Seven
Jacqui Cutler trudged into her expansive kitchen looking every bit as worn out and miserable as someone who had spent the morning digging potatoes, which she most certainly had not.
She was followed by the man she somewhat pretentiously referred to as her ‘PA’, even if – though he enjoyed the fancy job description, and had once asked if he could have business cards printed – Malky McDougall’s role in her company was rather more rudimentary.
A short, and deceptively smiley Aberdonian, Malky was -better known as ‘Google’ to most members of Blackpool’s -criminal fraternity, due to his unerring ability to provide any information his employer needed.
He would quickly deliver whatever names, facts or figures were asked for, even if those who had the information were not always keen to part with it, and his methods were somewhat more …
analogue than the company after which he was named.
Analogue in the same way that electric drills and baseball bats were analogue.
Google McDougall immediately went to the fridge and poured his boss a glass of wine. Having spent the last few hours not digging potatoes with her, he knew exactly what Jacqui needed to take the edge off.
‘Cheers, Googs.’ Jacqui sat down at the marble island, took a slug and lit a Marlboro. ‘Keep the bottle out, will you?’
McDougall carried the wine across and joined her at the island. ‘You did well, Jax. Can’t have been much fun.’
‘Needed doing,’ Jacqui said. ‘I’ve got responsibilities.’
They both looked up as Jacqui’s son Justin sloped in, frizzy--haired and gangly, wearing baggy trackies and an Oasis T-shirt.
He immediately went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of sparkling water.
Once he’d downed half of it, he nodded a hello to McDougall and stood studying his mother. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Your mum’s had a bit of a morning,’ McDougall said.
Jacqui looked across at her son and nodded, sadly. ‘I went to pass on my condolences to Ezra Simmons’s mother.’
Justin rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, right.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That’s why you went, is it?’
‘Ezra worked for this company.’ Jacqui emptied her glass and reached for the bottle to top it up. She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘It’s the very least I could do.’
‘Aye, the very least,’ McDougall said.
Jacqui began to describe the traumatic couple of hours she’d spent in Donna Simmons’s overheated front room, attempting to comfort the woman as she sobbed; passing Kleenex across and staring around at the pictures of her dead son.
Like many of the small-time dealers who worked indirectly for her, Ezra had lived with his mum, and as the two of them chatted Jacqui had done her best to cover up what was happening upstairs: the occasional cough to mask the bumps and scraping noises as Google rooted around in the dead boy’s bedroom, searching without success for the money Jacqui was owed.
The money Simmons had owed to a dealer a bit higher up the chain than he was, who in turn had owed it to someone else who ran a whole network of dealers, and had owed it to someone even higher up than that, who had owed it to Jacqui.
It was not even a grand, but fair was fair and business was business.
There had been a moment when Donna Simmons’s eyes drifted ceilingward after Google had closed a drawer a little too loudly and she’d shaken her head, confused.
Perhaps she thought that grief was making her hear things or that the spirit of her precious boy was making itself known, but Jacqui had spoken before she could give it too much thought.
‘I know what you’re going through, Donna,’ she’d said. ‘I lost a son, too …’
Justin rolled his eyes again on hearing that his mother had said such a thing, but nobody could deny that Jacqui had, on this occasion at least, been telling the truth.
Her younger son Adrian had been killed a year before; shot dead in a hotel room in circumstances entirely of his own making.
Whatever her reasons for trotting the line out to Donna Simmons, Jacqui had felt herself tearing up just thinking about it, and it had definitely helped with her performance.
She teared up again now, telling Justin.
‘For God’s sake, Mum.’
‘What?’ Jacqui snapped.
‘You can turn off the waterworks, all right? I know exactly why you went to see that woman.’
‘Go easy now,’ McDougall said, passing his boss a tissue. ‘You can see your mum’s upset.’
Justin ignored him. ‘It’s about money, right? It’s always about money.’
‘You’re being unfair, Justin.’ Jacqui stubbed out her cigarette and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m trying to run a business. A business that will be yours one day.’
‘I don’t want it,’ Justin said. ‘I know all about your “business” and I don’t want any of it.’ He turned and strode towards the door.
‘Justin, wait—’
‘I’ve got an essay to write.’
Jacqui stood up and shouted after him, but there was nothing she could do but watch her son leave.
‘Let the boy go,’ McDougall said. ‘He’ll come round.’
Jacqui reached for her wine glass and stared despondently into it, wondering what she’d done wrong.
Asking herself how she could put it right.
She had taken over the running of the Cutler organisation following the imprisonment of her husband, Wayne, three months before.
