The overalled man was a giant, with knockout body odour and BEAST tattooed across his knuckles.
‘If it’s metal it goes on the truck,’ Beast explained, illustrating the point by pounding a metal shelf so hard that it buckled before crashing to the floor. ‘Wanna get home before one. So I’m working hard and you’re working hard. Dig?’
‘Dig,’ Leon said, earning a scowl for daring to grin slightly.
The noise was mad as the three boys and Beast tore into the shop fittings, ripping out shelves and bashing ones that wouldn’t budge with rubber mallets. By the end the brothers had little cuts all over their hands and sweat-soaked clothes smeared in plaster dust.
‘Need one lad to help unload at the other end,’ Beast announced. ‘Other two can piss off home.’
Ryan was the oldest and, since he’d not yet registered at the local college, he didn’t have school in the morning. It was close to midnight, so there was little traffic as the truck headed north out of the city. The metal shelving up back crashed over every bump, and even though Ryan was past smelling like a rose garden himself, he gagged at the stale sweat smell coming off Beast’s filthy overall.
‘You know Trey?’ Beast asked.
‘Met him once,’ Ryan said, as the truck pulled on to the A41, heading east out of the city.
Beast grunted. ‘Trey thinks he can pull the wool over Uncle’s eyes. Better to own up in my book.’
‘Sure,’ Ryan agreed.
‘Specially since Uncle’s tight with Trey’s dad. Worst Trey will get is a kicking.’
‘Don’t know all the ins and outs,’ Ryan said, looking out as a motorbike shot by, doing at least a hundred. ‘He’ll kill himself.’
‘Son’s got a bike,’ Beast admitted, smiling slightly. ‘I said to him, if you crash and break your legs, don’t come running to me.’
It was a bad joke but Ryan laughed, because Beast knew stuff that he wanted to hear.
‘What does Uncle do exactly?’ Ryan asked.
‘Fingers in a lot of pies,’ Beast explained. ‘If you’re loyal he’s a top man. I’m not the sharpest, but I’ve been alongside him twenty years, man and boy. Started at the scrapyard straight out of school, ’bout a month after me. Now, Uncle owns the joint and I’m still out in the truck, picking up scrap.’
They turned off the ring road and hurtled down a rutted track that set all the metal in the back rattling and jarred all the bits of Ryan’s body that hurt after six hours’ graft. Inside was like the scrapyard scene from Breaking Bad and every other thriller Ryan had ever seen, with stacked-up cars and red London buses awaiting their last ride.
‘Got the biggest car shredder in Europe down there,’ Beast said proudly, as he pointed out left into darkness. ‘Have to shut it down at night ’cos the estate lot what lives behind moan about the noise. Back in the old days we used to smack down anyone who complained to the council, but Uncle makes us behave ourselves these days.’
Beast roared with laughter as he stopped abruptly, then reversed up to a mound of random scrap. The pair climbed in the back cage and spent ten minutes throwing out the metal shelves.
‘Is there a toilet?’ Ryan asked.
Beast laughed. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony, son.’
As Ryan peed on scrap, Beast headed towards a pair of cabins and unlocked a door. The first cabin was some sort of site office, filled with staff lockers and safety gear. The second was more modern, with blinds at the window and an air conditioner on the roof.
‘Is that Uncle’s office?’ Ryan asked, as Beast came out and started locking the other hut.
‘Never stays in one place for long,’ Beast explained, as he handed Ryan a half-litre bottle of cola. It was cold to touch.
‘Worked hard,’ Beast said, as Ryan downed half the bottle in four gulps.
‘Got any jobs here?’ Ryan asked. ‘Anything that pays? I’m young, but I’ll pull my weight.’
‘No chance,’ Beast said, as he locked up his truck before setting off towards a battered BMW. ‘Besides, a lad your age should be studying.’
Ryan moved to get in the passenger side, but Beast shook his head.
‘I ain’t your taxi service,’ Beast grunted. ‘You’ll pick up a night bus from the stop at the end of Savoy Crescent. And don’t hang around, ’cos there’s a few guard dogs on the loose in here.’
