Deadly Obsession (16 page)

T
ommy Hearn had adored
Riley's father, Cazwell Hart. Working for him was the ultimate dream. Growing up as a lad in one of Manchester's roughest areas, a young Tommy had spent his youth constantly breaking the law. Mugging, shoplifting, nicking cars ... if there was a petty crime that he could attempt then he would. He thrived on the danger, he loved the feeling of power it gave him and he filled with joy at the thought of getting away with whatever he could. School was pointless, a place for wankers interested in test tubes and equations. Tommy wanted his education on the streets and that was indeed where he and his group of sorry-assed, raggy-clothed mates learnt about life.

Kids at the time idolised the likes of Prince, George Michael and Sting, but Tommy had no interest in the hip-thrusting, girl-pleasing ways of the musical stars. His heroes were the darker, more sinister names he heard whispered on the street. The ones people feared, the ones linked to fights and urban rivalries across the city, the ones said to be responsible for people disappearing for good. One of those names was Cazwell Hart. He was spoken of like an enigma, someone whom people had heard of but nobody really knew. Talked of but never seen. Like the Santa Claus of the gangster world. But this ‘Santa' was not about giving ... far from it ... Cazwell was said to be all about taking ... taking lives. If someone stepped out of line and needed sorting, then rumour had it that Cazwell was the man sealing the deal. If a gangster could be placed on a pedestal then Cazwell Hart was the man who seemed permanently rooted to it.

Tommy would spend hours every day running the streets with his mates, avoiding the long arm of the law, lapping up tales of how Cazwell and his team of henchmen had successfully undertaken another job. Bodies were found in rivers, offices were mysteriously burnt to the ground, people beaten up to within an inch of their lives ... shit happened but it never stuck to Cazwell. If his name was linked to a crime, somehow he always managed to prevent that connection going any further. Links would be made verbally but hard evidence would be impossible to detect. Cazwell and those around him were obviously masters of their own universe. A universe where there were no laws, no authority and no comebacks. Tommy dreamt of being part of it.

His chance came when he was the tender age of sixteen. Underage drinking in his local boozer, he'd been rolling a cigarette in the beer garden when a man approached him asking him if he knew anywhere he could lay his hands on ‘a decent weapon to do a touch of business'. Without batting an eyelid, Tommy had told the man to come back an hour later. Sixty minutes passed and Tommy handed over a gun, wrapped inside a rag cloth ‘so there's none of my fingerprints on it' and demanded a ‘good rate' for supplying the stranger with a dangerous weapon. He'd asked no questions as to why the man wanted the gun and no mention was made of where it had come from. Tommy had stolen it when he'd broken into someone's house a few months earlier. His sense of survival had told him that one day it would come in useful. The man, part of Cazwell's gang, was impressed. Word had travelled that there was a young, eager to please upstart on the streets, and Cazwell Hart was keen to take him into his fold. Tommy was elated and by his seventeenth birthday he was working full-time for Cazwell, one of the gang, ready to learn the ropes and if instructed wrap them around somebody's neck until the colour drained from their cheeks. The enigma had become a reality. Cazwell Hart was his boss and Tommy would be loyal to him forever.

He was, until the day Cazwell died. By that time Tommy was his number two and proud to be the sidekick of his very own gangster god. He had cried for days when Cazwell died, for once allowing his softer side to flow freely. There was a part of him that had expected to take the reins of Cazwell's empire, but of course, it was not to be. Cazwell's only child, Riley, stepped up to the mark and Tommy stayed as number two. Tommy had made a great living through Cazwell and had been left a considerable chunk of money in his will. It was this money that had allowed Tommy to bail out Riley every time he made a wrong decision.

Tommy had never been a Riley fan from the start and was happy to watch him make mistakes, even knowingly encouraging them on occasion.
Why shouldn't he?
Riley wasn't a patch on his father and in Tommy's eyes he was never worthy to take on the mantle of Cazwell's corrupt empire in the first place. Blood related he may have been but that was all that connected him with the late, great Cazwell. Not that those looking on agreed. Riley was seen as a worthy successor, a modern day equal to his father, which was something that galled Tommy terribly. But some strong-bonded sense of loyalty to Cazwell kicked in when Riley finally bit off more than he could chew, which is where Adam Rich came into the equation. And what a complete car-crash of a fuck-up that had turned out to be ...

