Howard Linskey: The Dead

So I can’t walk away, ever, and that’s my punishment. The day I pulled the trigger on my boss, Bobby Mahoney, was the day I was handed my very own life sentence. I just didn’t realise at the time that it will only ever be over for me when I’m a dead man. My flight back from Istanbul was delayed and that gave me plenty of time to think about how I ended up here. You don’t set out to be a gangster. At least I didn’t. I’m no Henry Hill and the road I travelled was long, tortuous and made up of a million little baby steps, each one a decision that eventually, years later, led me here. There wasn’t just one turning point, a single chance to turn my back on this life before I fell too deeply into it. I know that now and often wonder what my life could have been, if I’d suddenly decided to just jack it all in, long before I became Bobby Mahoney’s indispensable right hand man, a Geordie Consigliere to the north-east’s most notorious criminal, a man who held the city in the palm of his huge, gnarled hand for more than three decades.

Then, when Bobby was killed, I stepped into his shoes and found they were a perfect fit. I may not have the brute strength, fearlessness and raw fighting ability of Bobby Mahoney, but what I lacked in those departments I more than made up for with my ability to read people and work things out before they did.

I had time to contemplate my situation because I was waiting for my suitcase to make an appearance on the carousel. I’d travelled first class but it was my suitcase that was acting like the diva, insisting on keeping me waiting and I was the last one there, apart from Palmer, my head of security.

The Gallowgate Leisure Group has gone global. These days we are an offshore company that uses lawyers and bankers more than enforcers or hit men and I have to oversee all of it. I try to look the part of David Blake, Chief Operating Officer, but apart from a few expensive suits, I’m pretty much the same guy I’ve always been.

In my business, you have to keep on growing and expanding, so you can earn the money you need to pay all of the people who will keep you away from prison or out of the grave. Bobby’s era of armed robbery and protection, of gaming machines, porno movies and illegal gambling may have been a brutal and bloody place but it has nothing on the world of international drug smuggling and money laundering I’ve been forced to take us into.

But business is okay, the money is still coming in and we haven’t killed anyone in a couple of years now, which is as good a barometer of the health of our firm as any. As Kinane is fond of saying, ‘We’ve got fingers in more pies than Mister Fucking Kipling,’ and he knows because he’s one of our inner circle, our main enforcer, the man you fuck with if you fuck with me. Since the guy is huge and looks like he’s made out of breeze blocks, this acts as a pretty big deterrent.

My bag finally put in an appearance and I was relieved because I wanted to get going. We left Heathrow airport, then took the underground to Kings Cross for a train north. I got off it at York but Palmer stayed on for a meeting in Edinburgh with Fallon, a Glasgow hard case who shares the city with us, because we are a sleeping partner in his Glasgow operation. I didn’t expect to be gunned down on the mean streets of York but you can never be too careful, so I got Joe Kinane to drive down and meet me. He picked me up in his Lexus and drove me to view an old Georgian hotel I had my eye on. I wanted to buy it, renovate the place and run it as a going concern, while laundering some of our drug money through its gilded doors. Once I’d viewed the hotel, we were free to drive back north again, which gave him his chance to brief me on everything that had been going on while I was away. Thankfully it wasn’t much. Everyone prefers a quiet life and I’m no exception.

‘Amrein’s been on a couple of times,’ he informed me, ‘something about a meeting. He wants you to get back to him.’

Amrein; our fixer, the guy who oils the wheels, greases the palms and keeps us all out of trouble, in theory.

‘I know about Amrein’s meeting,’ I admitted. ‘I’m trying to avoid it. I’ll call him tomorrow.’

I spent the final miles of my journey in a relaxed frame of mind. I was looking forward to seeing Sarah and my gorgeous little girl again. I’d missed them both. We were almost back in the city, just a few miles to go. I was tired and the last thing I wanted was an incident of any kind but that’s exactly what I got. As we were speeding up the A1, a car suddenly shot out from the slip road and cut us up big style as it crossed both lanes. Kinane slammed on the brakes with a ‘Fooking Hell!’ and scowled at the driver in front.

‘Simmer down,’ I told him once I realised we weren’t actually under attack, ‘it’s just some young tosser,’ the car was small and old but it had been souped-up somehow and the boy racer who owned it had spent a lot of time adding spoilers and spray painting it black. I couldn’t even tell what make it had been before he started.

Kinane ignored me and pounded the horn with one hand while he gripped the steering wheel tightly with the other and stepped on the accelerator to give chase. I tried to reason with him, even though I knew it would be hopeless. ‘I haven’t got time for this Joe,’ I said, as he swiftly gained on the other car, ‘I don’t need the grief of bailing you out if you lamp the lad.’

Kinane forced the car level with the boy racer, undertaking, so we were right next to him on the inside lane. The window on their passenger door immediately came down and the guy riding shotgun put his arm out and gave us the finger. I doubted he would have done that if he could have seen inside our car but the darkened windows meant he had no idea who he had just insulted. I could see the bloke’s pig-ignorant face clearly. It was twisted into a violent snarl of hate, as if we were totally out of order, preventing him and his mate from doing exactly what they pleased.

‘Little tosser,’ muttered Kinane, his voice going as high as I had ever heard it.‘Joe,’ I said it quietly, by way of warning, but you don’t give Joe Kinane the finger and get away with it. If you did, there wouldn’t be much point in employing him.

Kinane moved as if he was about to wind the window down and give this bloke the shock of his young life but, as he took his eye off the road ahead, I noticed the rear end of a lorry coming up at such speed it seemed to be reversing into us.

‘Joe!’ I shouted and he slammed the anchors on and swerved to the right just in time, ‘Jesus!’ I watched the back of the lorry veer past me.

Kinane gave it no attention. He was busy steering the Lexus through the rest of the traffic, chasing the little car as it slalomed amongst the other vehicles on the road. One or two of the other drivers looked a bit panicked as we came charging through them but Kinane paid them no heed. This kind of driving was not new to him and his blood was up.

The little black car suddenly cut across two lanes again, this time from right to left and it shot off the A1, taking the slip road into the city. Kinane followed. I had no idea how we missed the car in the slow lane, as we cut between it and the turn off. ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ I demanded.

‘Chasing-these-two-little-cunts,’ Kinane emphasised each word through gritted teeth.

I grabbed the door handle and held on to it tightly as our car swerved to the right and shot across the flyover, the driver of the car that was trying to get onto the road from our left must have had several heart attacks as we flew out and cut him up but Kinane just expected the bloke to brake and get out of our way, which thankfully he did. By the time he’d wrestled with his car, realised he was still alive and composed himself enough to sound the horn at us, the noise was already a distant one.