Faces (61 page)

Ali saw the looks of disgust on their faces at the way he was living, his pride kicked in, and he felt the shame at his situation. That he had been found out, that he had a serious capture by people who were not exactly friends of his was bad enough, but to be found in this hovel went against the grain. He was someone, he was better than this, and he knew it. He had money, he had prestige, and he also had an in-built self-destruct button that kept him from realising his full potential. He was also a typical Turk; he saw the girl he was with as nothing more than a bed partner. The child she had delivered him was nothing more than a tool to keep her by his side. He had children all over the place; they were his way of possessing the person for eternity. A child gave him an edge, it was a way of leaving his mark on the women he bedded. Used. He hated that he had been caught out like this, as if this was really him and how he lived, instead of just a hang-out, a hiding place. He felt a deep and abiding shame at his predicament. That these people were looking down on him, instead of respecting him for his past glories was embarrassing; he didn’t want to be remembered like this, remembered for living like a fucking animal. In Turkey he lived like a king.

Ali held the child tightly to his breast. She was his bargaining tool, his own personal ransom. His angry and hateful persona was to the fore and he was shouting at the top of his voice, unable to take on board what had happened to him; what was going to happen to him now they had tracked him down.

‘Go on, get out of my home, you fucking black bastards . . . I will kill you all . . . You don’t fucking scare me . . . I mean it, Danny Boy, you know the fucking score ... I’ll jump and take this fucking baby with me.’ He was talking fast, talking bollocks, his open face and his balding head were shiny with the sheen of nervous sweat. He knew his minder had left him out in the open, had stepped away from him and his problems; was saving himself. He knew in his gut he was already a dead man, but he was still willing to try and bargain for his life. He had survived prison, and he had survived solitary. He could survive this.

As they looked at him in disgust, a girl arrived back at the flat. Seeing her front door lying in her hallway, she guessed that there was some kind of upset going on, and her first instinct was to protect her baby. Her child. She ran into the front room, throwing the kebabs she had just purchased on to a small wooden coffee table. She saw the men there and knew immediately that this was a serious situation. She knew that her Ali boy was in deep shit; she had visited him and enjoyed the conjugal visits, had used her pregnancy as a bluff for his getting out of that place. She’d seen them making a good life for themselves and the baby they had created. Now, she saw her dreams dissolving before her eyes. This lot meant business.

The men stared at her, no one was expecting her and they were all wondering what on earth she was doing with this piece of shit, a man old enough to be her father. A man who would use his own child as a bargaining chip. The cold night air had sobered them up, made them realise exactly what they were dealing with. It was a depressing thought. She was a small-boned girl with heavily bleached blond hair, and even heavier make-up, thickly applied to cover the numerous acne scars on her cheeks. Her blusher was so prominent that it made her look like an extra on
Trumpton
. She was very young, and the men were shocked at her arrival. In fact, they were seriously fucked off because they were only interested in him. No one else. They wanted her to take her baby and go. Fuck off out of it. Then, suddenly, she gave a loud and piercing shriek. It went through each of their heads like a butcher’s migraine and Danny Boy, who was really getting annoyed now, stormed out on to the balcony and snatching the baby from the man’s arms roughly thrust it towards the girl.

‘Fuck off. Take your baby and fuck off. He was threatening to throw it off the fucking balcony. If I see your face here again tonight, then I’ll do it for him.’

The baby started screaming now, and the girl, who was not a fool, didn’t need telling twice. She wanted out of this place and she wanted to leave it in one piece.

Ali Fahri watched as the girl hurriedly left the flat, the kebabs, forgotten about, were still lying on the table in their numerous wrappings. The aroma of the meat was finally escaping into the atmosphere around them, making the room smell almost habitable. The twins were once more tearing the place apart, looking for the rest of the money they had lost, and the weapons that had been used against them. Neither of them wanted any part of Ali Fahri and his imminent demise. They were quite happy to let Eli deal with that part of the evening’s entertainment; for all their big talk, they understood now just how precarious life could become if you didn’t keep your wits about you. How, overnight, a person’s whole world could collapse. That was definitely food for thought.

Ali had been a serious contender in his day, and yet he had been reduced to this, to holding his own child as equity. It was a real eye-opener all right.