It had been a difficult period of adjustment, not least because it was largely Jacqui’s evidence that had put him away.
She wasn’t sorry, though, not even a bit.
Wayne had taken her for granted, dismissed her ideas and treated her like some lowly employee while she’d raised their daughter and their two sons.
On top of which, he’d thrown a Creme Egg at her.
That, she would never forget, or forgive.
Their two sons …
Adrian was gone, and things were definitely not working out with Justin the way she longed for them to. The way Wayne would want, if she gave a toss about what he thought. Which she didn’t.
‘Oh, Googs …’ She sighed, and let her head drop as -McDougall stepped across and laid a comforting hand on her arm.
The most powerful drug distribution empire in the north-west was her son’s to inherit, and instead he was mooning around on long walks or talking about stuff in coffee shops with his friends and wasting his time on some stupid Open University degree.
Environmental Studies, for pity’s sake.
‘That boy is such a disappointment to me.’
‘He’ll see sense,’ McDougall said.
‘I bloody well hope so.’
Of course, Justin claimed that he had seen sense, the day he’d announced that he no longer wanted anything to do with the family business and was going to sign up for uni instead.
Before that, back when Adrian had been killed, Justin had seemed all set to step up and take his brother’s place, help his old man run the show.
Once Wayne had gone to prison, though, the boy’s enthusiasm had dwindled rapidly.
Jacqui couldn’t be sure how much Justin knew about the part she’d played in his father’s arrest and conviction, but for whatever reason the boy had simply appeared to lose interest.
Kids needed to spread their wings, follow their dreams – she knew that. But still, as far as Jacqui was concerned, it was properly ungrateful. It was turning his back on his birthright.
All the same, Jacqui knew that when it came to keeping the business ticking over after she’d gone (to the Maldives or Mauritius as opposed to dying), Justin was still the best hope she had.
His sister was shacked up with some waster in Portugal, so it wasn’t as if she was going to be any help.
There was a slim possibility that someone from the next generation of -Cutlers could yet emerge and make a name for himself, but that depended on Jacqui being allowed to spend a bit more quality time with her grandchildren than her ex-daughter-in-law currently saw fit to allow.
Even if that were to happen (and she’d dispatched Google to have words), the day one of them started to look like a future boss was still a good way off.
It didn’t matter how precocious they were, even the eldest of Adrian’s kids was at least ten years away from doing his first grown-up drug deal or having someone’s legs broken.
On top of which, who was she to wish their childhoods away?
So, no, Jacqui wasn’t going to give up on her son quite yet, but that didn’t mean the daft beggar didn’t embarrass her on a daily basis.
‘He’s nearly thirty, for crying out loud! That’s way too old to be a student.’
‘Not if you’re a mature—’
‘And what the hell even is Environmental Studies? Like, staring at trees and buildings and shit?’
‘Well, I think it’s more about—’
‘And what on earth does he think he looks like?’
They were silent for half a minute or so before Jacqui snapped her head up, quickly enough to make McDougall step back, slightly alarmed.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Where do we go from here?’
McDougall recovered himself quickly. ‘Well, we need to find out who killed the Simmons lad.’
Jacqui nodded. ‘Too bloody right we do, because whoever it is, they’re obviously coming after us.’
‘Trying to muscle in.’
‘We need to know what happened in that park.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ McDougall said. ‘I’ve been down there, sniffing around. I had words with the park-keeper.’
‘And … ?’
‘He wasn’t helpful.’
‘I want that sodding money back, Googs—’ Jacqui stopped when her mobile rang.
She quickly drained her glass and fished the phone from her handbag.
She said ‘Right’, then ‘Thank you’, and ended the call, looking at McDougall.
‘Well, you can stop sniffing around,’ she said.
‘The bloke that killed Simmons handed himself in this morning.’
‘OK … is that good?’
‘Not especially.’
‘No, right.’ McDougall shook his head. ‘Course not.’
‘How am I going to get my money back from someone who’s now in the hands of the police? The money I’m owed.’
‘It’s certainly tricky.’
‘Someone removes one of my sources of income, they have to pay for that, right? That’s the way it goes.’
‘Aye, but is it really worth the hassle?’
‘Hassle?’
‘I’m just saying, it’s only, what … eight hundred quid or something?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Jacqui said.
‘Aye, right … you’re right.’
‘We’ve got a reputation to uphold. My reputation.’
Because fair was fair and people that crossed Jacqui Cutler got what was coming to them.
Business, Creme Eggs … whatever.