Leon pushed open the front door of a shop called ‘Crazy Computers’. Situated next to a Chinese chippy and a sunbed salon, it stood on a bend in the road opposite a carwash. The road led to the docklands at the mouth of the Mersey. Most of the small butchers, bakers and post offices were long gone. The supermarket chains had slowly strangled their profit margins until it was impossible to continue trading. There were a few new businesses trying to establish themselves: Polish food stores and Turkish barbers were dotted about every half a mile or so.
Leon looked at the frontage from inside. The glass was thick with grease and there was a display of keyboards in the window covered in a thick layer of dust. The shop had never sold a single computer in the five years it had been there. It was a front for the brothel above it. A staircase led up to the first floor. The hundreds of punters who trudged up them every week in search of sex had left the beige carpet soiled with their footprints. Leon had a soft spot for the building. Although it was a run-down dilapidated whorehouse, it was the first one that he had opened and it represented the start of his business enterprises. The first woman he had pimped out was his younger sister. She was slow and had had a string of boyfriends before she was sixteen. Leon had thought that if she was going to be a slut, then she might as well make him some money at the same time.
He had pimped her out to his friends and their associates. Heroin had been her best friend and as long as he had kept her stoned, she had gone along with it. She was a looker and word had soon spread that she was on sale. It hadn’t been long before he had taken on another local girl who had been struggling against a heroin addiction and needed the money urgently. Leon had decided that he could supply her with both, and so his empire had started to grow. Within twelve months, he had paid cash for five lockups across the city and he had peddled sex and heroin from both. He had been making a lot of money when his ambitions had focused on the growing crack cocaine market. His customers had been moving away from the brown and using crack instead. It hadn’t mattered to Leon what they took, he had decided to supply it.
He had found it difficult to find a regular reliable supplier of the drug. It had been hitting the streets in dribs and drabs and the price had yo-yoed. Two of the city’s notorious crime families had been at war over the supply of crack and their armed struggle had been driving their dealers underground, which had disrupted supply to the users on the streets. Leon had seen a gap in the market and decided to exploit it. He had got wind of a large shipment coming into the city and hijacked it, taking the drugs and the money and eliminating some of the key enforcers in the process. Four wanted criminals had been executed gangland style with a bullet through the back of the head, and a tip off to the press had allowed the photographers the chance to get to the scene before the police had had a chance to cover the bodies. The murders had been splashed all over the newspapers and television, but no one had been claiming responsibility. The warring families had blamed each other for the hit and escalated their battle with a string of murders that had virtually wiped out the top layer of both cartels. The importers had refused to do business with either family anymore, which had deepened the rift further. Leon had watched from the sidelines as they had annihilated each other, and used the proceeds of the hit to establish himself as the number one importer and supplier of the drug. The rest was history.
It had all begun here, at the Crazy Computer shop, and he grinned as he stepped in the door. At the top of the stairs, a middle-aged blond-haired woman who looked like she had applied her foundation with a trowel greeted him. Mascara caked her false eyelashes and her pencilled eyebrows gave her a surprised appearance. The days when men had paid her for sex were long gone. Now she took the money from the punters and organised washing the sheets and towels. She was one of Leon’s first working girls and he trusted her, to a degree.
“Hi, Leon.”
“How much have you got?” Leon pushed her aside and walked into a small waiting room area. Two nervous punters avoided making eye contact with him or each other. Leon scowled at them. He loathed the men that used his brothels. They were weak and so were the girls he employed to service them. He used their weakness to make money. It was the right of the strong to exploit the weak.
“Just over five thousand.” She followed him like a shadow but kept at an arm’s length from him. Leon was volatile and she had often felt the weight of his hand across her face. “It’s been a quiet week, Leon.”
She went to a cupboard under a bookshelf that was crammed with porn magazines and removed a carrier bag full of cash. Leon snatched it from her and stuffed the money into his inside pocket. Five thousand wasn’t a bad week’s takings, considering he had another thirty premises like this one. He grunted and walked down the stairs before unlocking the adjoining door to the mock computer shop. It smelled of must and damp. The wallpaper was peeling off one wall and black mould climbed the others. At the back of the shop was a door fitted with a metal grille. The top and bottom were fitted with padlocks. Leon took a bunch of keys from his black leather overcoat and unlocked them. The grill squealed as he swung it open and he pushed against the wooden door behind it.