Beast floored the gas, spinning up his back wheels and flailing Ryan with grit. Ryan had been hot all night, but now the breeze caught sweat-soaked jeans and hoodie. He considered investigating the huts, maybe even picking a lock and having a rummage. But CHERUB teaches you never to act without preparation.
Ryan batted a clump of mud off his cheek, and double-tapped his earlobe to activate the microphone on his com unit as he set off at a jog.
‘You there, James?’ Ryan asked. ‘Did you catch all that?’
James laughed. ‘Sounded like progress to me, pal. You OK?’
‘I’m trashed,’ Ryan said. ‘Can you pick me up?’
‘Last time you rode on the back of my motorbike you said it was the most terrifying experience of your whole life,’ James noted. ‘And that you’d never ride with me again.’
Ryan reached the electronic gate and realised that Beast had shut it behind him. Glancing around, he found a tear in the fence close by.
‘Well you’re still alive,’ Ryan noted. ‘So I guess your riding isn’t that deadly.’
20. BAGS
It was past 3 a.m. by the time James dropped Ryan back at Nurtrust and filed a detailed report so that staff on campus could start doing background research. He still looked tired the following noon, as he walked into a Costa Coffee in central Birmingham and spotted an Asian woman. She had tight-cropped hair and wore dayglo Nikes and leggings, like she’d be heading towards the gym.
‘Tanisha?’ James asked, as he approached holding freshly squeezed orange and a triple espresso. ‘Can I get you something?’
‘I’m good,’ Tanisha said.
‘Thanks for meeting at short notice,’ James said, as he settled on a leatherette bench and laid a document pouch on the table. ‘Are you good friends with Inspector Patel?’
Tanisha smiled. ‘Aisha started off as a community support officer, back when I was a junior scribbler for the East Birmingham Echo. We got to know each other quite well.’
‘Inspector Patel said you’re the person to talk to if you want to know about Uncle. She said you wrote articles about him, most of which weren’t published.’
Tanisha raised a hand and sounded blunt. ‘Who are you?’
James pulled a credit-card-sized ID out of his wallet. It showed him as a detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police.
‘And who are you really with?’ Tanisha said, smirking.
‘That’s a genuine ID,’ James said defensively. ‘Look at the hologram.’
‘I know they fast-track graduates in the Met, but how old are you? Twenty-five, tops.’
James snatched back his Met Police ID and swapped it for his real one.
‘Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service,’ Tanisha read. ‘So you want to know if Uncle is a radical, sending all that racketeering money back to Islamic State in Syria or wherever?’
‘Is he?’ James asked, before glugging his orange juice.
Tanisha laughed. ‘The answer is complex.’
‘Story of my life,’ James grinned.
‘Uncle – or Martin Jones to use his proper name …’
‘Is that his real birth name?’
‘Uncle was born in 1968, when racism was far more out in the open than it is today,’ Tanisha explained. ‘Welsh mother, Pakistani father. They decided to give him an English first name and use his mother’s surname.
‘There’s not much remarkable about his childhood. Parents ran a shop in North Wales, and moved to Birmingham when Uncle was ten. He was a tough lad. Got in trouble with the law. Spent time in borstal, two kids by the age of nineteen.’
‘Religious?’
T
anisha shrugged. ‘Not until he married his second wife, who was Muslim. He built up a little crew that hit the big time during the taxi wars in the eighties.’
‘Taxi wars?’ James asked.
Tanisha nodded. ‘There were more than a hundred private-hire taxi firms in Birmingham back then. Price cutting, fare poaching and nobody making any money. Then rival firms started sabotaging one another. Started off with fake calls, and blocking radio signals – this was before everyone had mobile phones. Then windows got smashed, cars vandalised. People started getting their legs broken and their houses burned down. After a few years, Uncle’s crew got the upper hand and you wound up with three big taxi firms for the whole of east Birmingham. All owned by Uncle, or his close friends.
‘He also made money in the scrap business, set up taxi firms in London and Manchester, and when the taxi business took a downturn, he started extorting money from shopkeepers, landlords, restaurant owners.’
