Marnie Riches - Born Bad - A gritty gangster thriller with a darkly funny heart

‘You take your time, boss …’ Conky said, peering down at the shine on his new shoes. ‘… While I hang around like a fart in a trance,’ he added, lowering his voice to a half-whisper. ‘Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do at eleven pm on a Friday night.’

Conky stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands folded behind him, sighing. Remembering how Paddy had stunk their cell out when they’d done time together, all those years ago. He had always laughed that it was the evil coming out. Bloody hell. Nothing changed, did it?

Glancing into the oversized mirror by the cloakroom, he double-checked that his trusty hair-piece was still reliably fixed into place, with his own dwindling hair successfully combed over the artful construction. He poked at it gently. It was robust, with no visible bald bits. Excellent. He must pay that bean-counting eejit, David Goodman, a little intelligence-sourcing visit soon, while his hair was looking quite so regal as to be almost intimidating. Maureen Kaplan’s son-in-law always blabbed a little louder with proper use of The Eyes, the power of The Hair and, of course, a pistol in his flapping mouth.

Conky tried to lessen his frustration by focusing on his thoughts about A Brief History of Seven Killings – the Man Booker Prize winner he was meant to finish in time for his book club. Which he had missed tonight because of Paddy. He checked his watch. There was a Dutchman waiting at the club to discuss the supply of mephedrone in the northwest. A big meeting, called at short notice at Paddy’s behest. But Paddy loved to keep people waiting. Conky, however, liked to be on time. Trapped in the punctuality paradox of being Paddy O’Brien’s muscle, Conky scratched at the nervous rash that started to itch up his neck beneath his best shirt.

‘Alright, Conks?’ Sheila said, emerging from the kitchen.

He turned around to greet the boss’ wife with a warm smile. Pushed his Ray-Bans up his nose to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled of exotic home cooking and perfume. He drank her aroma in and tried to commit it to memory. Her small, soft hand felt like a child’s inside his. He prayed his palms were dry. And that she wouldn’t see his irritable rash morphing into a blush.

‘Sheila,’ he said. Not knowing what to say next.

‘Want something to eat? I made a lovely paella. I’m just putting aside the leftovers. There’s plenty.’ She started to untie the apron from her tiny waist.

‘Aye. I could eat the arse of a baby through the cot bars, so I could,’ he said. Normally, she trilled with laughter when he used those old Norn Iron turns of phrase from his Belfast boyhood. Tonight, there was not even the glimmer of a smile. ‘I was only going to grab a burger at the club. Paddy’s due there in ten. So, I might have to eat it on the hoof, if you don’t mind, Sheila. The boss—’

‘Paddy can wait,’ Sheila said in a low voice. The lines either side of her mouth seemed etched deeper than usual.

She turned away from him. He followed her diminutive gym-honed form over to the range cooker, never taking his eyes from her. Savouring the opportunity to look without being seen or judged. But there was something unusual about her gait. She was walking gingerly.

‘Are you okay, She?’ he asked.

Turning to face him, Sheila’s gaze only reached as far as his chin. ‘Fine. I overdid it at the gym.’

He took several strides towards her and raised his glasses to his forehead, putting aside any self-conscious discomfort in knowing she would be able to see his protruding eyes. Stooping, he scrutinised the delicate bone structure of her face in the bright sparkling light of the chandeliers. Could see the ghost of a livid green bruise on her forehead, lurking just beneath a layer of heavy makeup.

‘What happened?’ He stroked her cheek gently.

She didn’t retreat from his touch but nevertheless refused to meet his gaze. She was blinking rapidly. ‘I tripped over my step in aerobics. Landed on one of my five-k barbell weights, face first, didn’t I?’

She looked furtively over at the kitchen door, as though she expected Paddy to be standing there, eavesdropping. Started to dish paella clumsily onto a plate, treating Conky to more uncomfortable silence, as though she resented him for drawing attention to the obvious.

‘If there’s anything you need to talk about, Sheila,’ he said, feeling the pressure of so many unspoken words, accumulated over years, pushing behind his thyroid eyes.

Her body stiffened suddenly. She turned back to the cooker. Busy with her frying pan.

Conky realised Paddy had appeared, and was now standing behind them.

‘Leave the grub, mate,’ the boss said, eyeing him carefully. ‘She’ll probably poison you with all that foreign shit anyway, won’t you, She? I nearly dropped my guts down that carsey.’ Paddy strode over and slapped his wife’s behind. Treated her to an aggressive kiss on the neck that she pulled away from.

Glad to leave the awkward atmosphere behind, Conky bid Sheila farewell and drove the boss beneath the fool’s gold of the streetlights down the A56, away from the leafy Cheshire suburbs, through Stretford and towards Manchester’s trading-estate wastelands. They ringed the centre like a shit city wall – identikit, corrugated iron super-sheds, punctuated only by the terraces of Old Trafford, the space-station-like construction of the Emirates cricket stadium and the gaudy blue dome of the Trafford Centre in the distance. All of that invisible as night fell in earnest, leaving only anonymous, hulking grey boxes behind high iron fencing that rusted in the Mancunian drizzle.

M1 House looked like any other premises, but for lasers that seeped skywards from the Perspex lights in the roof and the thump-thump of dance music that emanated from within.

‘Alright, our Pad,’ Frank said, greeting his older brother at the door deferentially. He thrust a full whisky tumbler towards him. ‘Come on. Come on, man. That Dutch bloke’s been waiting hours and he’s boring as fuck.’

Conky eyed the gaunt, twitchy figure of Frank O’Brien, wincing as Paddy grabbed the drink from him with one hand and administered a brotherly blow to his kidney with the other. Frank was already waxy-faced from whatever cocktail of drugs the daft wee fecker had managed to lay his hands on that evening, dressed like a 1990s throwback in a baggy long-sleeved top and cargo jeans. Shuffling through his giant temple to dance music in grotty old sneakers. A reluctant Pontius Pilate, Conky mused, serving beneath Paddy who was always channelling Tiberius on a good day; Caligula on a bad.

The bass-heavy music enveloped him, pulsating through the hot, damp air – it was almost tangible. Deafening shite. It was certainly no Dvorˇák or Mozart – it made Conky’s teeth sensitive and aggravated the pains in his legs whenever his thyroid was out of whack. Strobe lights flick-flickering all around, dimmed only slightly by the tinted prescription prisms in his Ray-Ban lenses that mitigated some of the thyroid eye disease that plagued him. Lasers flashing green and red in precise fans, pointing upwards, moving downwards to slice through the fog of the dry ice. Everybody caught in nanosecond freeze-frames. Hands in the air. Shaking that thang. Fecking eejits. Staccato dancing like possessed puppetry where the DJ was the puppet master.

‘Make some noise, M1 House!’ the DJ shouted as he blended the groove of one track into another, perfectly maintaining 128 beats per minute.

Jack O’Brien. Son of Frank O’Brien and number one nephew to Paddy. An accidental Adonis thanks to his dead mother’s Balearic colouring. The crowd worshipped this man, turning towards him in unison. Screaming and cheering up to the distant warehouse ceiling – above the lighting rigs, through the corrugated Perspex to the night sky beyond; out into the universe where their love would mingle with the stars.