The Family Firm

Chapter 52

'Nah, don't you look at him,' said Freddie, running his tongue through one of the spaces in his teeth. 'He can't help you, can he!'

The gangster was laughing, but his right-hand man could tell it was tinged with a hint of delirium. Smartly, Lenny said nothing, knowing it would only end badly. While he had no room for pity, seeing Vinny trussed up like a Christmas turkey struck a chord somewhere deep inside of him. Perhaps the pang was for Junior, who over the years had become something of a nephew figure to old Len, or maybe because Vinny was really only just a kid, twenty-five or so years old.

Unfortunately, in their world twenty-five was as it had been in the old days, a man, and young Vinny had made a very adult decision. While most young men that age were going to university, those in their profession had been on the take since they were only thirteen or fourteen years old. Lenny himself had worked for Archy since he was sixteen years old down on the dockland doing a black market racket selling Chinese knock-offs. Now you were expected to grow up that quickly—even over the course of one generation, he saw kids doing a lot worse than he had ever done at that age. It was becoming a violent world now, people were shooting people over the most insignificant things like it was some kind of Hollywood gangster film, and unfortunately all too often innocent people like Niamh Evans paid the price.

He and the others in the room were pulled from their thoughts at a bit of commotion near the entrance of the warehouse, and suddenly Frankie burst in through the doors in a light pink trouser suit and a small string of pearls around her neck, looking as well-put-together as she did furious.

'Where is he?' she shouted, her voice heavy as if she had just been crying, but it held nothing but pure rage. 'I wanna see him! I wanna see the bastard what tried to kill me son.'

Freddie turned casually just as his sister swept through the room like a storm in her matching pink suede Jimmy Choo pumps. She hadn't looked this good in a long time, longer than he could really count, and Fred could have laughed at the fact it took something like this to make her put the pieces of her former self back together again if the idea wasn't so heart-breaking.

Fred took a seat on the table with the tools, watching Frankie steadily as she stopped directly ahead of Vinny and looked down at him, the malice in her gaze so palpable he was shocked it didn't bore through the poor cunt's skin.

'I just wanted to get a good look at you,' Frankie went on, nodding firmly a few times. 'I just wanted to get a good look at the bastard that shot my little boy. But you . . . You're not a little boy, are you. You're a monster. Yeah? You're a monster.'

Freddie let her have her words before sniffing and pinching at his nose a few times. 'All right, babe,' he said after a short while, standing and taking her by the shoulders. 'Sling your hook, I've gotta get started if we wanna get anywhere tonight, eh?'

Frankie pulled herself roughly from his grasp, though her eyes never left Vinny, who sat tied-up ahead of her with tears running down his face. 'Oh, I'm not going anywhere, Freddie. I'm staying right here, and I'm not leaving until he's dead.'

Freddie watched his sister a few moments before shrugging. There would be no reasoning with her, and while normally he wouldn't have wanted her to see something so gruesome as what he had planned for young Vinny Smith, he had the feeling she needed to see it in order to properly grieve. And so, when she stepped back and folded her arms stubbornly across her bust, he simply rounded the murderer and crouched behind him, raising the secateurs he held.

Lenny took this as his cue to step ahead of Vinny and place his lacquered shoe against the top of his thigh, as if to prevent him from tipping the chair over should he move. And while Fred managed to force one of Vinny's fingers between the secateurs' blades, the cunt was jostling about violently, panic filling him as he realised what exactly was going on.