Top Dog Page 12

  “Think hard, boy,” Freddie growled.

  “Yeah, of course I did, Fred.”

  Freddie narrowed his eyes. Then where the fuck were they? “Get on the blower, now, and see where they are.”

  “I haven’t got any phone credit.”

  “Do you know what, you’re beyond fucking useless,” he said and threw Matty away from him. “I pay you more than enough, and you can’t even top up your phone credit?”

  Matty’s cheeks flushed. In truth, Freddie paid him peanuts, considering all that he did for him.

  Freddie pulled out his own mobile phone, and tapped in Big Tone’s telephone number. It went straight to his answering machine. He could feel his cheeks redden, could feel a familiar knot of anger churn in his gut, as his mind went into over-drive. Paranoia was beginning to set in, once again, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek, while he thought the situation through. He would put money on it, the reason for them not being here, somehow involved Danny McKay. Hadn’t that cunt caused him enough trouble?

  “Maybe they forgot,” Matty said.

  “No.” Freddie shook his head. “Something’s going on. There’s definitely something not right about all of this.” There was no other explanation for their absence. He tried to think back to the conversations he’d had with Big Tone over the last couple of days. There had to be something he’d missed, some sort of clue, proving that the big man was swaying toward Danny. “Did you definitely tell them about this meet?”

  Matty nodded his head, sheepishly. In all truth, he just couldn’t recall if he had or hadn’t.

  “Are we gonna start this meeting or not, Fred?” Mick Johnson asked.

  Annoyed, Freddie turned to face the men. “You all probably know by now, that that no good bastard, McKay, has taken over all of the doors.”

  Mick blew out his cheeks. He couldn’t understand how Danny had managed to do it single handed. “He must have had help, Fred. I mean, come on, where did all the men come from? They must work for someone. So, who else is involved in all of this?”

  Freddie nodded his head. He’d heard rumours that Moray Garner was involved. “Of course he fucking did, and I know exactly who it was.”

  He’d never liked Moray. To put it mildly, he despised him. He’d always been suspicious of the pikey bastard’s motives. The man had always been there, in the background, hanging around, just waiting to poach his number two, and now he finally had.

  Conveniently, Freddie let it slip from his mind, the fact that he, himself, had ordered McKay’s death. The truth of the matter was, he’d always been jealous of Moray’s and Danny’s friendship, their closeness. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if Moray had been the one who’d put Danny up to the takeover. After all, the idea had to come from somewhere. “Moray Garner is the other man behind this.”

  Mick stood quietly. He was more than concerned. After seeing Danny in action, he really didn’t want to get involved. And after hearing that Moray Garner and Danny had formed a partnership, only made matters ten times worse.

  He looked around him, and listened, as the men, most of them young enough to be his grandsons, told Freddie exactly what he wanted to hear. Telling him how they were personally going to bring McKay down, all of them acting the Billy Big Bollocks in front of their boss. It was laughable.

  The truth was, they hadn’t seen the real Danny McKay in action, but he had, and if he was being honest, it had scared him shitless. In all of his years, he had never seen anything so brutal, and he doubted he ever would again. Besides, he was getting too old to be scrapping with the likes of McKay and Garner, and after what he’d witnessed, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against the younger man, if it ever came to blows.

  “So, what do you want us to do about it then, Fred?” Mick asked.

  “What do you think I want you to do? Invite that bastard McKay to a fucking tea party? I want my doors back,” Freddie answered, looking around him. “And I want McKay’s head brought to me on a plate.”

  Mick had just about heard enough. Most of these kids didn’t have a clue what they were up against. “I’m not being funny, Fred, but how do you expect us to do that? It’s not as though we can just turn up and take them back, is it? McKay’s gonna expect comebacks, and he’ll be ready and waiting for it to happen.”

  “I don’t fucking know, or care, for that matter, how you’re going to do it. Just get it done,” Freddie snapped. His patience was being truly tested, and he felt as though he may as well be surrounded by imbeciles.

  “All right, fucking hell. Calm down, Fred.”

  “Calm down?” Freddie roared. “No, I won’t calm down. I’m finished, because of that little cunt.” He threw his arms up in the air and gave a bitter laugh. “And you seriously expect me to be calm?”

  “No, I expect you to have a plan. Something proactive we can actually do, instead of telling all of this lot here, to just go out there and get your doors. They don’t know what he is actually like, and it’s gonna be a suicide mission, sending them out unaware.”

  Freddie narrowed his eyes. He stared hard at Mick. “Shut your mouth,” he growled. “You’re going too far now.”

  “They need to know what they’re up against.”

  “I said, shut your fucking mouth,” Freddie spat. He took a step closer toward the older man, his fists clenched at his sides.

  Mick stood his ground. “I can see why McKay left now. This is no way to run a firm. And as for all of you,” he said, pointing his finger toward each of the kids who made up Freddie’s firm, “if you follow this through, and attempt to take those doors unprepared, or try getting lairy with McKay, then so help you all, because you’re going to need every bit of luck on your side that you can get.”

