LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Let’s just say, I’ve got my sources of reliable information,’ Bancroft told Sheila. ‘News travels fast in our world, and I can help you get on with the things that are more in your comfort zone.’

      Conky noticed that the veins on the backs of Sheila’s hands were standing proud. She appeared taut from her feet to her face, like a gymnast holding her body before executing a finale on the beam.

      She poked Bancroft in the shoulder. ‘You can take that shit-eating grin off your face for a start, mister.’ Taking a step towards him. Matching his height in those heels. ‘Now, first, I want to know which double-crossing little shit you’ve got working for me, earwigging and then mouthing off about my business. And second, cut the flirtatious crap and tell me what you’re proposing. South Manchester’s mine. All mine. I’m a businesswoman, Nigel. Not a bleeding hobbyist or the show pony you seem to be mistaking me for.’

      Bancroft’s muscle marched towards her, puffing themselves up like peacocks, squaring for a fight over a hen.

      Conky withdrew his weapon, pointing it at them but still keeping it for the most part concealed up his overcoat sleeve. ‘Back off, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Or you’ll have more holes in you than Emmental cheese, before you can shout croque-fucking-monsieur.’

      The Midlander muscle looked to their boss for a signal.

      Holding his hand aloft, Bancroft’s smile no longer reached his eyes. ‘Easy, lads. We’re just talking shop here, aren’t we, Sheila?’ He glanced at Conky’s gun, blinking too hard and fast. ‘No need for any nastiness. Call your dog off, will you?’ He turned his attention back to Sheila. His puffed-up ego seemed to have deflated somewhat, making that camel coat look a size too big.

      ‘Dog?’ Conky took a step towards him. ‘Catch yourself on, you cheeky wee bastard. You call me a dog again, I’ll show you the ferocity of my bite.’ He caught sight of Sheila’s steely glare and flinching jaw. Took a step back again and put the gun away. Satisfied that he had set his stall out for this posing ponce.

      ‘Now. Stop wasting my time, Mr Bancroft,’ Sheila said, checking her watch as though she had some more pressing engagement to attend. ‘I wanna know who fed you information about me and I want to hear your proposal. No dicking around.’

      ‘I’m not giving you my sources,’ Bancroft said, grinning like a bloody eejit again. ‘But I will say this: I’ll run your drugs, protection racket, any girls, gambling … whatever. All the tough stuff, I’ll run and give you fifteen per cent. I take all the risk. You just sit back and take the money.’ He opened his arms, raising them up as though he had just announced he had found a cure for cancer to a hospital ward full of the dying.

      ‘Fifteen?!’ Conky said, hoping the arsehole could hear the derision in his voice.

      Sheila stalked towards Bancroft, pushing her face right up against his. ‘You’re taking the piss. Shall I tell you what you can do with your fifteen lousy per cent?’

      Sheila dipped her slender hand into the handbag. Bancroft’s eyes widened as she pressed her gun into his gut.

      Conky held his breath. Would she shoot?

      ‘You can stick your offer right up your jacksy,’ she said, seeming to grow even more in stature. ‘You’ve wasted my time. Getting me down here, just so you can wave your dick at me before you try to shaft me for my business?’

      ‘No, I haven’t!’ Bancroft said. ‘The offer’s in good faith.’

      ‘Feel that?’ Sheila said, pushing the snub nose down towards his abdomen. Still out of the eyeline of Bancroft’s henchmen, who hung back, too far away to hear this exchange, Conky calculated. ‘That’s my dick you can feel.’ She raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes like an excited child, boarding a ride at a fairground. ‘If you want me to shoot my load, carry on with the insults, pal. Because you’re insulting me right now, and my dick feels a romance explosion coming on that won’t end well for you.’

      ‘Twenty per cent, then,’ Bancroft’s skin had paled to a sickly yellow now. His eyes darted to and fro, as though he was desperate to alert his boys to the danger he faced.

      Conky could see Sheila click the safety off. ‘There you go again with the insults. How about you tell me the name of the grassing little shit who seems to think my business is his business?’

      ‘Twenty-five. There. That’s my best offer, Sheila. Twenty-five per cent to run your drugs and protection and that.’

      ‘Raise your hands where I can see them,’ she said. ‘Any last words?’

      ‘All right! All right!’ Bancroft did as asked, shaking his head vociferously at his two men, as they moved in towards him, guns drawn, aimed at Sheila and Conky. ‘Just mull it over, will you? It’s good business sense, and you know it. Please.’

      Appraising the scene with the swift eyes of a militia man, Conky noted the innocent passers-by some hundred metres away. Made a split-second decision as to whether he could take out these two lumps and their bossman before the situation got out of hand. The specially manufactured prisms in the lenses of his Ray-Bans boosted his weak thyroid-eyes back to better than twenty-twenty vision. He could take them out, all right.

      ‘Put your guns away, lads,’ Bancroft said. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. ‘Sheila here is just being cautious, aren’t you? It’s understandable.’

      ‘She’s taking the piss, Nige,’ the black guy said.

      ‘Stand down, Steve. And you, Trev. It’s okay. We’re all good. Sheila’s just going to chew over my offer, aren’t you, love?’

      Conky could almost taste the adrenalin in the air. Blood rushed and roared in his ears. Here was the crux of the meet.

      ‘Love? Don’t you, “love” me, you presumptuous bastard,’ Sheila said, taking an all-important step away from Bancroft, though she still clutched the pistol in her hand.

      Bancroft lowered his arms uncertainly. Gestured for his men to back down.

      A young woman, clutching the hands of two small children, had started to cross the footbridge. She was moving closer by the second to the shores of the Lowry Theatre. Conky estimated that they had thirty seconds tops in which to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the ill-fated proceedings. He was relieved to see the black guy shove his weapon back inside his coat pocket.

      ‘This meeting’s over,’ Sheila said, clumsily opening her handbag with the hand that clutched her gun. ‘Now, piss off back down the M6 with your proposition.’

      But the white man-mountain in the leather donkey jacket was still aiming his gun at Sheila’s head. His colour was high. His eyes were glazed. Conky knew a man who had lost control when he saw one. The woman with the two small children was upon him, looking askance at the spectacle of a giant clutching a gun. When she screamed, Conky knew he’d left it too long to react.

       Chapter 4

       Paddy

      ‘Another pint, Marcus, kind sir!’ Paddy thrust his glass out towards the craggy-faced landlord, brandishing it beneath the short man’s nose as if it were a broken bottle. His words were slurring – he could hear that much. Had been for the last hour. But with every pint of bitter he drank, the reality of Kenneth Wainwright’s sad, shitty, low-rent world became more blissfully blurred around the edges; the ache of the scar where his body had been opened up with a boning knife by that little arsehole Leviticus Bell, posing as Asaf Smolensky, had dulled … just for a booze-numbed while.

      ‘You’ve had enough, Ken,’ the landlord said, grabbing Paddy’s wrist with an unforgiving hand. Stronger than he looked. ‘Go home and sleep it off, mate.’

      Swaying slightly,

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