Liverpool Loyalty Read online

  Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Smith stood by the open window of his hotel suite and lit himself a cigarette. He blew a smoke ring and watched it drift off through the night air towards the twinkling lights of the Liverpool skyline. He could hear the laughter of Finn and Neville coming from the interconnecting room next door. They were in high spirits and getting ready for a night out on the town. A rare chance to let their hair down and sample the legendary Liverpool night life. Their encounter with Craig Johnson hadn’t quite gone to plan after his teenage daughter had arrived home and spoiled their fun. Jerry shook his head in disbelief. What teenager in their right mind came home at eight o’clock at night? He took another long drag of his cigarette. There was no harm done. Craig Johnson would repay his debt to Mr McGrath before the week was out – one way or another.

  Jerry knew that Craig Johnson actually having that cash was about as likely as Jerry being granted an audience with the Pope, but if Craig didn’t have the money, Jerry would make sure that he paid in other ways instead. Craig and his wife owned their little terraced house, and while it wouldn’t cover the money owed, it would be a start. Mr McGrath had dozens of properties all over the UK, some of which he’d bought as an investment, and some of which he’d been ‘gifted’ when his debtors couldn’t pay up. Mr McGrath would be kind enough to let Craig and his family keep living there – so long as they paid him a substantial monthly rent, at least.

  ‘We’re heading off, Jerry,’ Finn shouted as they walked through the open door. ‘You sure you don’t fancy it?’

  Jerry shook his head. ‘I’m too old for clubbing now. I’m going to have myself a nice drink in the bar downstairs. A good steak in the restaurant and then it’s a film and bed for me,’ he replied with a grin.

  Finn smiled back. ‘Don’t expect us back until tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll pull some fit Scouse birds,’ he said with a wink.

  Jerry laughed. ‘I’m sure you will.’ He flicked his cigarette butt out of the window and walked back into the centre of the room, which now reeked of expensive aftershave. ‘But listen to me, you two,’ he said sternly. ‘Don’t you be causing any shit tonight, do you hear me? This is not our city, so fucking behave yourselves.’

  ‘But Alastair said we should stir things up a bit?’ Nev protested.

  ‘And we will. But with those idiot Johnson brothers, and no one else. I told you what Jock said. We are not to go making any more enemies while we’re up here. Understand?’

  The boys nodded at him and he waved his hand at them to leave. They bolted for the door like a pair of kids running to the ice-cream van and he sat on the bed with a sigh. Nev and Finn would be spoiling for a fight after they’d been interrupted at Craig’s house earlier. He just hoped they didn’t pick a fight with the wrong person.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Connor Carter walked through The Blue Rooms, nodding to the bouncers as he passed. It was technically Jake’s club, having been left to him by his father. But he and Connor were business partners in numerous ventures and they used the club as the base of their operations, where they oversaw the day-to-day running of their considerable empire. As he made his way towards the back office, which he shared with Jake, he wondered at the state he’d find his business partner and best mate in this evening. If he thought about it, it was becoming a rare event to see a sober Jake Conlon. With each passing week, Jake seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of self-loathing and substance abuse. Of course, he brushed it off whenever Connor tried to broach the subject with him, claiming that he was just having some fun, and who could deny him some fun after the year he’d had – the year they’d both had? Paul’s murder eight months earlier had hit them both hard. There wasn’t a day that passed when Connor didn’t think of his twin almost every moment. Sometimes, if he thought about his brother too much, he felt like his grief would swallow him whole, so he tried not to dwell on how much he missed him – preferring instead to remember happier times and Paul’s sense of humour, rather than spend long periods thinking about how much his life had changed, and how he would never see his brother again.

