Born Bad: A gritty gangster thriller with a darkly funny heart. Marnie Riches

who knew a man, place a few strategic phone calls to a few strategic people in Greater Manchester Police and HMRC. That had shut the lot of them up.

      Now, Lev was trying to work out how to tap up his bosses for £150K, while they were still feeling triumphant as the new Kings of the Wild Frontier. Their coronation was all but certain, as soon as this down payment was made. Provisional supremacy to the tune of a mill in cash. Maureen Kaplan had decreed it, witnessed by her sons, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful and her son-in-law, Doc, so it had to be so. The King would be dead. Long live the Kings.

      Nearing safety, they passed the hulking silhouette of Strangeways tower to their left.

      ‘Am I going mental with post-traumatic whatsit, or did I just clock that little schmuck, Ellis James, in a Mondeo?’ Jonny asked, craning his head to see the bonnet of the black saloon that was now just out of sight.

      ‘The cop? Where?’ Asaf asked.

      ‘Parked on the corner.’

      ‘Maybe he’s cruising for a lady of the night,’ Tariq said, steering the people carrier into the loading bay and pulling up in front of the metal shutters. He applied the handbrake. ‘A gnome with a face like a smacked arse like him would have to pay for it.’

      ‘It’d better bloody not be Ellis,’ Jonny said, suddenly seeming decidedly less cocksure. ‘Not tonight. Not with what we’ve got to do.’ He turned to Tommo, who normally manned one of the brothels, and Tariq’s second cousin, Nasim. ‘You both stay here. Keep an eye out for that snooping bastard. Call me if he gets out of his car.’ Turned to the rest of them, wearing an expression that said he had more than just Gorgeous Sandra snipping away at his balls. ‘Come on. Let’s get inside.’

      Lev followed the others into the factory, trailing behind the tall figure of Asaf. With the machinery off and only one or two lights on, the space seemed eerie – not a place he was yet wholly familiar with as a lowly Sweeney Hall street dealer. He tried to block the mental image that flickered in his mind’s eye like an epilepsy-inducing strobe: his former colleague, Suspicious Sid, lying dead at the top of a multi-storey car park in Bury. Filleted like a side of salmon, complete with cucumber laid like scales over his flank in the way that only Asaf Smolensky, the infamous Fish Man, left his kills. Had Suspicious Sid’s count not been short several times of late, Lev would never have been promoted to a rank he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

      ‘Tariq,’ he said, patting his boss on the shoulder blade.

      Tariq swung around and treated him to a smile and a wink. ‘How’s the neck, son? Gave Pissy Pants Paddy a run for his money, didn’t you? You’ll go far.’ Normally a controlled man who seemed to consider every word before he spoke it, tonight, Tariq’s exuberance was almost tangible.

      Maybe now was the time to get him onside. ‘Can I ask—?’

      ‘Not now. We’ve got to get this cash out and over to Conky McFadden by midnight.’ He took the pistol out of the inside pocket of his reefer jacket and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. Took his jacket off. ‘You and Asaf wait here. Some things only me and Jonny can do. Know what I mean?’ Wink.

      The bosses disappeared off upstairs, presumably to where the offices were situated. Lev was left alone with the Fish Man – a situation he was far from happy with. What on earth should someone like him say to someone like Asaf Smolensky? Should he talk to him about Jay? Did Smolensky have a family? Lev couldn’t see it somehow. No wedding ring. No warmth. Very little in the way of any discernible humanity. He doubted the stresses of being a provider and fatherhood in general were the Fish Man’s chosen topics of small-talk.

      Asaf took a sandwich out of the pocket of his coat. Started to eat hungrily. It smelled meaty. Lev’s stomach growled. Since the business with Jay and the money and confronting his lost cause of a mother, he hadn’t really been eating.

      ‘What you got there?’ he asked, gazing wistfully at the snack.

      ‘Ham.’ Asaf wiped butter from his beard. Chewed noisily.

      ‘But you’re an Orthodox Jew.’

      ‘I’m Israeli,’ he said, spitting as he spoke. ‘Ex-Mossad. Know what that is?’

      Lev shook his head, still staring at the doorstep of a sandwich.

      ‘The hardest military men in the world. Like the US Marines but with bigger bollocks. I’m a highly trained operative. Don’t be fooled by the hat and the peyes.’ He flicked his ringletted sidelocks. ‘This Hassidic bullshit is just a cover. I’m hiding in plain sight. Nobody suspects a part-time fishmonger to be an executioner.’

      Suddenly, Lev didn’t find the sandwich appetising in the slightest. He kept visualising Suspicious Sid, with his insides leaking all over the concrete floor in that car park. He hadn’t seen the body personally, but he’d heard tell how gruesome the scene had been from a few of the lads dealing over in Bury and Radcliffe. How the hell had he ended up rubbing shoulders with the likes of a psychotic murderer on a daily basis? Somehow he doubted Smolensky sat as he did during a rare evening off, wondering how he could get the hell out of this life of class A crime with its high stakes of category A prison or violent death.

      ‘I’m a damned good fishmonger though.’ Asaf raised an eyebrow, chewing away contemplatively.

      When Tariq and Jonny started to bring boxes downstairs, Lev was relieved. There weren’t as many as he had anticipated.

      ‘Is that it?’ he asked, wishing he could pocket some of those plastic money bags full of twenties.

      Jonny gesticulated towards Tariq’s box. ‘There’s a money counter in there. Get it out and start stacking the twenties.’

      ‘Where was all this?’ Lev asked, tugging the cash out of the stubborn plastic envelopes.

      ‘Mind your own business, son,’ Tariq said.

      Sweat beaded on Lev’s forehead as he fed sheaf after sheaf of notes into the machine. The cloying, greasy smell of cash in his nostrils. The sense that he was being tested and that every pair of eyes in the room were on him. He felt dizzy. Overwhelmed. The words were on the tip of his tongue – Can I have a loan of £150,000 for my dying son, please? – but he knew this was neither the right time nor the place to ask. Especially with the Fish Man breathing down his neck.

      Finally, Asaf belched. ‘I’m going for a slash,’ he said, tipping his homburg hat back like a confused cowboy.

      With the others on sentry duty in the loading bay, there were just Lev, Jonny and Tariq left. Now was his moment.

      ‘I know this is a bad time to ask, right,’ Lev began. ‘But I’ve got this personal … issue. I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up, like.’

      Tariq looked quizzically at him. Jonny did not tear his gaze from the whirr of the money in the machine.

      ‘Go on,’ Tariq said. ‘Spit it out.’

      Relief of sorts flooded him with warmth. Lev opened his mouth, poised to issue forth about all that had gone on with his boy; outlining how British surgeons couldn’t operate; delivering a heart-rending appeal for a sum of money that was surely a piss in the ocean for men like Tariq and Jonny.

      ‘Well, you see, it’s proper bullshit, right? My son’s been diagnosed with this—’

      A deafening clang, followed by multiple footsteps, stemmed the confessional tide. Damn it! It was Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber from the loading bay. Panting. Clearly agitated.

      ‘It’s the copper!’ Nasim half shouted, half whispered.

      ‘You sure?’ Asaf asked.

      ‘Dumpy white bloke with glasses and a buzz cut?’

      ‘That’s him,’ Tariq said. His Adam’s apple was pinging in his throat like a bagatelle ball.

      ‘Well, he’s in the loading bay, shining a torch in the car.’

      Jonny’s