“Alright, Leon.” A voice came from behind him.
“It’s freezing out there,” a second voice called chirpily.
“Pissing down again,” the first voice added.
The two men stepped into the computer shop and rubbed their hands together. They were both black and heavily built. Jackson was in his forties and had his hair braided to his scalp. Dean was younger and had shaved his hair off to the skin. He carried a sports bag in his right hand and his left hand was in his pocket next to his Luger.
“I don’t need a weather report, Dean. Have you got the cash?” Leon growled. He was usually pleased to see them but rarely showed it. Talking down to them had become habit, his way of remaining in control.
“Take a chill pill, Leon.” Dean looked hurt and offended. “The money is in the bag.” He tossed the sports bag to his boss and Leon caught it awkwardly with his right hand.
“How much is in here?” Leon unzipped it with his left hand and poked around inside. There were bundles of fifties tied up with elastic bands.
“Just over a hundred big ones.” Jackson whistled to emphasise the amount.
“Good. What about the gun?” Leon grunted and walked into the storeroom.
“It’s in the bag.” Dean pointed to the sports bag. “What are you going to do with that thing anyway? It should be at the bottom of the Mersey, Leon. It’s dirty.”
“I’m not going to do anything with it, Dean.” Leon grinned. “You are.”
Dean looked at Jackson and shook his head. He didn’t like the tone of Leon’s voice. There was definitely trouble heading their way. Dean rubbed his shaven scalp and waited for the punch line. He was Leon’s enforcer and Jackson was his partner. Together they collected Leon’s monies, protecting his interests with their own lives. Leon paid well and it was easier than working. Not that he could get a job. Dean had hated school and could barely read and write. He had left school at fifteen and signed on the social at sixteen. A decade of petty crime had followed before Leon had taken him onboard as muscle. Dean was a tough man with a reputation as a fighter and it hadn’t been long before he had moved up the ranks. He was loyal and trustworthy and Leon had recognised those strengths in him. Leon had dragged Dean into the business faster than he had been able to think and when Leon had given him his first hit, he had realised just how deep in he was. His wife and kids were his life and they wanted for nothing, but he dreaded the possibility that one day they might find out what he did to earn his money. Worse still, one of Leon’s enemies might hurt them to get to him. His wife was a practising Christian with deep beliefs. She took their children to Sunday school every week and if she ever found out what Dean did for a living, it would kill her. Dean wanted out, but it wasn’t a job where he could give a month’s notice. He had squirreled thousands of pounds away and planned to disappear with his family, far away from Leon and the people who would come looking for him. The right time hadn’t come yet, though. The last thing he wanted was more blood on his hands before he ran.
“What’s happening, Leon?” Jackson stuffed a stick of gum into his mouth and chewed it with his mouth wide open.
“Jinx, that’s what’s happening.” Leon scowled. “I want the
man wasted.”
“What?” Dean frowned and shook his head. “Jinx is okay, Leon. We go back a long way.”
Dean was from the same area of the city as Jinx. They had never been friends, but they knew of each other and there was a level of respect between them. Jinx was a popular character with many friends. He had given Dean’s sister the deposit for a flat when her ex-boyfriend had put her in the hospital before burning all her clothes in the front garden. Jinx had found out about her plight and found her somewhere to live the same day. He had chucked her a thousand pounds to buy a new wardrobe and the basic furniture she needed. Jinx did that kind of thing. He helped people out and was popular. If he was harmed, there would be plenty of dangerous people looking for revenge. Dean didn’t want any part of messing with Jinx. Although he didn’t really know him, Dean liked the man.