  Freddie lunged forward, his broken ribs slowing him down. He needed to shut the older man up, before he let slip about the hammering he’d received from McKay. The last thing he needed, was for the last few remaining men he had, to think he’d lost control.

  With ease, Mick pushed the man away from him. “I’m going,” he said. He turned to walk away, and then coming to an abrupt halt, he spun around and moved closer to Freddie’s ear. “Let me give you some advice, son. I’ve been in this game a long time, and I swallowed what happened to that Greek kid, but you were bang out of order with what you did. You should have finished the lad off first, before burning him. You need to get a grip on this firm, before it all goes tits up, which trust me, the way you’re going, it will. And you need to lay off the coke and sort your nut out, before you end up getting another kid killed.”

  Stunned, Freddie watched as the older man walked away. He stood for a few moments, just thinking. Fuck him, he thought bitterly. Fuck them all. He didn’t need any of them. One way or another, he would get his doors back, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

  * * *

  “You’ve got a good one there, girl. That man loves the bones of you.”

  Hayley Stevens rolled her eyes. She opened up the jewellery gift box, pulled out a diamond bracelet, and turned it over in her hand. It was the latest in a long line of gifts from her husband, Terry, and was his way of apologising for making her stay at her mum’s the night before.

  She hated this shithole. It was cramped, old-fashioned and stank of mould. It was nothing like her beautiful house in Brentwood. In her opinion, she was too good for the Dagenham Council Estate she’d grown up on, and always had been.

  She dropped the bracelet down beside her, uninterested. If Terry had bought her the Mercedes A-class, which she had her eye on instead, she may have been able to raise a smile.

  “You’re one ungrateful moody cow. What’s wrong with you?” Jean Wilson asked.

  “Oh just fuck off, mum,” Hayley snapped. She sat staring at the television set, which dominated the tiny front room, bored out of her mind. She couldn’t spend another evening stuck indoors with her mum, whose sole purpose in life, was to gossip about the neighbours.

  She stood up and admired her reflect
ion in the gilt mirror above the mantelpiece. She needed a night out on the town, she decided. Somewhere fancy, up West. She had a lovely Greek fella with the body of an Adonis on the side, who would be more than willing to take her out for the evening.

  “Where are you going?”

  “None of your business,” Hayley replied, walking from the room. Seeing as her husband had left her in this dump, she may as well make the most of her free time. While the cat’s away, the mice will play, she grinned.

  * * *

  “I’m still not sure about all of this,” Lloydy said, sitting forward in Big Tone’s car.

  Terry Stevens turned in his seat. “Other than all of us fucking off, have you got a better plan?”

  Lloydy shook his head. “You know I haven’t,” he groaned, flopping backwards in his seat, defeated.

  Big Tone tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. To say he was nervous, was an understatement. If they could just make Danny listen to what they had to say, he had a feeling this could work out in their favour. Surely, the man would understand the predicament Freddie had put them all in. Freddie was, after all, their boss.

  He had a little speech prepared, and he’d rehearsed it over and over in his mind, only each time, it became more shallow and meaningless. He cleared his throat.

  “This is it, lads,” he stated, as they spotted Danny pull into the car park of Ritzy’s Nightclub. “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Terry sighed, as he opened the car door and climbed out.

  They walked across the car park, quickening their pace, before Danny disappeared inside the building.

  “Danny, hold up a minute,” Big Tone called out.

  Danny turned his head, immediately suspicious of the three men’s intentions. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Big Tone held up his hand. “We just want to talk, mate. I swear.”

  Danny’s body was taut, as he went into defence mode. His fists were clenched, ready to defend himself. He’d been expecting something like this to happen, and was more than ready for the three men, should they attack.

  “Do we have a problem here, boss?” Callum asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Danny answered.

  Coming to a halt, the three men stood a safe distance away from their former colleague. “Just five minutes of your time is all we’re asking for.”

  Danny watched them warily. By this point, he had a dozen or so of his and Moray’s best men stood behind him, not that he needed them to fight his battles. He was more than capable of the task himself. He felt nothing but rage for the men in front of him. They’d not only been work colleagues, but friends for many years, until they’d betrayed him, that was. Now, they were nothing to him.

  “Just fuck off, before I end up doing you some damage,” he said, beginning to walk away.

  “Please, Danny, just five minutes.”

  Danny paused and turned back to look at them. A part of him was actually intrigued to hear what they wanted. Obviously, it was Freddie who’d sent them, and he wanted to hear what his former boss had to say about the takeover. He thought it through for a moment, then nodded his head. He might as well get the inevitable over with. After all, he had more than one bone to pick with them, and seeing as all three were on his hit list, it made sense.

  “You better come in then, but make it quick.” His body remained taut, his muscles straining, as he walked inside the club.

  The three men looked toward each other, then followed Danny inside. Flanked on either side by Moray’s men, they knew if this went tits up, they were in big trouble.

  Walking through to Moray’s office, Danny took a seat behind the oak desk. He stared at the three men, his expression giving away no tell-tale signs of what he was actually thinking. It was unnerving.

