The Charlie Cobb Series

Chapter 1

1

A man’s gotta have a code. That’s why I’m not gonna drop the guy. I’m just gonna scare the s**t out of him. And this is my favourite place to do it. Grab ‘em by their belt and flip ‘em upside down.

I’ve got Mr Kavuk here dangling over the edge of the old Rope Works. It's a beaten up Victorian warehouse in the middle of a concrete, needle and weed jungle. It’s stark and dirty. An abandoned world a couple of miles out of the city. Cold and windy too, especially in late February.

I bet if I dropped Mr Kavuk right now, the animals and birds would clean up the mess before the council did. It’s that kind of place.

Kavuk himself is a middle-aged guy. Turkish, I think. Short. Chubby. Receding. Baggy black slacks and a matching jumper over a white shirt. A flash of gold around his hairy wrists and fingers.

“That’s a nice watch,” I say. “You buy it or nick it?”

“I don’t steal.”

“Sure.”

“Is this what this is about?” he asks, wriggling and kicking his stumpy legs. “A few stolen watches?”

I let him slide a little lower over the edge of the flat cement roof. He gets a nice view of ten floors down.

“You know why we're here, Mr Kavuk. You’ve been roughing up some of the neighbours. Trying to get them to sell.”

“The business is growing. I offer a fair price. They’re stubborn.”

“Yeah, well one of ‘em has insurance with Mr Rudenko. And Mr Rudenko would like you to stop.”

“I'm not scared of your boss.”

“He’s not my boss,” I say, tipping him further over the edge. “I'm independent. Like Switzerland."

“Then whatever he’s paying you, I’ll give you ten per cent extra.”

“You cheap bastard.”

“Okay,” he says, his head filling with blood. “Fourteen.”

I laugh and shake my head. I let go of his belt. He begins to slide through my grip. I've found over the years that expensive pants slide easy.

“s**t!” he yells.

I tighten my grip around his knees.

“You’re getting heavy, Mr Kavuk. You agree or not?”

Kavuk eyeballs the patchy, cracked concrete below. He looks up at me. “No.”

“No? You’re hanging off a roof, mate.”

I’m so surprised, I almost drop him. By now they're usually giving up their wife and kids. Anything to let ‘em up. I decide he needs some extra motivation.

“Perhaps I’m not being clear,” I say, letting go completely. He gasps. I catch him by his fat ankles. He swings. “You know, fat ankles like these are harder to grip.”

His face shifts from panic to something else. I dunno. A kind of weird resolve, I suppose you’d call it.

“I don’t care what you do," he says.

"Fine," I say, letting go of an ankle. I feel the strain in my right arm. “Did I mention my old shoulder injury? It freezes up if I hang on too long."

That's the truth. I once had this guy by his foot. My whole arm went dead. Yeah, that was a mess.

“If you’re gonna drop me, drop me," Kavuk says. "I don’t bow to anyone. Especially not a Russian.”

I can see why the pig-headed fool’s built himself a nice little empire. He’s one hell of a negotiator.

“Okay," I say. "I’ve got another question. If I drop you right here, right now, who inherits your business? Your wife?"

“My son. Omar.”

“Well then. My grip is gonna give out in about thirty seconds from now. And when your head makes a Jackson Pollock all over the concrete, I’ll drive across town and find young Omar. I’ll bring him up here and go through this all over again . . . Assuming, of course, Mr Rudenko’s happy to stop there.”

I can see him run it through his computer. He looks at the ground. Looks at me. Shakes his head. “Okay, okay. But leave my sons.”

Just in time, too. My shoulder's getting stiff. I haul him up with both hands and flip him upright. He collapses against the lip of the roof. I drag him onto his feet and hold him while he gets his balance.

“Can we go now?” he asks, checking his watch. “I’ve got appointments.”

“Course,” I say. “Right after you go through the gift shop.”

“Huh?”

“I can’t let you leave without a souvenir,” I say, pulling my phone from the inside pocket of my black bomber. I dial 999.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

I hold a finger up for him to shush. A lady operator answers. “Ambulance,” I say.