  Connor knew that Jasmine and their unborn baby were also a big factor in keeping him on the straight and narrow. He sometimes wondered what he would do without them to keep him grounded. Would he have ended up like Jake too? Seeking comfort in the bottom of a whisky bottle or a bag of white powder? Who could tell? He understood how hard it was for Jake to deal with losing Paul. He had loved Paul too, albeit in a very different way. Jake and Paul had been attracted to each other like magnets, unable to stay away from each other, despite the potential ramifications of their being together. But sometimes Connor felt like he’d lost Jake as well as Paul. He missed the sharp, sober Jake, who was always on the ball. The man who was funny and charming, and had a great head for business. The man he would trust his life with.

  He reached the office and paused to collect his thoughts. The Jake sitting on the other side of that door was only a shadow of the man he really knew, and if he didn’t do something to snap himself out of the self-destructive mode he was in, Connor didn’t know what he would do. He felt like he was keeping things afloat on his own, and he didn’t know how much longer he could do that, especially now that the police were sniffing around them. Connor needed a partner with a clear, level head, not one who didn’t know what day of the week it was.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door. Immediately he wished he’d knocked when he saw Jake and a topless barman snorting coke off the desk.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Connor shouted across the office. ‘The police could walk in here any minute. Could you be a little bit more fucking discreet?’

  Jake looked up, bleary-eyed, and frowned. ‘Con. What are you on about? The door was fucking shut. Not like they can just barge in here without a warrant, is it?’ he snapped.

  The barman gave a wan smile as he wiped the traces of powder from his nose.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Connor barked at him as he nodded towards the open door. Picking up his shirt from the floor, Jake’s latest conquest made a hasty retreat.

  ‘You two weren’t fucking in here, were you?’ Connor said, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

  ‘So what if we were?’ Jake replied with a shrug.

  ‘God, we’ll need to bleach this fucking desk then,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Can’t you keep your dick in your pants for a few hours? You were supposed to be sorting out the Blackpool job. Have you?’

  Jake nodded before wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘It’s all sorted, mate. It won’t be a problem.’

  Connor eyed him suspiciously. They couldn’t afford any slip-ups with the police breathing down their necks. He wasn’t sure if he could trust Jake to handle anything any more, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t manage everything on his own. The Blackpool job should be straightforward enough. A shipment of their finest Colombian marching powder to be delivered straight from the docks and up the M6 to their dealers. It was a smooth operation ordinarily, and one of many, but a firm in Blackpool had tried to chance their arm and nick the last shipment. They had all ended up getting the shit kicked out of them for their trouble, but Connor wanted to make sure that something similar didn’t happen again, so they were going to send reinforcements.

  ‘I said it’s sorted,’ Jake snapped.

  ‘Okay. Keep your fucking hair on.’

  ‘Well, stop looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot then.’

  Connor shook his head. ‘I’m not. You’re no idiot, Jake…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But you’re fucking wasted again. We can’t afford to have any cock-ups. We need to be more careful than ever after we got pulled in for Billy’s murder.’

  ‘Oh, relax. They’ve got fuck all on us,’ Jake replied dismissively. ‘And they can follow us around all they like, but they won’t get anything on us. Murf sweeps this place for bugs every other day. No one would dare breathe a word to the filth about what we get up to. We’re untouchable, mate.’


  ‘But someone has breathed a word, haven’t they? The police have a witness.’

  Jake shrugged. ‘They’ve got nothing.’

  Connor shook his head. There was no getting through to Jake when he was on coke. He thought he was made of titanium.

  ‘We need to go and check on Nipper and make sure he knows who he’s paying what to over the next few weeks. We can’t be driving around with bags full of dough any more. The plod will be looking for any reason to pull us over and nick us, so let’s not give them any more than we already have, eh?’ Connor said.

  Nipper Jackson was their counter. He handled all of the cash they had coming in from their various ventures. He sorted, counted and stored it, but now he would be responsible for paying everyone who needed to be paid too. He was a crucial cog in their well-oiled machine and they paid him very well for his trouble. But Connor had come to value Nipper’s work ethic over the years, and more importantly, his discretion. As far as Connor was concerned, Nipper was worth every penny they paid him.