I
t was
mid 2012 when Riley first mooted the idea of opening a nightclub to Tommy.

‘Imagine it, Tommy. A place where people could meet, deals could be arranged, jobs could be organised. It would look a lot more legit than people coming to “the factory” all the time. Dad was always saying we should have an incognito HQ for our business.'

Despite Riley having a point, Tommy's first reaction had been to scoff in his face. Riley may have been more than capable of finding his way around a firearm but when it came to monetary affairs he was beyond useless at times, and Tommy knew better than anyone that creating a club, especially one that could become a trusted base for the criminals of northern England to frequent, would cost major money. There was no way Riley could fund it.

It was then that the seeds had begun to germinate in Tommy's mind once again. Riley was right, Cazwell had always said that a base away from the factory would be a good idea. It had been one of the things he'd been contemplating before his death. A club would have made Cazwell proud.
But could Riley be trusted to make it work?
Knowing him, he would probably have bankrupted the place before the first punter walked through the door.

Tommy had money. He could invest in Riley's idea and safeguard his own capital by making sure Riley signed a few more dotted lines here and there ensuring that everything came back to him. Yes, maybe a club was good idea. A respected venue could be a nice little earner and equally act as a cover-up for any jobs that needed to be sorted.

Despite still being desperate to play the Big I-Am, Riley knew that borrowing the money from Tommy would be his only chance to make it work. As Tommy said, ‘Make it a success, you pay me back ... you fuck it up, I take charge.' Riley was certain that the result would be the former and not the latter.

Tommy lent the money happily, considering it a win-win investment and left it to Riley to find a venue. It was once he had that things started to unravel.

The space was a derelict old office block. Unused, in a good area of Manchester and considering its immense size, the price was incredibly low. It ticked all the boxes. At least that's what the weasel of an estate agent who was flogging the property kept saying anyway. When Riley had taken his name and number from the sign hanging on the front door and phoned him, the agent was insistent that they should move fast. Other parties were interested in buying it too and the early bird was definitely going to be the lucky buyer to get the worm.

Riley could see its potential, as could Amy when he took her to see it. She couldn't wait to get her hands on the property and pushed Riley to do everything he could to make sure it was theirs before somebody else pulled it from under their feet. Riley, keen to please, arranged a cash deal for the venue and planned to meet the estate agent as soon as possible, something that the overly exuberant and somewhat childishly excited agent couldn't wait to do.

It had been a dark, damp morning in January 2013 when Riley had headed to the property to hand over the cash. His appointment was scheduled for 11am. He'd turned up an hour early in eagerness and found the office door open. When he'd ventured inside he'd found the agent discussing a deal with another man. A man Riley instantly recognised as Adam Rich. Adam, the only man with the same kind of feared notoriety in Manchester as Riley's father had possessed and the man who had constantly been Cazwell's arch rival back in the day. The enmity had been passed on to Riley. Adam and Cazwell had clashed over jobs, fought over women and squared up over their competitive gangland manors. Neither wanted to be number two.

Adam was handing over a case full of cash to the agent. Riley had hung back in the shadows cast by the pillars within the office, not letting either man know of his arrival. Automatically he placed his hand on his overcoat and traced the outline of the gun housed inside his pocket. He never went anywhere without it and if he and Adam were inside the same room together then he had a strong suspicion that he might need to reach for it.

Riley listened in to the men's conversation. It was the whiny agent who spoke first, his voice snivelling, his actions shifty. His eyes darted around the room as if looking for someone. ‘Right, this place is yours, the paperwork is all here ...' He handed Adam a brown padded envelope in exchange for the briefcase. ‘Enjoy it, whatever you decide to do with it.'

Adam, a man who had thrived on his sharp business sense to shape his criminal empire, was not convinced. He could smell a rat. ‘Do you not want to count the cash? £250K ... It's all there ... and surely you need me to sign something.' The agent tugged at the case, trying to free it from Adam's knuckle-bound grip.

