Crooks - A London Gangsters Tale | COMPLETED

Chapter Seven

The whole thing was arse about face. Wayne tried to imagine it the other way around, and he couldn't. What if David had tried to get at one of Popov's sons? It wouldn't happen. It just wouldn't. Mikhail Popov was famously cautious, he took every conceivable measure to ensure that he and his family were protected at all times. And David, well... the recent events spoke for themselves, didn't they?

His dad was weak. It was a painful realisation, but an inescapable one. David Carter was weak, and Mikhail Popov was strong. Simple as that. And if Wayne wanted to make any changes to his own personal situation, he could no longer rely on David to sort things out. It was time to make his own way.

In spite of everything, Wayne couldn't bring himself to be angry at the Popovs. He knew they had arranged the incident, that they had crippled him and robbed him of his career. But they would never have done it if not for David. They had given fair warning, and it was all just part and parcel of the business for them. It was David who had made the conscious decision not to take it seriously. In Wayne's mind, it was David and David alone who was the agent of his present misfortune.

At long last, the depression he had been suffering from for weeks began to recede. He felt as though he were coming through the other side and was now able to channel that negative energy into righteous anger. He could focus his destruction outward instead of inward.

Of course, on the surface, things went back to the way they always had been. Wayne cowtowed to David in just about every respect. He answered fan mail and he started making media appearances again. It was now roughly three months since the fateful match, when Ronnie Vincent's boot brought an undignified end to Wayne's ambition. He was up on his feet again now, still walking with the aid of a metal cane, and still attending regular physical therapy sessions. But he was slowly getting back to the real world.

However, whenever he was interviewed by a pundit, or quizzed by a fan, he refused to answer the question: would he ever play again? He wanted to keep them guessing for a bit. He had an ace up his sleeve, and he was going to play it for all it was worth. There was nobody he could trust. Nobody. His father – his hero, his boss, his leader – was now his enemy. He had no girlfriend, no friends to speak of – save for his teammates, who had been conspicuously quiet lately. He was alone. But that gave him an inestimable advantage. It meant that he owed loyalty to nobody but himself.

"Hello, Mile End Media Support, Rochelle speaking?"

"Hiya Rochelle." Wayne spoke with self-conscious cheerfulness to match Rochelle's crisply professional telephone voice.

"Oh, Wayne! Lovely to hear from you. How are you feeling? On the mend, I hope?"

"Ah, you know, not too bad. Can't complain."

"Is it your dad you're after? He's been out of the office for a few days, actually. He's over at Silvertown, I think..."

This was music to Wayne's ears. Things would go a lot smoother with Dad out of the way. "No, no, it's you I want to talk to." He was sitting at home, in his kitchen, which had become the base of operations for his plan. He plotted things out meticulously, as though it were a heist or a military campaign. He knew exactly what he needed to do to ensure things went his way. He knew what to say and how to say it.

"In fact, I wanted to run something by you."

"Oh yes? And what's that?"

"A press conference. Could you set one up for me?"

There was a smile in her voice as she said: "You're going to have to give me a bit more info than that."

"It's an announcement I want to make. I want to... go public with something. Can you put it together?"