Eli walked purposefully towards the man on the small balcony. Ali was tiny in comparison to him, did not look like he could really do any damage to anyone without a gun, or a weapon of some description. Eli felt his own size, felt his superior strength. He saw the fear in his antagonist’s eyes and enjoyed it. Embraced it, felt the power that he had over this man, this man who had caused him fucking untold aggravation. Who had the audacity to think Eli was so fucking weak he could be robbed and intimidated and not retaliate. Who was such a cunt he would fucking allow this piece of shite to put a gun in his face while his child was in his arms. A child that he would die for, unlike this cunt in front of him, who would have killed his own flesh and blood to get out of a situation that he had caused in the first place. A situation that he had executed without a moment’s thought for what the consequences might be.

As Eli raised the machete above his head he saw Ali put up his arms instinctively, attempting to protect his face, his head; it was this simple action, along with the use of his own child as protection, that made Eli feel even angrier than he did. Ali didn’t even have the guts to try and fight him, to try and remove the weapon from his hands. He wasn’t going to go down fighting, instead, he was trying to protect himself like a fucking woman would against a man who was obviously her superior in power, strength and, more importantly, intellect. He smashed the machete down with as much brute force as he could muster, and watched with morbid fascination as it severed the man’s right hand from his wrist. He watched as the errant limb dropped onto the floor with a dull thud, and the blood started to pump out everywhere. Ali was looking at his severed hand in utter amazement, as if it belonged to someone else, the shock of the attack making him mute. The sight of his own hand on the filthy floor of the balcony was almost unbelievable. Then the pain set in. The awful feeling as his blood was pumped from his body was suddenly all too real. With each beat of his heart he felt it spurting out everywhere, felt the pain as if he was being milked by an invisible hand. People were now watching the drama unfold. Other balconies around them were now lit up, lights were going on all over the place. Ali’s final humiliation was now a public spectacle. ‘You bastards . . . you fucking black bastards.’

‘That’s a bit racist ain’t it, Ali? What about us, the white bastards?’

Even Eli laughed at that and Ali was in desperate tears at the casualness of the words. ‘You are all bastards . . .’ His voice was loud, and full of hatred and accusation. He dropped to his knees then, feeling the slippery stickiness of his own blood as it was sucked into the material of his trousers. It was everywhere, all over him, the pumping of his own heart making a deep puddle all around him, causing him to skid heavily onto his elbows as he tried to stand himself up. It was a living nightmare; he was nearly in tears as he saw his own hand lying there in the filth and dirt. And the full force of his predicament hit him when he heard the shouts from the other flats; a chorus of jeers to egg his enemies on to even greater violence and he heard a cacophony of insults from complete strangers who assumed he had to be the one in the wrong. Who were enjoying seeing him laid so low. But Danny Boy and the others were uninterested in the drama they had created. They just wanted it sorted and over with, once and for all. None of them even contemplated that someone might call the police. It simply wasn’t going to happen. No one would be that fucking stupid; if these men were willing to do this to the Turk the general consensus was what else were they capable of? Especially to a grass. And the Turk wasn’t worth the aggravation anyway. Danny Boy knew that their identities were already being discussed, and this would just be another urban legend, exaggerated and embroidered by all these people who were pleased just to be a part of it. Another tale of his violence to add to
all
the others. The knowledge saddened him in many ways, even as he was pleased about it. The savagery of the attack would keep the Filth at bay. Every one of them knew that.

‘Go on then, Eli, finish him off. We ain’t got all fucking night.’ Danny was shouting now and his voice, and the urgency in it, communicated itself to Eli, and he brought the machete down onto the man’s head with all the force he could muster, splitting his skull open. They watched in fascination as Eli tried unsuccessfully to retrieve it. Tried to pull it back out, but it was stuck there; it was buried deep in Ali’s brain.

That’s when the man finally started to scream, his voice started babbling out in Turkish, his terrible pain evident to anyone who could hear him, sounding like an animal caught in a man trap. He was trying to get up once more, trying to walk about, as Eli was still trying to remove the offending object from his skull. Eli was slipping all over the place in Ali’s blood, it was everywhere, and Ali was still not going back down. He was a strong fucker, there was no doubt about that.

