Leviticus Bryan lived just outside Southport, north of Liverpool on the coast where there was all the drizzle and grey of Manchester, along with the added bonus of a bitter sea breeze. Getting to the approximate area had been easy enough but that was when the navigation device decided it fancied a day out at the seaside and stopped cooperating.

It took Jessica another half an hour to eventually find the right house. Each property was set back from the road with large, winding driveways. Most had large, imposing walls or hedges along the front, with huge gates to put off any potential trespassers. Or coppers.

Despite numbers being hard to spot, Jessica saw Leviticus’s straight away because of the large ‘LB’ letters which were part of the metalwork of the gate. His property was perhaps the most imposing on the street. Although each had a large plot of land, his seemed to be wider than anyone’s and the thick brick walls were certainly taller.

Jessica parked on the road and got out, staring up at the height of the wall, thinking that even if someone gave her a piggyback she would struggle to reach the top. Security lights were placed intermittently along it and it was clear you would have to really want to get in if you were going to go over the wall.

As she peered through the gate, Jessica could barely see the house itself. The driveway arched up, then looped around to the right out of sight. The metal of the gate was painted black, with nothing to place your feet on horizontally if you were to attempt climbing it. There was a wide lush green lawn on either side of the drive and a red car was just about visible far off towards the house.

Jessica walked to the speaker box to the side of the gates and pressed the buzzer, shuddering as the sound instantly made her flash back to standing outside Nicholas’s club trying to get in. After a few further attempts with no one answering, she returned to her car, reversing until she was parked directly in front of the gates before turning the engine off.

She had spent the morning reading up on Leviticus and knew a ridiculous amount about him. On paper, it seemed as if the man she was waiting for had an awful lot in common with Nicholas. They had both been brought up in poverty and then made something of themselves through less than legitimate methods. While Nicholas had gone out of his way to offer a genuine front for his enterprise, Leviticus had been less careful. He had a conviction for possession of a dangerous weapon and another for grievous bodily harm. He’d spent time in prison for both offences but had apparently been out of trouble since being released four years ago.

Whether that meant he was crime-free was a completely different matter.

Nicholas’s business had been exclusively based around the Manchester area, while Leviticus operated out of Liverpool. If the two setups running out of roughly the same area hadn’t caused enough tension between the two powerful, wealthy and egotistical men, Leviticus then took things one step further by starting to open places in Manchester as well. On the surface, the launching of a rival pub wouldn’t necessarily cause such an escalation of hostilities but Jessica figured most of the businesses were a front in one way or another for laundering money and selling drugs. That is what would have undoubtedly caused the ‘war’ Eleanor had described.

It probably didn’t help that Leviticus was black and surrounded himself with other people of the same race. Having seen Nicholas at close quarters, Jessica doubted he was the type to openly welcome most people he didn’t know, let alone someone who looked different to him.

Jessica had still been at school herself at that time but knew from the officers senior to her that policing had changed immeasurably since those days. Although most stories about corruption were apocryphal, there had undoubtedly been certain officers who’d turned a blind eye to such behaviour, hoping one side would wipe the other out and make life a lot easier for everyone.

Whether or not he was a changed man, Leviticus had shut down his businesses in Manchester after going to prison. There was little sign of him doing much in Liverpool either. Certainly from the official records, Leviticus had retired from obvious criminality.

In theory, Jessica should have approached the local police if she was crossing borders to interview someone but that would have meant escalating things through Cole and probably the superintendent. Because she wanted to keep as much of Eleanor’s story to herself as she could, Jessica figured she would take the disciplinary if it came. It wouldn’t have been the first time she was in trouble.

Jessica sat in her car, waiting. She played with her phone, skimming through the names and thinking of the people she had lost contact with over the years. Although she had few very close friends, there was a wealth of people she had met through her job, or through others who simply drifted in and out of her life. She thought about Eleanor and Kayleigh and the way they had once been so close, experiencing all sorts of adversity together, and yet, somehow, they still grew apart.

As she was lost in her thoughts, a car horn blared loudly, making Jessica jump. She turned to her right where there was a large silver car angled across the road with Leviticus Bryan in the driver’s seat gesticulating angrily at her.

Jessica gave him a cheery wave as she stepped out of her vehicle and walked towards his door. His window was humming down as she approached and he rolled his eyes as he leant out towards her. His voice was deep and powerful as he uttered a single word: ‘Bizzies’.

‘How did you guess?’ Jessica asked.

‘You walk like one.’

The man’s accent was broad Scouse, although there was an element that sounded as if he had tried to teach himself to sound more posh at some point.

Jessica crouched by his window so they were at the same eye level. ‘My mum would be so pissed off at hearing that. She used to make me walk in a straight line because I was pigeon-toed as a kid.’

She was surprised when Leviticus broke into a grin. ‘You’re funny,’ he said.

‘That’s not what they said when I got bottled off at the Comedy Store.’

He smiled wider, eyes twinkling in the dwindling sunlight. ‘What do you want, Bizzie girl?’

‘Just a quick chinwag, I’ll probably have a brew if there’s one on offer too.’

‘What makes you think I’ll invite you in?’

Jessica only needed two words to make the smile leave his face: ‘Nicholas Long.’

18

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ Jessica said, climbing out of her car and walking along the driveway towards the front of Leviticus’s house. The top of the drive had a tarmac circle for cars to turn around and there were already three different vehicles parked along the edge, each large and expensive-looking.

Leviticus was waiting by the door as Jessica approached and she turned to point at the other cars. ‘Are these all yours?’

‘I paid for them.’

‘Still got a few quid then?’

He ignored the insinuation as he unlocked the front door. Jessica stepped into a vast circular hallway, with a cold marble-like white floor and huge stone pillars on either side of a wide spiral staircase. Jessica could not stop herself from looking impressed, something which Leviticus noted with a grin.

As she glanced away from the interior towards him, Jessica noticed how grand Leviticus looked. He was well-built but it was muscle, not fat, his broad chest and strong shoulders padding out a perfectly fitted black pinstripe suit. His shoes gleamed in the artificial light, matched by the chunky gold rings on his fingers. Jessica didn’t feel the same sense of trepidation she had experienced when meeting Nicholas. There was a sinister aura of aggression and danger that surrounded the club owner but Leviticus’s cropped, slightly curly, silver hair made him seem grand-fatherly.