Page 13 of Fury
Indie looked around the table expectantly, and I watched our comrades shrug, not one looking like they disagreed.
“Aye,” a chorus of deep voices vibrated in the air.
“Speaking of funds, I might need to take some out of the pot for Ste’s funeral,” Indie added, the room descending into a charged silence. “There’s a new boss at the funeral home. She won’t honour our old agreements.”
“A woman dealing with club business?”
Barry the Blade and Big Red, the oldest surviving members of the club, exchanged glances.
“Yes,” Indie continued. “The owner’s daughter. Throwing her weight around her old man’s company. I get it. But she wants to charge us more and ensure a police presence at the funeral.”
Mutters broke out around the table, a sea of deep voices and the shaking of heads.
“Look,” I offered. “I just need a bit more time. Try another tactic.”
“And what’s that, then Fury?” Magnet asked and I could almost hear him rolling his eyes into the back of his skull.
“I’m going to frighten her off.”
“What, you’re going to show her your cock or something?” Magnet scoffed, the table erupting into a gaggle of chuckles.
“She’s stubborn and tough. She just needs running out of town. The only way I can see that happening is if we frighten her away. Make her think twice about why she is here up north.”
“You reckon it’ll work?” Indie asked.
I shrugged. “Worth a try.”
Because I had nowt else. She hadn’t fallen for my usual charm, or my height and bulk, my presence or even my looks. So, now I needed to put it all together differently. A woman in club business was unthinkable, however much we liked them in our beds. She needed to go.
Chapter Six
The office was desolate. The only ones here, me and the bodies of someone’s loved one in the freezer at the back of the building. Even with the thin paned windows, the night was quiet, nothing stirred. Not the moan of wind, or the sound of a vehicle, the bark of a dog. And not the scratch of the overgrown bushes just below the window looking out onto an equally overgrown quadrangle which had once been a small garden of remembrance.
My father’s interest in the businesses had declined as his health and age had. My older brothers only interested enough to take a wage every month and do nothing to keep the business running profitably. They hadn’t even noticed the discrepancies in the accounts. I stared at the screen of the computer and the online banking I’d finally got access to. The internet connection was nearly as dead as the bodies in the latter half of the building, and every click or move of the mouse seemed to take forever.
There were sums of money leaving the accounts all over the place. Small enough to be unnoticeable but large enough to cause a dent, especially as their frequency had been increasing. Transfers I could trace through the bank, but the cheques were harder. And so far, I hadn’t found a hint of a cheque book in this office, and I was sure Dave would have been paying everything by cheque or cash, as he seemed to be stuck in the dark ages.
Kicking the heels off my aching feet under the desk, I stood, padding across the thin carpet tiles to where the row of filing cabinets stood, each a sentry, side by side, watching me curse the old plastic cube of a computer. I’d been through these filing cabinets twice. But I couldn’t find much out of place. No sign of a cheque book, or a stash of cash, or anything that showed Dave had his fingers in the proverbial till. But it had to be someone in one of the offices, and this one had been losing the most money. With the number of funerals on the local crematorium’s records, it should have been turning over a tidy profit.
I pulled the first drawer out, wincing as the steel ground against the decaying plastic runner, squawking loudly in the quiet of the office. Thumbing through the alphabetised dividers, I moved straight to ‘K’. I’d already realised they weren’t filed under ‘N’ and seemed to be known in the office as ‘The Kings’, the shortened version of the motorbike club name supposedly giving them a superior feeling. But this here was my kingdom, and I wasn’t being dictated to by some long-haired yob in leather.
“Fuck,” I muttered out loud, the paper catching the back of my hand on something sharp in the cabinet, the injury stinging like I’d just cut myself on a Stanley knife.
I pulled my hand out, inspecting the wound, watching blood oozing to the surface of the skin, heat now mixing with the stinging sensation to create a burn. Fuck the Kings. I yanked the cardboard folder from the ‘K’ divider. The whole thing was rammed full. Thicker than every folder in there.
Wandering back to my desk, I slumped into the old, uncomfortable office chair. The stuffing had worn so thin in parts I could feel the metal frame pressing against the back of my thigh, and what had once been padded armrests were picked away to holes, yellow and green stuffing crumbling away at every touch. No wonder Dave wasn’t making any profits. There’s no way he could sit in this chair all day. It was giving me sciatica and a migraine.
I opened the folder, pulling out the handwritten documents. Notes and invoices. Adrian ‘Ade’ Carter died 1992. Alfie ‘Baratone’ Gray, died 1994. John ‘Boneman’ Gray, died 2005. Eddie ‘Eagleye’ Gray died 2006. Simon ‘Si’ Carter died 2013. Each sheet had another deceased Kings’ member listed, with details about their funeral and the breakdown of the invoice. The deaths went back years, and the funerals were reasonable, except anyone with the name Carter. They all seemed to warrant a bigger event. And every invoice only just covered the costs. The profit margins were minimal. Dave had been undercharging for years and years, despite the huge amount of business the Northern Kings seemed to bring us. And that meant there was something far deeper that I didn’t yet understand.
But I would. I’d understand these Kings, and why my father’s company was being shortchanged. Why I was having to sit here in an office that smelt of must and damp, in an ancient swivel chair instead of my top floor office looking out across central London.
The light flickered above my head, and for a half second it went off completely, engulfing me in darkness. Even the electrics here were old. And probably illegal as far as health and safety laws were concerned.
I moved through the paperwork. More names of dead motorcycle club members. It was amazing they had any left. The lights flickered again, not quite going off but casting shadows around the office. The hair on my arms prickled, a shiver racing down my spine. And now suddenly, despite being alone, I felt like I was being watched.
Turning round, I reached towards the window, pulling the cord at the side, the discoloured vertical blinds swooshing as I pulled them across the dark expanse of space at my back. And as I turned, I was sure I’d seen the tiniest of movements in the blackness of the overgrown courtyard. A shadow caught by the lights inside my office. I tugged at the other cord, snapping the blinds into the closed position and blocking out the night. For a moment, I felt safer now that I couldn’t be seen, and I couldn’t see what might be out there.
But I was still rattled, my heart drumming in my chest, consumed by an irrational fear, and every little creak and groan of the aging building seemed amplified in the silence. I listened for a while, trying to still the march of my heart and breathe slowly, willing my brain to think logically. I was tired. I’d worked for days in this barren place, with only dead bodies for company on a nighttime. It was time to go.