Page 39 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
Day of rest? Kelvin was born restless and he’d die that way. I followed him as he turned and retreated inside, where he dropped down onto a large sofa; I sat on its double, on the other side of the coffee table.
There was no point in stalling. “I want to talk about the business.”
“Do you now?” He leant back, his arms spread along the backrest, his legs flopping open. The pose managed to be somehow both relaxed and alert, confident bordering arrogant, and a display of status that was pure Kelvin.
A bland smile sat on his lips as he watched me, saying nothing. It was a trick, and so much a part of Kelvin I wondered if he was even aware of it any longer. I’d witnessed it so many times over the years, when he’d had need to ‘deal with’ people who’d transgressed some line or another. Controlled and dangerous, a calm before the storm, before he struck hard and fast, slicing through the unlucky bastard he had in his crosshairs before they had a bloody clue as to what was happening. The one difference was that, this time, it was me he was looking at.
I counted to three in my head, and added two more for good measure.
“We’re at a crossroads, with the business.” It wasn’t the first. I’d never questioned the direction the business had taken over the years because I never had a reason to, but I had one now. An image of Kit filled my head, happy and smiling up at me, his eyes soft and trusting as we’d lain in bed, sweat soaked and sated. The memory made my heart flip, but I shoved it away because every part of me needed to be focused on the here and now.
“A crossroads, you say? What do you mean by that, exactly?” His smile broadened, a cat toying with a mouse. Fuck it, I wasn’t going to dance around playing games.
“I’m not getting in any deeper. Back handers for bent coppers and local politicians. The drugs. The brothels and parties. Pushing to make deals with scum like Aksoy. All of it. We could start to pull back, Kel. We could go legit across the whole of the business. Haven’t we shown we’re savvy businessmen, haven’t we proved it? Aren’t you sick of always looking over your shoulder?”
He said nothing, using once again, consciously or not, the trick of silence. I’d watched as so many had begun to fluster, and babbled, filling the void, unaware they were condemning themselves until it was too late. I stared back at him, refusing to play the game.
“Alex,” he said on a sigh, his features softening. “Where’s all this come from? No.” He held his hand up, palm outwards. “Don’t tell me, because I already know. You’ll be volunteering to help sick and injured kittens next. But that crossroads you talk about, we got there years ago and made our choice about which path to take.” He leant forward. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, almost a purr, just as it had always been when he’d brought me down from panicky anxiety, making me take both a literal and figurative deep breathwhen we’d both been boys on the make, living off our wits and shit scared. Except, it had never been Kelvin who’d been scared, it had only ever been me.
“Everything we’ve done, every step we’ve taken, every decision we’ve made, we’ve done it for one reason only: to keep ourselves safe, to make ourselves untouchable. To not be the shit on somebody’s shoe. To not be a statistic, bleeding out in a back alley or slumped behind a pile of rubbish with a needle sticking in our veins.”
Everything he said was true, and I’d have been a fool to deny it. But?—
“Yes, we chose a path, but we don’t have to stay on it.” I jumped up, sweeping my arms around the room. “Haven’t we both made more money than we know what to do with? And we could carry on making it. The clubs and bars, that’s what we should be concentrating on. Christ, ensure the ‘hotels’ are really just that. We don’t need all the other stuff and the crap that goes with it. Not any more.”
Theother stuff. Selling sex and drugs. Being the pimps and drug pushers Kelvin said we were.
“Hmm. So, we give notice to our police and political contacts? Aren’t there laws that say we have to consult when undertaking such a radical restructuring? Are you suggesting we issue P45s, and pay some kind of redundancy?”
“Cut the smart talk,” I snapped.
“Why? Because somebody here has to be smart, babe, and it sure isn’t you.” He sprang up from the sofa, his movements crisp and sharp as he stepped towards me. “What do you think will happen if we go to Commander X, DCI Y, or Councillor Z, and tell them ‘sorry, but that nice little—or not so little—monthlydonation to your favourite charitywill no longer be forthcoming?’ I don’t think they’d be very happy, do you? They be down on us like a ton of bricks.”
“We’ve got insurance. Photos, recordings, all those records of payments showing names, how much, and dates. It’d be…” I searched for the term. “M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. They know what we could release. We could wreck lives and careers with the touch of a button.”
“We have got insurance, you’re right, but do you really think they’d all roll over and play nice? Some would, but not all. We operate on a basis of mutual trust. It’s a fine balance but it works, for them and for us. What do you think the Right Honourable MP for Shitsville would do? You know, the one who’s all cozy in bed—and I’m not sure I mean that as a figure of speech—with some high up in MI5? What do you think he and some of those other very well connected names would do if we threatened to upend our very successful, mutually advantageous arrangement? If they thought we’d expose them, they’d go after us with everything they’ve got. We’d end up inside before we could so much as scratch our arses.
“The system we have works because it’s in everybody’s interest. But it won’t be that if you start rocking the boat, making waves, or whatever fucking metaphor takes your fancy. And tell me this. How long do you really think you’d last as a guest of His Majesty’s, eh? You’d be looking over your shoulder for a completely different reason?—”
“Stop. Stop. Right. There.” I forced the words through hard clenched teeth, as much to hold down the sickness boiling up in my stomach, as my skin heated and a bead of sweat slimed its way down my back.
“Everything that happened before, it’d be nothing to what you’d face,” Kelvin said quietly, “and they’d make sure of it. Could you take that, Alex? You were never as tough as you liked to think. You’ve grown a shell because you’ve had to, but it’d shatter at the first hammer blow.”
“Then why have we got so called insurance if it’s worth shit?”
“I never said that. We could bring a lot of people down. But the ones who really matter? They’d find a way to crush us and throw us out for the rats to feed on. So we carry on doing what we’re doing, we keep everything in check and everybody gets what they want, and that includes us.”
He stepped towards the lacquered drinks cabinet but stopped when he heard my whispered words.
“You want to carry on living this life? Then buy me out. Let me walk away from it. We’ve got physical assets.”
The clubs, the bars, the hotels, the party house, the rental properties. Flats and houses, run down and bought for peanuts, dotted all over London, let out for sky high rents our tenants couldn’t always pay. But that had never mattered to us, because for every one we evicted, there were dozens waiting to take their place. We owned it all, lock, stock, and barrel. A buy out. It wasn’t what I’d come with in mind, but why not? As for the rest, all that insurance, I wanted none of it, not any more, because what I wanted was out of the only life I’d known for so long.
He turned around slowly. “Buy you out? Buy youout? You don’t get it, do you? And you know what, Alex? That makes me so fucking angry, but also disappointed.” He stepped towards me, the scent of his signature cologne drenching me. There had been times, so many over the years, when that dark forest aroma had meant strength and safety but now all it was doing was suffocating me.
“Why not?” But I knew why not as he stared at me as though he didn’t know me. And why should he, because in recent weeks sometimes I’d hardly known myself.
“Because ours is not a normal, straight down the linebusiness, Alex. We’re bent. We’re crooks.We. Are. Criminals.” He counted off on his fingers, like items on a list. “We have crooked officials of His Majesty’s government in our pockets. We push drugs in our clubs. We operate whorehouses, where we send boys off to hotel bedrooms to get well and truly fucked over.”
