“She did it twice,” Shannon would say. “That’s the thing you’ve got to know about her. Two times over she made herself. I mean, like, literally out of nothing.
“She didn’t have rich parents or a good education or any of that stuff. All she had was, you know, her belief in herself. Her belief that she could do it.
“She grew up in Churchbeck, and let me tell you in case you didn’t know, Churchbeck is not Manchester. It’s not even Bury. It’s just one of those places where factory workers used to live in Dickens novels and shit. And Dickens isn’t hiring any more.”
That always got a laugh, and though Shannon herself didn’t actually get the joke – or know who Dickens was, for that matter – she was happy to take the credit. With the scene set, she would lean in close as though she was imparting great secrets. “Grace went to one of those massive comprehensives that they made by collapsing a whole lot of little schools all in together. She had a bad time of it, no doubt. She got beaten and bullied and bent all out of shape. I know you wouldn’t think it now, but she was the victim back then. Mostly because she was really weird-looking. She had a thing.”
If nobody asked the obvious question, Shannon would wave her hand across her face as though she was trying to mime something that was too hard to describe in words. The words of this legend might be Devlin’s but she added the stage dressing herself, and she was good at it. Sooner or later someone would play straight man for her. “What kind of thing?”
“I think they call it a facial cleft. But there’s lots of different kinds and she had one that was way out there. Crazy. Like, her lip and her nose were all folded back into her cheek, sort of in a pleat. She couldn’t even talk properly. They called her Frogface. And nobody would touch her or get too close to her in case they got the Frogface Curse.
“But she was really clever, even then. All the kids who were picking on her in the playground, she beat them all when it came to her grades and all that stuff. She came out with a fistful of A-stars, even though she was off school half the time having all this surgery done. They can’t fix a facial cleft all at once because the bones of your face don’t all grow at the same speed. So they’ve got to do it a bit at a time.
“And in the end they made her beautiful. She’s still got these little tiny scars – under her hair and along the line of her jaw – but you can only see them if you get in close and look really hard, and who’s gonna be up for that?”
Shannon tended to rush through this part of the story fairly quickly in case anyone asked her how she knew about Grace’s scars, or came up with questions about the surgery that she couldn’t answer. If they asked about the exam grades she just said airily that you could look that stuff up online.
“So now here she was with a new face and a new job, and she was on top of the world. She was working down Bury job centre. Setting up interviews for all the little snots who used to give her grief. She made them dance, from what I heard. Oh yes.
“Anyway, that was how she got into all the people-trafficking stuff. It was only what she doing already really, except with illegal immigrants. She was hiring them out for building sites or crop-picking or whatever and taking two-thirds of the pay-off for herself. Making money hand over fist.”
This was the cue for a dramatic pause. The audience knew the punchline, because here was Grace doing a twelve-stretch in the middle of nowhere. How are the mighty fallen. And risen again. But they didn’t know the precise mechanism, and in some ways this was the best part, so Shannon drew it out.
“It was Operation Gary that fucked her. What, you never heard of that? It was after all those cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay. They set up a special task force to stop people from doing what Grace was doing.
“But she might have got away with it if she hadn’t taken on a partner. She was never all that great with computers, and it was slowing her down. She needed someone who could run ads on the ‘Help to Work’ website and stuff like that. Match up supply and – what’s the other one? – demand, yeah, when she had a dozen illegals in the back of a van doing nothing.
“So she took on this nice young man. Stephen Menzies. He did all that stuff for her. Did some other stuff for her too, if you know what I mean. Scratched her back and oiled her crack.
“Only Menzies was a police grass. He was part of this Operation Gary, and he got all the dirt on her and then gave evidence against her when she was arrested. She got twelve years, with deferred parole. Plus they stripped out all her bank accounts and took her house off her and everything. Illegal enterprise, whatever they call it. They left her with the clothes she stood up in. Banged her up in here.
“I know what you’re thinking. It takes time to bounce back from something like that. And it does. It took Grace about a month. From the moment she came in here, she was looking around her and seeing how it all fitted together. All the rackets. The big operators – there were three or four of them back then – they thought she was nobody. First-timer and all that. They didn’t pay her any attention. Until she walked right up and took it away from them.
“It’s all about what you believe in, and what Grace believes in is Grace. And nobody else, not any more. She never forgets and she never forgives. Once she had it all sorted in here, she went back and dealt with a few bits of old business.”
This was Shannon’s favourite part, which was why she always saved it for last. “She hired these two blokes. Johnny Satchell, who used to be the bouncer at Electric nightclub, and this ex-squaddie, Peter something or other. A real head case, he was – scariest man you could ever meet. Grace paid for twelve hours of their time. Top dollar, but she said she wanted their best work.
“The clock started when they knocked on Stephen Menzies’ door. Saturday morning, eleven o’clock. She knew he’d be in, and he was. All by himself. And by God, she got her twelve hours’ worth.”
32
Dr Salazar had his audition with Grace sitting on one of the comfortable chairs in the privacy of her cell. It was a great deal more luxurious than his consulting room.
Devlin had warned him not to say a single word about their private arrangement regarding his pethidine habit, and Sally didn’t. In fact he barely opened his mouth at all: between fear and shame, he was an elective mute.
Grace seemed to be fine with that. Sally felt she mainly wanted to be listened to, not to listen. “This is a new venture for us,” she said, leaving the us undefined. “We’ve got total control of the market here in Goodall, so if we’re going to expand at all, we’ve got to move outwards into the medium-security blocks. You understand?”
Sally nodded.
“Now Mr Devlin thinks there might be a part for you in all this, doctor, and I value Mr Devlin’s opinions. But you haven’t always been in my corner. Two years ago you were making serious trouble for me, and I had to get serious with you in return. I’m sure you remember that. The thing is, it’s okay to try something like that once, when you don’t know any better. But I wouldn’t want you to try it again. I’d want reassurances. I won’t ask for promises, because promises don’t mean anything. I just want to hear you say that you’ve learned your lesson and you won’t do anything stupid.”
“I have,” Sally said. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
“And…?”
“And I won’t do anything stupid.” The words came out easily and brought no increased unease. For Salazar, just being here in this situation was the functional limit of degradation. The speed of light. If you hit the speed of light and accelerate, you can’t go any faster.