Cosmo’s money, which of course she didn’t.
Second, there had been something in John York’s voice that she did not like, more than just the words he had used.
When the phone call was over, she went for a shower, then drank two mugs of black coffee to clear her head and give her a controlled energy boost, before kneeling down at a floor-level cupboard in the kitchen, at the back of which was the fuse box for the flat. In the gap behind this she kept the slim file containing all the paperwork from John York relating to the investments he’d made for Cosmo in the last four years.
She sat at the kitchen table, opened her laptop and then smoothed out the documents.
To be honest, she wasn’t expecting much.
She found even less.
She searched the names of the companies referred to in the documents on the internet.
There were no matches.
Not that she necessarily expected to find much, but some references would have made her feel better because even bent companies often had websites or mentions in police bulletins.
She searched for two hours with breaks for feeding Arthur and rocking him back to sleep.
Finally, she closed the laptop and sighed. ‘Bollocks … I’ve been had again.’ She smacked her head into her hands and kept it hanging there until something dawned on her.
‘It’s the only way out of this,’ Marcie said, swaying from side to side to get Arthur back to sleep after a very greedy session at her breasts, both of which were now exceedingly tender. Breastfeeding might be good for the kid, but it took its toll on her, and she knew she’d have to have another boob job once he’d stopped sucking on her. She was moving gently around the lounge as Arthur’s eyes closed. ‘It makes perfect sense and there’ll be no comebacks if we do it right.’
‘You’ll have to run that past me again.’ McCabe frowned at her.
‘Kill John and Isobel York. It’s what you do, innit?’
‘And how will that work exactly?’
‘Make it look like a burglary gone wrong,’ Marcie said, getting quite excited by the prospect. ‘Uh, somehow … that would be your job. Kill them and then we can lie to Dunster because he won’t know any different. He thinks that Brendan put his money through the Yorks, so if they’re dead, there’s a bloody good excuse for not being able to get the money! Simple.’
McCabe said, ‘It’s a shit plan.’
‘It’s better than nothing, because it looks to me like John York has been taking all the money channelled into him and has been lying about where it’s been invested. He’s provided bank and interest details, and he’s actually paid interest, but I can’t find any of the banks he’s supposedly used mentioned anywhere on the internet, even on the dark web. They don’t fucking exist, Mac.’
‘But, like you say, he’s been paying interest.’
‘Yeah, on the face of it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘OK, OK … he might have invested the money but lied to me about where, and maybe there is real interest being accrued … but you know what I think?’
‘Go on.’
‘He hasn’t invested a penny of it.’
‘But the interest? Where has that come from?’
‘Out of the capital.’
‘What do you mean?’ He was struggling to get his head around the concept.
‘I think – and I might be wrong – he’s pretending to pay interest but it’s coming out of the capital. Or he has invested the money just for himself … whatever, he certainly isn’t willing to pay back the capital … and he sounded like he was lying and scared on the phone, and when I checked, there was no trace of any of the companies he’s supposed to have invested in. So, whatever, we’re in a shitty situation and a way forward is to kill John York and tell Cosmo we can try and get his cash, but it’s doubtful because the guy’s dead … You can make it look like a gangland hit or something, can’t you?’
‘He ain’t gonna like it.’
‘I don’t fucking like it, but the day has fucking come round and we’ve got to deal with it.’
‘How about I torture him? We’d get to know that way,’ McCabe suggested.
‘OK, do that, see what he says – but that still won’t change the fact that Brendan had been pulling a fast one, and we don’t know where Cosmo’s money went, and now I think John York is doing the same thing. All right, it’s fucking potty – I know, I get it – but it’s a way of dealing with a shitty situation, yeah?’
‘Right, right.’
‘So will you do it?’
‘I’d do anything for you, you know that.’
‘Aww …’
‘And I’m thinking it might be worthwhile taking Jack Carter out of the picture, too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the cops will start rooting, and Carter is the only living link between us and the Yorks. It’s just common sense.’
Marcie understood the logic. It was like an evidence chain that needed to be broken.
‘Scope it out and do it.’
He did scope it out, but plans usually go awry, and the first part to do so was when McCabe climbed the hill behind Hawkshead Farm and John York’s fleeing daughter ran into him as he came over the crest.
And now, as McCabe sat waiting patiently for Jack Carter to arrive home – and McCabe wondered if Carter’s absence was significant or just a coincidence – he felt it was a bit of a shame he’d had to kill Beth York.
A bonny lass, running in fear. Probably had nothing to do with anything her dad was involved in. But she had been hysterical, and McCabe couldn’t take the chance of letting her go. He’d trussed her up quickly so he could come back to her after he’d been down to the farm to check out what was going on. He’d used the duct tape he’d brought along for his intended interrogation of the Yorks, and he’d thought he’d done a decent job of it – but clearly not, because she had managed to break free and leg it up the hill.
He had gone hunting and eventually found her running blindly ahead of him, falling, crawling and not responding to his calls to stop. She was still fleeing for her life and would not willingly be caught by him again.
Suddenly, ahead of him, she had stopped and seemed to be teetering, trying to balance, her arms windmilling.
McCabe drew his Browning and double-tapped her in the back and immediately saw her disappear; he then realized that she had stopped suddenly because she’d reached a perpendicular drop over the edge of a cliff face.
He had approached carefully, obviously not wanting to topple over himself. Even with the NVGs on, he could not see where she had fallen, but he knew she was dead.
Having pursued her up and across the moor, he had become slightly disorientated in spite of the goggles, but he did find his way back to his parked car, and it was then that he realized the water bottle he’d used had fallen out of the side webbing of his rucksack. He knew he’d have to take the chance of leaving it, that it would be too risky to go back and try to find it.
And he had something else to do, which was to go and see Jack Carter and kill him.
But Carter hadn’t been at home. He did not answer any calls to his mobile number or landline and seemed to have gone to ground. A month later he still had not surfaced, and Marcie and McCabe were highly suspicious, making it all the more imperative, in their eyes, that he was dealt with.
However, one good thing for Marcie and McCabe following the murders of John and Isobel York (an unexpected blessing they could not believe: someone had done their dirty work for them!) was that Dunster Cosmo went off the radar and made no more demands for his money to be repaid, as though he knew something about their deaths which he was not admitting.
McCabe adjusted the seating position in his car.
He was parked on the narrow country road close to the junction that led to Jack Carter’s house in Silverdale, as he had been on and off for the last month since his visit to the farmhouse. Travelling up from the south was a pain, but the job was necessary, and occasionally Marcie and Arthur would accompany him and stay in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
But for the last few days, and for a few days to come, McCabe was alone. He slithered low into his seat and let his mind wander about the possibility of some sort of future with Marcie. He was amazed he had come this far with her. He pulled the peak of his baseball cap down over his eyes, but then a car coming down the lane from behind caught his attention in the door mirror.
He slid further down.
The car drove past.
Jack Carter was at the wheel.