She patches me through. A guy asks me what kind of emergency it is. I tell him it’s the serious kind. I give him the address and cut off the call.

I tuck my phone away and square up to Kavuk. “Right. So which arm then?”

“Which what?”

“The left or the right? Which can you do without?”

Kavuk attempts to run. I lunge forward and grab him. I bend him over double with a hand pressed on his shoulder. I extend the left arm out. “I’ll go with this one.”

“No! The other one! The other one!”

I guess he wanks with his left. I switch to the right arm. I straighten it out. “On three,” I tell him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth.

“One . . . Two . . .” I snap it quick.

He screams and scares a couple of pigeons off the side of the building. The guy whimpers. Holds the top of his arm. The bone sticks out the wrong way through the sleeve of his jumper.

“There,” I say, admiring a nice job. “Clean as a whistle.”

He throws up as I lead him across the roof. “You animal,” he says, trembling.

Round and round we go down the uneven narrow staircase that stinks of junkie piss and dead things. He curses me all the way. All the names under the Manchester clouds.

I walk him across the stretch of unused land. Weeds up to the knees. Broken glass crunching under my trusty docker boots: black and steel toed. One of three pairs I rotate to keep them fresh.

I don’t wear trainers. Trainers are no good for kicking in doors or ribs. Not thick enough for when you’re walking over needles and glass. Not grippy enough for when the floor gets slippy with blood. No, what you need in this game is a sturdy pair of boots. Health and safety always comes first.

We stop at my car. A big, dark-blue Peugeot saloon. Sporty and pricey in its day. I’ve got it parked up on a street where prossies offer a blow 'n' go drive-thru service.

“You smoke?” I ask Kavuk.

He nods his head, shiny with cold sweat.

I open the passenger door and reach inside the glove box. I pull out a pack of cigs and a silver lighter. I take out a cig and push it in Kavuk’s mouth. I light it. He puffs away, calmer now. The shock kicking in.

“You not smoke?” he asks me as I put away the lighter and cigarettes.

“Only after messy jobs,” I say. “The cigs are reserved for the people I hurt. I'm good like that.”

“I can’t believe you broke my arm,” Kavuk says, blowing smoke and staring at the bone. Getting used to it.

“You’ll be right as rain in a few weeks,” I say. “And count yourself lucky. Rudenko wanted a leg.”

As Kavuk makes light work of the cigarette, the ambulance shows up. Lights flashing blue. Siren on silent. It pulls up in front of my car. A pair of paramedics in green overalls jump out. A man and a woman in their forties. Short. But then most people are short next to me.

“This is your man,” I say, pointing to Kavuk. “I’ll leave you to it."

“What happened?” the woman asks. She snaps on a pair of blue latex gloves as the male paramedic opens the back of the ambulance.

“He fell over,” I say, walking around to the driver’s side of the Peugeot. “Didn’t you, Mr Kavuk?”

Kavuk tosses the cigarette butt and nods. The woman guides him towards the back of the ambulance. Shaking her head and giving me the evils. Like I give a s**t.

I get behind the wheel of my car and reverse out of there before they can ask any more questions.

See, I told you I'm a nice bloke. Most enforcers wouldn’t have called the ambulance. They’d have left him up on the roof with a busted leg.

That's the problem with the new breed. They lack principles. Discipline. Class.

I spin the car round and shoot past a pair of late afternoon prostitutes in fishnet tights. I hit the elevated ring road that circles the city, the Manchester skyline like a giant game of Tetris. Some buildings old. Some new. Some made of brick. Some made of glass. Red and white cranes working on dropping the latest pieces in place.

As I tear past traffic in the outside lane, I get on the phone to Rudenko. I tell him it’s done. Kavuk agrees.

Rudenko tells me to come over to Dimitri’s, pronto. He sounds pissed off. I hang up the call and smile. A pissed-off client means there’s a big problem. And the bigger the problem, the more I get paid.