Maura's Game

by Martina Cole

  ‘I can’t let it go. He tried to make it look like we were out for a full-scale war and we couldn’t understand it. We routed everyone in an attempt to find out what the fuck was going on. Then Roy’s wife was shot twice on her own doorstep . . .’

  Tommy’s dark eyes widened.

  ‘You are fucking joking?’

  ‘I wish I was. It’s been a waking nightmare. I will fill you in on all the details when you feel able to take them in. Now have another drink.’

  ‘Is he dead yet?’

  Tommy Rifkind’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

  Maura nodded.

  ‘Good as. Garry and Lee snatched him from his flat. You realise they’ll have to make an example of him?’

  Tommy Rifkind put his head into his hands and cried like a baby.

  ‘Not Garry, Maura . . .’

  She looked at him and felt a flicker of sympathy for a man brought so low that he was crying in front of her. She hardened her heart and her voice.

  ‘He insisted, Tommy. We have to send out an important message to others, don’t we? Tommy B’s associates need to know who and what they are dealing with. We’ll get to them in due course.’

  Joss poured them all another drink and Maura was glad of the burn as the alcohol hit the back of her throat.

  ‘There was no negotiating then?’

  Maura shook her head once more.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Would you negotiate if it was you?’

  ‘This will kill his mother.’

  Maura shrugged once more.

  ‘Shit happens. Eh, Joss?’

  He nodded dumbly. Fortunately he was known to be a man of few words. If he’d opened his mouth now he’d have started bawling like Tommy.

  Gina came into the room and, seeing her husband crying, went to him. She pulled him from the chair and led him out of the room, nodding in a friendly way to Maura as she passed her.

  Maura looked at Joss and said, ‘I told her the score on the phone. I always got on with Gina. I knew Tommy would need someone once he heard the news.’

  ‘Was the lad in with Vic Joliff then?’

  Joss’s voice was heavy and harsh from disuse.

  Maura nodded.

  ‘Ambitious little bastard he was,’ Joss said. ‘Born in him, I suppose.’

  ‘Who’s that, Joss? Tommy B?’

  He nodded. ‘A word to the wise, Miss Ryan. Before you finish off Joliff, find out who else was in with him. He wouldn’t have done anything this big on his own. He’s a heavy, not a mastermind.’

  ‘Thanks, Joss, but I already sussed that out for myself. Vic Joliff’s safely in prison hospital at the moment with a slit throat. He’s going nowhere till we get to him.’

  Tommy B was crying, sobbing in fact, deep racking sobs that shook his whole body.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake – I’ll ask you again, shall I? Who else is in this? You know a lot of my family’s business – how? Want something to prick your memory, do you?’

  Garry’s voice bounced off the walls of the Portakabin in Tommy Rifkind’s breaker’s yard. Almost casually he passed an electric saw over the man’s trussed legs.

  At first Tommy B couldn’t speak; his eyes were glazed with shock. Garry kicked him then and his mouth strained in a silent scream.

  ‘I – I told you – all I know,’ he moaned. ‘It was Joliff who gave me my orders. It had to be him running things. Now, please – finish it!’

  His bloodshot eyes met Lee’s imploringly. Behind Garry’s back he nodded then stepped around his brother holding a heavy torch. He swung back his arm and crashed it into the side of Tommy B’s skull. The tortured man slipped thankfully into unconsciousness.

  Garry was narked.

  ‘Hold up, Lee. Keep your hair on. You shouldn’t have jumped the gun.’

  Lee turned on his brother.

  ‘That’s fucking rich, that is, coming from the biggest nutter this side of the Atlantic. What’s the matter? Want me to keep him awake while you cut off his arms and legs? He’s told us all he knows. He said it was him who done Sandra Joliff too, though fuck knows why. No one takes that much punishment when they can buy themselves out of it.’

  Garry was offended and it showed.

  ‘Telling me my business, are ya? Do you want a smack in the mouth or what? You’ve had the right hump since we left London. All the way up the M1 it was like sitting with a big kid.’ He started doing a childish voice. ‘ ‘‘How long till we get there?’’ I nearly started singing ‘‘Ten Green fucking Bottles’’ to keep you amused!’

  Lee laughed despite himself.

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Come on, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Sheila left me.’

  Garry shrugged. ‘Well, you can’t blame her. All this must have given her one up. I know it did me. Imagine how she must be feeling, especially in the club and all. ’Course she would be worried. She’ll be back by the end of the week.’

  Garry saw the hope on his brother’s face and hugged him.

  ‘Relax, Lee, everything is going to be OK. You and her are like the fucking Brady Bunch. Now help me get him on the table so we can do what we said and go home.’

  ‘Do we have to cut his arms and legs off?’

  Garry looked at Lee as if he was mad.

  ‘Of course not, but it will give people something to talk about, won’t it? And let’s face it, everyone will know it was me and you who done it so we enhance our lunatic rating and stop any more fucking part-timers trying to take over our patch. Good business practice.’

  Lee grinned, happier now that Garry had put his mind at rest about Sheila.

  ‘Well, if you put it like that!’

  ‘See, Bruv, you know it makes sense. Now pass me that electric saw.’

