The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018. Marnie Riches

landlord released his wrist. Looked down at the money. ‘Go home. Sleep it off. Come back later. Then I’ll serve you.’ His face softened only slightly, revealing a smile that was like a tight fissure in his bark-like skin. ‘Come on, Ken. You’re not worth much to me as a regular if you get knocked down on the way home cos you’re too pissed to see straight.’

      Feeling his pulse thunder with adrenalin, the Paddy of old relished the invincible feeling of The Rage taking over his battered body. But the part of Paddy that was still just about sober dimly acknowledged that he was – for now – no longer the boss of South Manchester. He was not the King. At the insistence of Katrina – the almighty Sister Benedicta – he had taken on the threadbare mantel of Kenneth Wainwright willingly and for a reason. Lie low, Pad. Gather your strength. Sting those plotting, lying bastards when they least expect it. Destroy every last one of them. Tariq, Jonny, Conky, Lev, Gloria and Sheila. Sheila … bring that bitch to heel and reclaim her as your wife. His intentions, not Katrina’s. His sister had hoped he’d use the fresh start to make a new life for himself. But hadn’t she always played the controlling older sibling? Paddy, despite his new-found vulnerability, was in no mood to be ruled by another.

      His sluggish, internal debate was interrupted by his phone ringing loudly. Buzzing its way across the beer-splattered mahogany, where it butted up against a washed-out bar towel. Katrina’s name on the display, of course.

      ‘Oh, bloody hell. Here we go.’

      On the other end of the crackling line, Katrina’s voice sounded edged with hellfire and damnation. ‘Patrick! I got your message. You sounded drunk. Please tell me you haven’t burned through your week’s money already. And please tell me you’re not in that crumbling den of iniquity, The Feckless Oik’s Arms again.’

      In the background, he could hear the noises of the nursing home that she ran with military bombast – the beeping of residents’ alarms; the monotonous verbal ramblings of old Rose, who tottered up and down the corridors all day long on her zimmer, repeating the same demented shit about needing the toilet, though she wore an inconti-pad so big that it barely fit inside her gusset. Swaying slightly on his bar stool, he imagined he could still smell the stale cabbage and cloying stink of soiled underwear.

      He belched down the phone. ‘I can’t live on peanuts, Kat. Drop us hundred quid round, will you? Just til Giro day.’

      There was a muffled noise on the other end – his sister, putting her well-scrubbed hand over the mouthpiece, perhaps, to stop the other nuns from eavesdropping. ‘I didn’t commit fraud to get you a new identity just so you could wash your chance of a new life into a barman’s swill bucket, Patrick O’Brien.’

      Paddy tugged absently at the wadding that spilled out of the vinyl seat cover. ‘Piss off, Kat. You don’t have the first bloody idea what it’s like for a rich man to need state handouts. Do you know how little a sad bastard like Wainwright—’ In amongst the beer fumes, he realised he had slipped up. Eyed Mark the landlord furtively. ‘I mean, a man like me gets in disability benefit? I spent more on my aftershave than I get to live on for a week now.’ Damn. Another slip-up. Putting his mouth into gear before his brain was switched on. That’s what his Mammy would have said.

      ‘Patrick!’ The agitation in her voice was clear. Paddy had called the shots for decades. Now, suddenly, the jackboot was on the other foot. ‘I am not giving you extra money out of the nursing home’s coffers to fund death by cirrhosis of the liver. You’re turning into Dad.’

      ‘Thanks a bundle. Is that a no, then?’

      The line went dead. Paddy smashed his phone onto the bar top, cracking the screen.

      ‘Right!’ the landlord shouted. ‘That’s it, Ken. Out!’

      Surprised to find himself deftly manhandled by the landlord towards the door, Paddy pointed confusedly at him. ‘How did you get over the bar? Fucking … Spiderman!’

      The other drinkers barely looked up from their pints, sitting as they were, in silence around three or four old tables that were dark-stained with ages-old stout spillage and nicotine from a bygone era. Cracked and dirty single-glazed windows barely shed light on the dump, with its swirling brown and lime carpet.

      ‘Shithole!’ Paddy shouted, shrugging the landlord off. Searching for words that came only reluctantly through the hoppy fog of beer-thoughts. ‘Shitty carpet.’

      ‘See you later, Ken,’ the landlord said, pushing him gently onto the street. ‘Go home and eat something.’ The door was closed firmly behind him.

      Stumbling into the street, Paddy clutched at his stomach. Even now, after six pints, he could feel the ache of a body healing reluctantly.

      A horn honked, loud and long. Then, an angry voice.

      ‘Get out of the way, wanker!’

      Paddy jerked himself backwards onto the kerb, surprised that he had veered into the road and the path of a white van without realising. The driver had stopped abruptly, his passenger hanging out of the cab window, screaming at him with an angry red face, peeping out from a plaster-encrusted beany.

      Not registering the words but understanding their sentiment, Paddy stuck his middle finger up at the man. ‘Shove it up your arse!’

      The passenger opened the van door and got out. He was tall too, seeming larger in a hi-vis donkey jacket with baggy plaster-spattered cargo trousers and elephantine steel-toecap workmen’s boots.

      ‘Come on, you big bastard,’ Paddy slurred, holding his fists aloft. Squaring up to the far younger man. Couldn’t have been more than thirty. But even in his early sixties, Paddy was certain he was more than a match for this prick. He swung a punch. Missed.

      The enraged plasterer, now accompanied by the van’s driver – a giant of a man who looked like a brickie, judging by his physique – raised his fist.

      ‘Leave him be! He’s an invalid! Leave it, lads. No harm done, right?’

      A woman’s voice to Paddy’s left. He felt someone link him and drag him across the road. With sluggish eyes, he registered that it was Brenda. He grinned.

      ‘Hiya, Brenda, love! I thought you was at work.’ Lunging for her, he planted a wet kiss on her cheek and squeezed her breast through her bright green liveried work fleece. ‘C’mere gorgeous. Give Pad— Kenny a kiss.’

      Brenda giggled girlishly and blushed. Swiped his hand away delicately. ‘Not in public, Kenneth. Come on. I’ll walk you home. I’m not due back off my dinner for half an hour. I’ll microwave you something to soak up the booze. Have you got anything in?’

      Paddy grabbed at his crotch. ‘I’ve always got something in for you, Brenda!’ The polar opposite of Sheila, he thought, eyeing up this new easy lay that he’d met during the pub’s quiz night. All pillowy breasts and a nice big fat arse. He had never thought that would be his thing, but Brenda – recently abandoned by her ex and desperately needing a man to bestow her womanly love on – was comforting and obliging. She made good stew and cleaned his house for him. A man like him shouldn’t go without.

      Sturdy, reliable Brenda steered him along the road towards the purgatorial two-up, two-down that he had rented in Kenneth Wainwright’s name. Rent paid by the dole. Furnished sparsely with MDF shit from the catalogue.

      ‘Right, let’s get you a nice, strong cup of tea,’ Brenda said, rummaging in his trouser pocket and finding his keys.

      Paddy stumbled through the door, making a beeline for the old-fashioned sofa – a British Heart Foundation shop classic in threadbare wine jacquard. The cig burns were all his. As the institutional magnolia-painted walls spun around him, he took out his phone. Realised Brenda was otherwise occupied, clattering around in the kitchen – no doubt looking for something edible among the empties and the mouldy takeout leftovers. He dialled the number that appeared most frequently in his call log, apart from Katrina’s and Brenda’s.

      The familiar gravelly voice at the other