‘And the law just let him?’ James asked.
‘There’s a lot of politics involved,’ Tanisha explained. ‘First off, when Uncle started, there wasn’t a single dark-skinned officer in the Birmingham police force. And how do you report a crime when you don’t even speak the same language as your local cops? By the time Birmingham started getting Asian police officers, Asian councillors, Asian Members of Parliament, Uncle was so ingrained in the system that most of them were his people. They’d condemn him in public, but behind closed doors they’d talk him up.
‘Uncle keeps the drug dealers out of Asian neighbourhoods. Uncle paid for repair work on the mosque. Uncle stops the developers moving in and closing down Asian-owned businesses. And when it came to election time, they’d be lining up to ask for campaign donations. Labour, Conservative. Uncle would donate to both sides, as long as they didn’t rock his boat.’
James was fascinated. ‘And Uncle’s influence extended to your newspaper?’
‘God yes,’ Tanisha nodded. ‘We knew his name, but we were never allowed to publish it, to preserve the great mystery. If you published an article about some charity donation made by one of his taxi firms, you’d have the phone ringing off the hook with advertisers. But if you published anything critical, Uncle would send out an edict. Any business that dared to advertise in your newspaper would get a petrol bomb through their letterbox, and no newsagent would dare to sell the paper with the article inside.’
‘Clever,’ James admitted.
Now Tanisha narrowed her eyes accusingly. ‘And you know what really pisses me off?’ she said, wagging a finger. ‘People have known about Uncle for years, but the police always claim not to have resources to investigate. Your intelligence lot are only interested in a tiny number of radicals, while a massive crook sits in the background pulling levers for half of Birmingham.’
James smiled. ‘I’m here to help.’
‘You’re young and idealistic,’ Tanisha said. ‘But the system is rigged against ordinary decent people. I even know what your next question is going to be.’
‘You do?’ James asked.
‘You’re going to ask me if Uncle turned into some crazy radical, and if he’s donating profits to radical groups.’
‘That’s what I need to know,’ James admitted.
Tanisha snorted. ‘Uncle has grandparents, cousins and a half-brother in Pakistan. He sent money to them over the years, enabling them to become quite influential in their region. In 2013 there was an American drone strike close to the family compound. Two of Uncle’s nephews and his eight-year-old goddaughter were killed. I’m also told that some of his cousins were arrested and beaten by Pakistani troops who were hunting for Taliban in the area.’
‘How do you know this?’ James asked. ‘You don’t work for the newspaper any more, do you?’
‘When classified advertising went online, the Echo went under, like most local newspapers,’ Tanisha admitted. ‘I have two office cleaning jobs and I volunteer in a women’s shelter. But I still live in the community and I still hear things.’
‘So your source on this was reliable?’
‘My source was a housekeeper who worked for Uncle’s third wife. I don’t know her well, but she had nothing to gain by lying to me.’
‘So Uncle turned radical?’
Tanisha looked slightly irritated by this comment. ‘Uncle drinks alcohol and holidays in Las Vegas, his latest wife and four of his six children aren’t Muslim. So he’s not about to grow a beard and start living under the principles of Sharia Law. But after the drone strike, he is violently opposed to western interference in the Middle East and North Africa.’
‘And is he active?’ James asked. ‘Does he donate to causes?’
‘Uncle has the morals of a sewer rat. He’s had drivers run over by their own taxis, blackmailed local planning officials, petrol-bombed family businesses that don’t pay his protection fees and beaten two of his ex-wives into the hospital. He now makes four or five trips a year to the Middle East. I have no idea what he’s up to, but if I were you, I’d be looking for something that’s unsavoury and highly profitable.’
21. JUDO
Ryan met the twins as they headed out of school. They grabbed McDonald’s, then drove to the Sunray Travel office. Monty and a guy with a hipster beard were doing design work in the office, as the three brothers ripped up carpet tiles in the print room.
Just before six, Monty went out and got coffees for everyone. The quintet sat around having their break when a key turned in the main door. The new arrival was short, sunburnt skin peeling off his nose, and ten years older than in police surveillance photos. But it was unmistakably Uncle.