  Jake stood up and took his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Come on then, lad. Let’s go and see our Nipper then.’

  Connor and Jake left the club by the back door, oblivious to the carnage that was starting to unfold at the main entrance. Jack Murphy –Murf – had just taken a sucker punch from a burly skinhead with a southern accent. It wasn’t often that Murf was caught off guard, but he’d been coming out of the gents and was still zipping up his fly when he’d been punched in the gut. He looked up to see another fucker coming at him with a machete. Despite being out of breath, Murf dropped to his knees and the sword struck the wooden doorframe instead, lodging itself there. Soon the club’s foyer was filled with the sound of a woman’s screams as blood from one of the bouncer’s noses spattered across her white mini dress. Murf looked up to see the bald man who’d punched him and another man with tattoos on his face wielding baseball bats and swinging them with abandon, not caring who or what they hit with them. Murf staggered to his feet. It was a Wednesday night, the day before the start of the Grand National, so he’d given his most experienced bouncers the night off, knowing they’d be working all hours for the next four days. Still, the lads he had with him were no mugs and there was no way they should be getting their arses handed to them by a pair of southern twats.

  Murf straightened up and ran towards the melée. ‘Come on, let’s scarper,’ the bald-headed one said to his mate. Before Murf could reach either of them, they had bolted for the door. Still winded, and with at least twenty years on them, Murf didn’t have the energy to chase them. Instead he looked around the foyer and surveyed the damage. One of the large glass doors was smashed, along with a few mirrors, and would need replacing. There was a machete wedged into the toilet door frame. Three of his bouncers were on the floor bleeding, and one was out cold. The two who were inside the club, watching the room, came running into the foyer.

  ‘Too fucking late, lads. Where were you?’ Murf snapped as he walked over to the unconscious doorman and tried to rouse him.

  ‘We only just heard, Boss. They were in and out,’ Carl, the youngest one, answered.

  ‘Call a fucking ambulance for him, will ya?’ he ordered. ‘Are Jake and Connor still here?’

  Carl shook his head. ‘They’re not in their office.’

  Murf frowned. He hadn’t seen them leave. They could have gone while he was having a piss, although more often than not they slipped out of the back door these days. How was he supposed to keep a bloody eye on them if they didn’t tell him where they were going? Not that Jake and Connor knew he was keeping an eye on them; they’d have a bloody canary fit if they found out. But he’d made a promise to Grace and Michael that he would look out for them. He sighed as he realised he’d have to phone one of them and tell them about tonight’s little adventure. It could have been nothing, just some scallys looking for a fight. Or it could mean something much more.

  After making sure the injured bouncers were okay, Murf went to the back office for some privacy. He wondered whether to phone Grace or Michael and decided on the latter. Both of them would be pissed off about what had happened, but as big and hard as he was, the truth was Grace scared the shit out of Murf when she was angry.

  He dialled Michael’s number and waited for him to answer.

  ‘All right, Murf?’ Michael answered.

  ‘Not exactly, Boss,’ Murf said.

  ‘What the fuck has happened now?’

  ‘We’ve had some trouble at the club—’

  ‘Are the boys okay?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Yeah. They weren’t even here. Look, it might be nothing. It could just have been some lads looking for a scrap…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But they were all tooled up. They were good. And they were from down south.’

  ‘Down south? Like London?’

  ‘Maybe? I don’t know. They all sound the fucking same to me. But it makes me wonder if it was a deliberate attack. They were in and out pretty fast. Smashed the place up a bit. Gave some of the lads a good walloping. Put me on my arse as well. Then they left.’

  ‘Did anyone recognise them?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Nope. Like I said, they weren’t from round here, Boss.’

  ‘Was the CCTV working?’

  ‘Of course,’ Murf replied, slightly offended by the question. He always made sure it was – unless it was in the best interests of the boys for it not to be.