‘No need, you can take the paperwork away with you to read and then sign it when you're happy. Drop it into my office when you can. The address is in there.' He indicated the envelope.

Riley shifted position behind the pillar, trying hard to hear every word. As he did so his foot kicked a stray piece of rubble. The noise was sufficient for the two men to hear. Adam turned to face him and his concentration lapsed as he recognised Riley Hart, causing him to let go of the case. The agent, realising that this was not what he had planned, turned to run from the room, case in hand. Riley, with lightning speed, pulled the gun from his overcoat pocket and fired a bullet into the concrete floor in front of the agent causing him to stop dead in his tracks. He dropped to his knees and cowered with his hands above his head.

‘I think you should give the man his money back, don't you?' stated Riley. ‘You'd have been wanting mine in an hour ...' Riley held up the case towards Adam. The look on his face told Riley that his nemesis understood his meaning.

‘Another buyer ... and you, of all fucking people,' said Adam. An incredulous grin opened across his face. ‘Looks like this little twat was trying to take us both for a ride.' He pointed at the agent crouched on the floor.

Riley walked towards the agent and pointed his gun directly at the man on his knees.

‘Right, you blubbering little cunt, care to tell me what the fuck's going on here ... trying to sell this place twice over?'

Riley never received a reply. The agent reached into his own pocket as deftly and as inconspicuously as he could and pulled out his own concealed gun. In less than the time it took to draw breath he pointed it towards Riley and the sound of a shot rang out.

The shot hadn't been from the agent's gun. Riley watched as the agent slumped backwards, his face shot away, a pool of deep red blood puddling across the floor. Riley, not even shaken by the close proximity of death, turned to face Adam. The gun in Adam's hand was still smoking.

‘I wasn't sure you'd seen him go for the gun ...' said Adam. ‘Seeing as we're on the same side for once I thought it was the least I could do ...'

T
he agent had turned
out to be anything but legitimate. The name and address on the door were fake. His real name was Weston Smith, a two-bit con artist who had apparently made a habit of targeting derelict buildings across the country, posing as an estate agent and then proceeding to try and sell the same property to as many different people as possible, pocketing the cash-only deals all the way.

Adam and Riley worked together to dispose of the body, burying it in scrubland at the back of the derelict building. The story would have ended there had it not been for the fact that a few days later word swept through the criminal world that London's most feared tough guy, Jarrett Smith, was asking questions about the mysterious disappearance of his only son. Last seen in Manchester, Jarrett and his team of henchmen had travelled to the city in order to try and find Weston. Jarrett was determined that if his son had met a grisly end then the person or persons behind it would pay an equally fatal forfeit.

Adam was paranoid that Jarrett, one of the few men in life he truly feared, would find out that he was the man who pulled the trigger and that his rival, Riley, would be the one to let the murderous cat out of the bag. Riley played the situation to perfection. He insisted that Adam find out who really owned the building, offer a price nobody could refuse for it and then sign it over to him. In Riley's mind, winning one over on Adam and gaining a club for his own business was the ultimate way to make his dead father proud. The fact that the club would still be signed over to Tommy Hearn was beside the point. Riley had one over on Adam. And Adam could rest easy as his secret was safe from Jarrett Smith and nobody would ever find out about him killing the gangster's son.

When building work started on the club, Adam was emphatic that Weston's body was moved from the scrubland where it risked potential discovery and buried within the foundations of the fresh concrete poured into place to resurface the club floors. His rotting carcass was buried deep beneath The Kitty Kat Club dance floor where Adam knew it would never be found again. The only people who shared his secret were Riley and Tommy.

Adam had been elated that his secret had died when Riley lost his life at the club. Jarrett Smith, a cut-throat of a man who was more than capable of holding a grudge for forever, would never know the truth. Tommy would never say, not wanting any association between the two rival gangland families. That was a feud that could only end in major bloodshed.

But what if Riley wasn't dead? And with the arrival of Amy Hart there was a risk that her snooping around could uncover the truth about the body that lay beneath the floor of what was now the casino.

That was definitely something that Adam couldn't risk ...