Danny Boy walked over to them and, lifting Ali up from the floor as if he weighed nothing, he wrenched the machete from its new home. Then, he threw Ali over the balcony without a second’s thought. He picked up the man’s severed hand and threw that off the balcony after him, throwing it as if it was a rugby ball, with all the strength he could muster. Then, passing the bloodied machete back to Eli, he said angrily, ‘How long were you going to make that last? For fuck’s sake, three of you and one of him, I mean it ain’t rocket science is it?’ Shaking his head once more, Danny’s anger was almost tangible now; his huge muscular body reminding them just how strong he really was. How he was capable of taking them all on without even breaking into a sweat. Then he said casually, his mood changing as always with lightning speed, ‘That was fucking terrible really. You got what you came here for though? You got the poke?’ The Williams boys nodded gently; the evening’s events had left them a little subdued. ‘Come on then, back to the yard.’

As they walked out Danny picked up the kebabs and took them with him. At the lift Danny looked at them and said gaily, ‘Waste not, want not, eh?’

The twins were still in shock at the night’s events, and Eli was not sure just how he felt about Danny Boy’s interference in all of this. He felt as if he had been set up somehow, as if he had not really had any control over what had just happened. They had their money back, but it all seemed staged, contrived, somehow. This bloke had not even had a fucking decent minder on his case. When it came down to it he was just a fucking ponce, not worth a wank. What on earth had made him think he could have taken them on in the first place?

As they left the flats they heard the ambulance sirens in the distance. Danny laughed once more and, taking a big bite of his kebab, he said through a mouth full of reconstituted meat and wilting salad, ‘Bit fucking late for them, ain’t it? Typical fucking national health.’ Everyone laughed; suddenly they were glad that it was over.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Arnold Landers wasn’t sleeping and this was affecting his day-to-day living. In fact, he was so tired at times he wondered at how he managed to keep on top of his workload. That Annie had noticed this was also a worry. Danny Boy had eventually welcomed her back into his fold with open arms, even though it had never been really mentioned between them, he’d known that Danny Boy had had the ache with his sister for a long time. He also knew that it was her association with him that had softened Danny Boy towards her; he was always telling him how much he appreciated the way he had taken his sister under his wing. How he saw the way he kept her on the straight and narrow, cared for her, and made her respect herself once more. All these compliments were a heavy burden for Arnold, especially as he didn’t feel he warranted them. It also made it impossible for him to ever leave her, not that he wanted to. But the knowledge that anything like that was now completely out of the question did not exactly enhance their relationship. He cared for her but, at the same time, Danny Boy’s presence was always there, hovering in the background of their daily lives, reminding him of how precarious his position could be if Annie decided to turn against him.

Becoming a part of the Cadogans had been such a buzz at first, now though, he saw it for what it was, a fucking prison sentence. You could never have another individual thought with people like them, everything you decided was with the Cadogans in the back of your mind. From how they might react to his actions, to how they would perceive his opinions and, worst of all, how they expected him to automatically adopt their points of view, as if anyone who disagreed with them were anarchists, were being deliberately disloyal to the family. He had preferred it when Annie had still hated her brother and wanted to go against him at every opportunity. Now she was basking in his new-found interest in her, in his brotherly concern for her well-being.

Even Jonjo seemed to be socially acceptable these days; he was a useless drunk who was either stoned or coked out of his nut but he had still been given a lot of responsibility in the businesses anyway. Responsibility that
he
,
Arnold
, was expected to make sure wasn’t fucked up in any way. In effect, he was Jonjo’s unofficial minder. Basically that meant that he did all the main work, sorted out the employees and made sure that everything ran smoothly. It also meant that he was run off his feet, and yet was still seen as nothing more than the number two, after Jonjo of course, and only given any kind of kudos by Danny Boy in the comfort and privacy of the offices they frequented all over the Smoke. Not an ideal situation for anyone, but it was beginning to wear him down. He was not happy being used like this, and he had to make that point sooner rather than later. If Jonjo had at least a working knowledge of what he was supposed to be doing it wouldn’t be too bad, but he was completely in the dark about it. From the nightclubs and the debts right through to the bookies, Jonjo was in complete ignorance about even the most basic workings of anything going on around him. He couldn’t even understand that a seven to two bet on a dead cert was just a professional gambler’s way of buying money for himself. That they put on seven quid to win two quid back was beyond his comprehension, and he then voiced that opinion to their regular punters, very
loudly
; as he voiced many other opinions that would be best left unsaid.