  ‘Send it over to me, Murf. I want to see what went on.’

  ‘I’ll email it over, Boss.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Let me know if you recognise them, or if there’s anything you need me to do.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Murf hung up the phone and turned on the computer to upload the CCTV to email over to Michael. He found the right section on the video and watched while he waited for the file to upload. Murf felt a twinge of embarrassment as he watched his bouncers, and then him, easily bested by the two intruders. It wasn’t an experience he was used to, nor one he wished to repeat any time soon. He made a mental note to review the rotas for the next few weeks and make sure he always had at least some of his most experienced bouncers on with him in future.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Connor turned off the engine as they parked outside Nipper Jackson’s house in West Derby. He looked across at Jake and noticed his best mate was getting twitchy and agitated. The coke was obviously wearing off.

  ‘Why don’t you have a line before we go in?’ Connor asked with a sigh. At least then Jake would be sharp and not sitting fidgeting like a crackhead in Nipper’s kitchen.

  ‘Yeah, I will,’ he replied as he took a small silver bullet-shaped cylinder out of his jacket pocket. ‘Want some?’ he asked Connor.

  ‘No,’ Connor snapped. ‘You know I don’t touch that shit. But at the moment, you’re more use to me on it than coming down off it.’

  Jake tipped some of the white powder onto his hand before sniffing it up into his nostril. ‘That’s better,’ he said as he wiped his nose with his finger and thumb. ‘Ready?’

  Connor nodded. ‘Come on.’

  Nipper had opened the door before Connor had a chance to knock. They had phoned him en route so he was expecting them.

  ‘Come in, gents,’ Nipper said with a smile as he opened the door wider. ‘I’ve put the kettle on.’

  Soon the three men were sitting in Nipper’s kitchen drinking tea. ‘So, what’s the score, lads? Do you need cash?’ Nipper asked.

  ‘You hear about us getting lifted the other day?’ Connor asked, ignoring the question.

  ‘Yeah, I did, and it’s good to see you both out and about again so soon.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re under investigation for murder in the meantime, so we need to lie low for a while.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Nipper said with a whistle. ‘A murder charge? Well, that will cramp your style, lads. What do you need me to do?’

  ‘We can’t be driving around with any cash o
n us, so, until this thing blows over, you’ll be dealing with some of our employees rather than us, Gary Mac and his sons will be looking after the money drops. You might have a few extra people dropping by but Gary will let you know in advance who will be turning up and how much they need paying,’ Connor answered.

  ‘Not a problem. I’ll make sure everything runs like clockwork.’

  Connor nodded. ‘Nice one.’

  ‘So, who are you supposed to have murdered then?’ Nipper asked.

  ‘Billy Johnson,’ Jake growled.

  ‘Oh?’ Nipper replied as he sipped his tea, not probing any further. Connor knew that Nipper was very much of the what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him persuasion. While he was very good at his job, he was a bean counter – an accountant by trade, he stayed away from the other side of the business.

  ‘Don’t you want to know if we did it?’ Jake snarled, his lip curled up like an angry dog.

  Nipper shook his head furiously. ‘Nope. It’s no business of mine, Jake.’

  ‘Jake!’ Connor snapped at him. ‘Come on, it’s time we left.’

  ‘Why did he ask who we murdered if he didn’t want to know if we did it?’ Jake shouted as he stood up suddenly, his chair falling to the floor with a clatter. He stalked across the kitchen towards Nipper. ‘Do you know something you’re not telling us?’ Jake said as he edged closed to a now terrified Nipper who was physically shaking in his seat.

  ‘No,’ Nipper mumbled.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Connor barked as he grabbed Jake by the arm and steered him towards the door. ‘Leave him the fuck alone, will you?’

  ‘What if he knows something?’ Jake asked, his eyes wide as he stared at Connor, who suddenly realised that that last line of coke was one too many and had pushed Jake over the edge.