The Charlie Cobb Series

Chapter 5

5

“A pink balloon, Dad? Really?”

“What? You don’t like it?”

Cassie sits across from me in a a one of those overpriced chain restaurants. Some kind of bean burger thing on her plate. The 19 balloon tied to the back of her chair.

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m a grown woman,” she says.

Mandy, Cassie's mum, pinches her cheek. “Aw, you’re still my baby."

I point at the bean burger. “I don’t know how you can eat that rubbish.”

“I don’t know how you can eat an innocent creature,” she says, turning her nose up at my double cheeseburger.

“You know your dad," Mandy says. "No meat, no meal."

"You don’t think they’d strip you to the bone, given half the chance?" I say.

“Cows are herbivores, Dad.”

“Herbi-what?”

“They don’t eat meat,” Mandy says, shaking her head.

“Yeah, but they would if they did.” I say. “They'd eat you alive, too. At least we put a bolt in 'em first."

Mandy––my one-time, long-ago squeeze––sits alongside Cassie on the inside of the booth, next to a window facing a busy city street. She picks at her chicken wings with false orange nails, hair dyed half blonde, half brown. Her mind elsewhere as usual.

Cassie gazes out of the window too. Her mother may be on cloud cuckoo half the time, but not my Cass. Usually she’s as sharp as a tack. Switched on and telling me all about her life at uni.

“Something wrong, Cass?” I ask. “You don’t seem your chirpy self.”

She circles a fry in a puddle of ketchup. Looks up at me with those big blue eyes. Uh-oh, I know that look. I’m about to get hit with some bad news. A boyfriend. A baby. A loan. All three.

“It’s nothing,” she says.

I let it go and bite into my burger.

Then she spits it out. “When are you going to stop?”

“Stop what?” I say, mouthful of burger.

“Being a criminal,” Mandy says.

I swallow my food. Look around the restaurant. Glare at Mandy. “Why not announce it over the PA?”

Mandy shrugs and gnaws on a chicken wing.

“Mum’s right, though. When are you going to give it up? You’re in your forties now. It’s embarrassing.”

“Time you got a proper career,” Mandy says.

“What, like you? Handing out happy endings at the massage parlour?”

“I’ve already spoken to Mum," Cassie says. "She’s agreed to stop doing them."

“And the cigs. I’m packing them in too,” Mandy says. Proud of herself. Mother of the pissing year.

The pair of them burn holes in me.

“What am I supposed to do?" I ask. "I’m too old to do anything else.”

“Lots of people change career in their forties," Cassie says.

I think about Murphy’s offer. I put down my burger and sip on my beer. “Well, now you mention it, I’ve been offered this, um, management position. A big organisation. Pay rise. Benefits. Apartment.”

Mandy laughs. “You?”

“What company? What doing?” Cassie asks.

I think fast. As fast as my brain will go. “Project management. Mergers and acquisitions."

Cassie takes a bite out of her hippy burger. The heat’s off: she bought it.

“You mean running a gang then,” she says.

Bollocks.

“Come on, Dad. We’re not stupid.”

“Well, one of you isn’t.”

Mandy sneers back at me.

“If it makes you feel better, I might have to wear a suit.”

“It’s not enough,” Cassie says. “You’ll still be hurting people.”

Christ. First the veggie thing, then the protesting, now the sudden moral compass. It's ever since she started that damn uni. Tree hugging do-gooders filling her head with lovey-dovey new age nonsense.

Cassie drops her burger. “Every time I’m in lectures, I get this image in my mind, of you bashing someone’s head in, breaking someone’s door in. Or going back to prison. I start to feel sick, like a fraud. I’m there studying criminal behaviour and my dad’s this mafia guy.”

“You’re ashamed of me?” I ask. The thought never occurred to me.

“I used to tell myself you were a good guy who happened to do some bad things. But you're not a good guy, Dad.”

I look towards Mandy.

Mandy shrugs. “She’s not wrong, Charlie.”

“You had a rough start, Dad, I get it. But you’re middle-aged now."

“Steady on,” I say.

"Not far off," Mandy says.

So much for a pleasant birthday meal. I’m letting it play over in my head a while, when I notice a young skinhead in jeans and a red sweatshirt. He’s kicking up a fuss over the bill. Throws a couple of notes at the slip of a young waiter and calls him a f*****g nobhead. He gets up and shoulders the waiter out of the way. Swaggers off to the gents’ toilets.

If there's anything that grinds my gears, it's a lack of manners. If there's anything that grinds 'em more, it's some scally bastard throwing his weight around.

“Going for a piss,” I say, dropping a fry and walking across the restaurant.

I follow the guy into the gents. He lines himself up in front of a urinal. Before he can pull out his d**k, I grab hold of his neck. I throw him backwards, off his feet, into an empty stall. He lands twisted on the toilet bowl. I drag him back out by his ankles, a cake of blue detergent in my spare hand, scooped from a urinal.

I pull his face up to mine, a hand squeezing his throat. “Open your mouth,” I tell him.

He looks at me wide-eyed in fear. Shakes his head. His lips sealed shut.

“It’s this or my dick.”

He half opens. I shove the blue cake in the gap. “Now close it.”

He bites down on the cake and gags.

“This place might be a rip-off,” I say, “but manners cost nothing.” I drag him to his feet. “Now piss off.”

He spits the cake out and bolts through the door, I rinse my hands off and follow him out. He scurries across the restaurant. Humiliated. Fuming. His girlfriend asking him what’s wrong. Their confused playschool-age daughter in tow.

Was that me when I was younger? Is the girlfriend Mandy? The young girl Cassie?

I shudder at the thought, but reassure myself. It was a long time ago, and I've changed. A seven-year stretch in Strangeways’ll do that to you.

As soon as I slide back into the booth, Cassie’s onto me in a flash. “See, this is what I’m talking about.”

“Eh? I just went for a piss.”

Mandy shakes her head.

How the hell Cassie ended up smart is beyond me. She gets her looks from her mother and the balls from me. But I don’t know where the class or the brains came from.

In the end, I crumble. Can't fight against those guilt-trip eyes. “Fine. I’ll jack it in.”

Mandy always said I was a softie with her.

Cass picks up her burger. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Swear on my life?"

“What? Hold on now.”

“Swear on my life that you’ll give it all up. No more Mr Nasty."

“I’m not swearing on your life, Cass.”

“Swear on my life, or I quit uni.”

“You’re not gonna do that.”

“I mean it,” she says, staring me point blank in the eye.

Shit, she does mean it. You know why? Because she’s just like her old man. Stubborn as blood stains on a tennis shoe. And she knows I’m a man of my word.

I sit back and sigh. “Fine.”

“Say it, Dad.”

“Cassie, I will give it all up. I swear on your life."

“What will you give up?” Mandy says. “Be specific."

Cassie raises her eyebrows. c***s her head. Mandy the same.

I crumble again. “I give up the violence, the crime, the whole bloody lot. Just don’t you dare quit your studies.”

Cassie smiles. She slides her iPhone across the table. Pushes a big red button on the screen.

“You recorded it?” I ask.

“Now you can’t take it back,” she says.

I pick up my burger in my right hand. I keep my left hand under the table. Fingers crossed. A promise doesn’t count if you’ve got your fingers crossed. Everyone knows that.

So yeah, tonight I’m a reformed man. Father of the century. But tomorrow night, I do what I do best.