“I want him dead, Dean, and then this gun goes into the boot of Bodger’s car. We kill two birds with one stone. Jinx is dead and that arsehole Bodger is in clink. We move in and take over their business interests.” Barry Hodge had rented a lockup from Leon two months earlier. He used it as the base to operate an internet fraud worth tens of thousands selling pirated computer games. When the fraud squad had investigated, they had searched the entire building and discovered the massage parlour above it. The vice squad had been down on Leon like a ton of bricks. Bodger had known it would cause Leon hassle but he didn’t really care. Leon wanted to show Bodger that the consequences of disrespecting him were dire. If he could take Jinx out in the process, then it was happy days.
“Brilliant, Leon. You might as well broadcast it on the television that we killed him. If we move in it’ll be obvious who was responsible,” Dean ranted. “We don’t want Jinx’s friends on our case.”
“Dean is right, Leon. We don’t want to mess with him,” Jackson added. “They are dangerous people.”
“What the fucking hell are we?” Leon shouted. “The boy scouts?”
“It’s madness, Leon. It will start a war we can’t win. Everyone will turn on us.” Dean felt a knot of tension in his guts. He needed to be away from this business before Leon got them all killed. They had soldiers they could call on, but they were mercenaries, loyal to the highest bidder. Leon hadn’t endeared himself to anyone over the years. If he started a war, they would be on their own.
“No one will know it was us, you clown.” Leon puffed up his chest and his fat chin wobbled. “We take Jinx out of the game and then plant the weapon on Bodger. Then we spread rumours around that he was responsible for robbing the poker game and that’s why Bodger shot him.”
“Bodger is an internet scammer, Leon. No one will believe he shot Jinx!” Dean shouted back.
“They will when we tell the Turks that they were in it together and they stole their cocaine,” Leon grinned. “We’ll tell them that Jinx set up the heist and then stitched Bodger up by keeping all the cash for himself.”
“Now I know you’ve lost the plot, Leon.” Dean rubbed his head again in frustration. “If you get the Turks involved there’ll be a bloodbath.”
“Good. We can watch it from the sidelines and mop up what’s left when they’ve finished.” Leon took out the gun from the sports bag. A hessian cloth covered it. They had used the weapon the month before when a crystal meth dealer and his partner had failed to pay their debt to Leon. They had taken them to a remote part of Delamere Forest, where they had forced the dealer to dig his own grave before burying him alive while his partner watched helplessly. Then they had made him dig a second grave while he begged for his life and promised to pay the debt immediately. They had agreed to let him live if he paid up, but he had tried to make a run for it and Jackson had shot him in the back as he ran through the trees. The injured dealer had made it to the road before he died and Leon’s men hadn’t been able to find him in the dark. The police had recovered a bullet and the ballistics were on file, which made the weapon dirty. If they killed Jinx, it could link them to two murders.
“This is madness, Leon.” Dean felt crushed by the pressure. Leon was behaving erratically lately. He had been paranoid before the nightclub robbery, but now he was on edge all the time. His cocaine habit was becoming ridiculous and it was beginning to warp his mind. Jinx was becoming the focus of his aggression. He wasn’t thinking of the backlash his murder would cause. “You are forgetting another thing, Leon.”
“What’s that?” Leon took a silver box from his pocket and flipped the lid. It was designed to hold rolling tobacco but he had filled it with cocaine. He dug his fat thumbnail into the powder and snorted it. His eyelids flickered as the powder dissolved into his bloodstream. “What am I missing?”
“Who did rob the poker game?” Dean’s eyebrows lifted, his forehead creasing. Speculation was rife on the streets. The city’s underworld was in uproar about the heist. Accusations were flying about and several suspected culprits had been beaten to a pulp as the gangsters looked for retribution. So far, no one had confessed. Word was out that two men were sitting on five kilos of cocaine and sooner or later they would try to offload it. Every dealer in the city was waiting for an approach. “If we finger Jinx for the heist and then the real robbers are found, we could be in deep shit, Leon.”
“They’re in the wind, Deano, gone.” Leon licked the remaining powder from his thumb as he spoke. “There is twenty grand in it for you, plus a cut of whatever we take over when the dust settles.” Leon knew everyone had a price. Jackson would shoot his mother for twenty grand but Dean was different. “Twenty grand, Deano, you could a lot with that.”