He was accompanied by a broad-shouldered Asian woman, dressed in canvas pumps and a jogging suit.
‘Uncle,’ Monty said, trying to sound warm, but obviously cacking himself as the little man looked around at the whirring humidifiers and glue patches where the carpet had been ripped up.
‘What’s all this then?’
Monty looked sheepish. ‘We had a flood.’
Uncle gave his accomplice a nod. She gave Monty a brutal punch in the mouth, followed by an expert knee in the ribs. Then she ripped his arm up behind his back and splayed him face first over a desk.
‘Did you just lie to me?’ Uncle said calmly, as hipster-beard and the three CHERUB agents looked on warily.
‘No,’ Monty said, then as Uncle stepped closer, ‘OK, yes … Trey told me to.’
‘Who do you work for?’ Uncle demanded. ‘Me or Trey?’
‘You, sir,’ Monty begged, as the woman tightened the wrench on his arm.
‘Who is the manager of this print shop?’
‘I am, sir,’ Monty snorted.
‘I’m told I need a 950L printing machine, for the princely sum of seventy-two grand,’ Uncle said. ‘And I’m not paying for that, Monty. You are.’
‘I don’t have that kind of money,’ Monty begged. ‘There’s no way …’
‘Your parents own their house, don’t they?’ Uncle teased. ‘And the bakery? I’m sure they can get another mortgage.’
‘My parents worked all their lives,’ Monty gasped. ‘They’re in their sixties.’
‘I don’t give a shit how you get my money,’ Uncle shouted, then looked at his female bodyguard. ‘Give him another taste, sweetheart.’
She moved ruthlessly, a knee in the kidneys, then flipping Monty on to his back and boxing him with a barrage of head shots.
‘You have one week to come and tell me how you plan to pay for my new printer,’ Uncle said.
Blood streamed from Monty’s mouth as the kickboxer yanked him up and shoved him out into the hallway. Hipster-beard looked terrified as Uncle approached, pulling something out of his back pocket.
The bearded designer was relieved by the sight of two twenty-pound notes.
‘Taxi Monty to the hospital,’ Uncle ordered. ‘Keep your trap shut.’
The designer trembled as he scrambled out, half expecting the kickboxer to sprawl him with a kick up the ars
e.
This just left Uncle, bodyguard and the Sharma brothers, still holding their drinks.
‘I hear you boys are a bit tasty,’ Uncle said, raising his fists like a boxer. ‘Messed up Trey and his idiot driver. Any of you prepared to show my girl Mya what you’ve got?’
Ryan figured it was his job, since he was oldest. ‘I’m game if she is,’ he said, putting his coffee on a desk and stepping forward.
Expecting a cocky teen who’d probably done a few judo classes, Mya kept her hands low as she stepped forward and launched a vicious thigh kick. The blow hurt, but Ryan was taller and lunged with his right arm.
Ryan caught Mya under the chin with his palm, then took her by the throat, driving her backwards across a desk top. He narrowly avoided a kick in the face as he let go, and rather than take the opportunity of a knockout blow, he flipped the desk.
Mya crashed off the back, accompanied by pens and a tape dispenser. Then Ryan leaned on the underside of the desk, pinning his opponent between the desk top and the wall behind.
‘You can’t do that,’ Mya protested, arms flailing as she tried to break loose.
‘You kept your arms low,’ Ryan said, matter of factly. ‘You showed me a lack of respect.’
Uncle was smiling as Ryan took his weight off the table. Mya furiously launched herself back at Ryan. He went low and used Mya’s momentum to roll her over his shoulder, judo style.
‘Enough,’ Uncle yelled, stepping between as Mya hissed.
Mya got up in such a fury that she caught her ankle on a cable, tugging a lamp off a desk top. The twins smirked as Ryan and Mya eyeballed furiously.
‘How old are you?’ Uncle asked.
‘Seventeen,’ Ryan said. ‘My brothers are fourteen.’
Uncle smiled. ‘You like hurting people?’
‘Only if I have to,’ Ryan said.
‘How’s your moral compass?’ Uncle asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Ryan asked.