  “Well?” he finally asked. “What the fuck do you want, and you’d better have a good explanation for being here, because right now, I’m doing everything I can to not tear the three of you apart.”

  “We just want to apologise for everything,” Big Tone said, his voice wavering.

  Danny nodded his head, his expression devoid of any emotion. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You planned to have me taken out, and now you have the audacity to come in here and apologise?” His voice was calm.

  Lloydy looked down at his feet. He was more than terrified. Danny McKay was unpredictable. You never knew which mood you would catch him in, and as Big Tone had pointed out more than once, that famous temper of his was always there, ready and waiting to explode. He’d known coming here was a bad idea from the start.

  “We had orders from Freddie. It wasn’t as if we wanted to actually do it.”

  “So that makes it all right then, does it? Then why didn’t any of you useless cunt’s come to me and tell me what was going down?”

  Big Tone looked across at Terry for support. “We had no choice, mate.”

  “What are you looking at him for? He’s not going to help you out, and believe me, Terry here, is in enough shit as it is.”

  Big Tone swallowed deeply. The speech he’d rehearsed over and over again was gone from his mind now. “We’re sorry. There’s nothing else we can say.”

  “What about my wife and my boy? Did they not cross your minds in all of this?”

  Big Tone nodded his head furiously. “Of course they did, and I begged Freddie to let you go home to them. I told him from the off that this was all wrong.”

  Danny gave a hollow laugh. “That’s all right then, isn’t it? Thanks for that. The fact of the matter is that you were still going to try and take me out,” he roared, banging his fist down on the table, making the three men physically jump.

  Terry could feel his heart thumping wildly in his chest. His throat was dry. He needed to say something, and fast, to help the situation. “We had no choice. If we didn’t do as Freddie ordered, then he would have taken us out as well.”

  Danny turned his head toward Terry. The anger he felt was clearly evident across his face. “So basically, you all decided to save your own skins. What about me, eh? Didn’t I matter in all of this?” he asked with a sarcastic tone.

  Terry looked down at the floor. There was nothing else he could say. Danny had hit the nail on the head, and the truth of the matter was, they did only look out for themselves.

  “Well?” Danny demanded. When Terry didn’t answer, he stood up and moved forward. “You were next on my list,” he said, giving the man a cold stare. “Did you honestly think I was going to let you get away scot-free, for your part in all of this?”

  Terry took a step backwards, in his haste to put himself at arm’s length from the big man. Moving cautiously forward, Big Tone held out his hands, in a bid to ward Danny off. “Please, Danny,” he began to speak fast. “We don’t want any trouble. We only came here to talk. We’re done with Freddie. We’ve walked out on him and the firm. All we want to do is smooth things over with you, so we don’t have to look over our shoulders anymore. What more can we do to put this right? We’ll even get on our hands and knees and beg, if we have to.”

  Pausing, Danny listened intently to what Big Tone had to say. From the sound of it, Freddie’s men were dropping away like flies. His so-called firm was disintegrating in front of his very eyes. He felt a flicker of satisfaction spread through his body, as he leaned back against the desk and wondered, briefly, how he could put these three men to use for his own gain.

  He had a plan. “Okay, let bygones be bygones,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “From now on, you work for me personally. That means, you report to me and no one else, is that understood?”

  Stunned, Big Tone glanced across to Terry and Lloydy. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How on earth had they managed to get Danny onside so easily and so quickly? What a turn around. “Yeah, of course, and thank you,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. He felt as though the weight of the world had lifted off of his shoulders, so immense was the relief.

  “I want you all back
here by six tonight, okay? I’ll put you back on the doors.”

  The three men nodded their heads, shook his hand and then left the office. As they walked out, Danny stared after them. The contempt he felt for them was at the forefront of his mind. They were a means to an end, as far as he was concerned, and nothing more.

  * * *

  Hayley Stevens lay back on the bed. She was naked and had positioned herself in a manner to show off her best assets. She watched, as her Greek lover emerged from the shower, towel drying himself as he did so.

  “Come back to bed,” she purred.

  Adam Christos smiled, showing perfect bleached white teeth. “Tell me more about your husband first.”

  Annoyed, Hayley pulled the sheet around her. “Why do you always want to talk about that old bastard?” she sulked.

  Adam sat down on the edge of the bed. “I need to know everything about my competition, my beautiful lady.”

  “He doesn’t compare to you.”

  When Adam raised his eyebrows, Hayley sighed. “Okay, I don’t know exactly what is going on, but there is trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” Hayley said. She let the sheet drop from around her for a second time.

  “Well, how do you know there is trouble?”

  Sitting up, Hayley wrapped her arms around him and pushed her ample breasts against his back. “He told me. He’s always whining about something or other, though, so it’s probably nothing.”

  “You need to find out exactly what is going on,” Adam said, as he turned and prised her arms from around his waist.

  “I will do,” Hayley smiled. It didn’t occur to her, to seriously question why this man, who’d come out of nowhere and pursued her, never wanted to talk about anything other than her husband, and the men he worked for.