  Maura and Joss had to wait half an hour before Tommy Rifkind came back into the room. It was obvious he was still devastated but he had regained his equilibrium. Maura slowly filled him in on what had happened.

  She started with the deaths of Lana Smith and Sandra Joliff, watching the changing expressions on his face as he realised just what his son had been party to.

  ‘Joliff was attacked in Belmarsh, not an easy feat in itself and we still don’t know who was behind that, but we are assuming he stepped on a few other toes in the course of his scheming. He’s still alive, by all accounts. We will be paying him a visit in the future.’

  ‘My boy was used by Joliff then?’

  Maura shrugged.

  ‘Or Joliff was used by someone and brought Tommy B into it with him. I don’t know yet. We are gradually piecing things together. It was the car bomb at my home that really caused the hag with me brothers, and of course with me. I will not be threatened by anyone, and whatever Terry was to everyone else he was my partner in more ways than one.’

  She finished her drink and waited while Joss poured her another. It would give them time to digest this piece of logic.

  ‘I am sorry about this, Tommy, really. But you understand we had no choice in the matter? Especially after someone slapped me mother as well. I mean, no one is going to swallow that, are they?’

  Tommy shook his head and sighed.

  ‘Stupid little fucker he was. Wouldn’t be told. Thought he knew it all. It’s a different world now, Maura. The youngsters are a law unto themselves. He had his fingers in so many pies . . . lap dancing clubs, prostitution, you name it.’

  ‘How about drugs? That is Joliff’s preferred game.’

  Tommy nodded.

  ‘We’re all into that now, Maura, be honest. It’s the biggest money-spinner of them all.’

  ‘But I understand your boy was into crack? That’s not a legitimate business as far as I’m concerned.’

  Even Joss was amazed at Maura Ryan’s double standards.

  ‘It’s still cocaine, Maura, whatever way you dress it up.’

  ‘Well, I leave that to the younger members of the family. Personally I hate it all. Never dealt in skag or crack.’

  ‘W
hat about the new one then? This crank or whatever it’s called.’ Joss seemed genuinely interested in her reply.

  Maura smiled.

  ‘A bit of puff is about my mark these days, that’s practically respectable now.’ Her mobile rang and she answered it. She looked at Tommy Rifkind.

  ‘I am sorry, Tommy, it’s over.’

  He nodded and Maura was amazed by the way he took the news of his own child’s death. Still, if the alternative was the continued ministrations of Garry and his saw she supposed any parent would look relieved.

  Sarah and Roy kept vigil together.

  At 3.28 on the morning of the second day Janine breathed her last. A blood clot found its way to her heart and she was dead in seconds.

  Roy sat holding her hand for hours afterwards; it was only when Carla came in with Joey that he finally stopped. He held his daughter then as if he would never let her go, sobs shaking his whole body.

  ‘She’s gone, Carla, and no one else was here with her. Neither of her kids was with her.’

  Carla didn’t say anything, she just held her father. As she looked at her mother’s body she was ashamed to find that she felt nothing for her. Janine had ignored her own daughter nearly all her life and now she was gone. It seemed only her father was weighed down with the burden of her death. He had aged within hours, and the haunted look in his eyes would stay with her all her life.

  She was saying a prayer with him when a dapper Benny breezed into the room.

  Roy’s voice was ravaged with hurt and guilt.

  ‘She’s gone, Ben, your mum is gone.’

  ‘Look at your mother, child, and remember all your life that you helped to kill her.’ Sarah’s voice was cold as she spoke to her grandson.

  ‘You know what they say, don’t you, Gran? ‘‘What’s bred in the blood comes out in the bone’’. Remember that next time you get the urge to preach to me,’ he taunted her.

  He looked his mother over briefly and left the room. Carla and Joey followed in his wake.

  Sarah looked at Roy sadly.

  ‘You’ve lost him to Maura like I lost all of you to her years ago. You’ll bury him, Roy, you mark my words. You will bury him, and as God is my witness I hope you have to do it sooner rather than later. He is dangerous, my Michael all over again. But whereas Michael had a heart inside his body, that child has nothing but hatred.’

  Roy didn’t answer her because he knew she spoke the truth.

  Meanwhile Tommy B’s mother was identifying her son’s head in a mortuary at Liverpool General Hospital.

  As she screamed at the fates and cursed whoever had done this to her son she was thankfully unaware that the two men responsible were back in the smoke where for them it was business as usual.

  As far as Garry and Lee were concerned, Tommy B was forgotten already.

  But his father wouldn’t forget. And neither would Vic Joliff.

  The prison medics had been too quick to write him off. Joliff was stronger and more cunning, even after losing five pints of blood, than anyone had realised. With his head held on by stitches, he still managed to throttle the dozy PO standing guard by his bed and force him to unlock the shackles. He put the unconscious screw under the sheet and hid himself in a hamper of dirty laundry, timing his escape for the early-morning collection. He later overwhelmed the driver, and the van was found abandoned on the Kent coast.

  After that he seemed to vanish into thin air. There were no further sightings; no body ever turned up.

  The Ryans were beside themselves. There were too many loose ends altogether about this business. One of the most annoying was that Joliff was rumoured to have become close to one of their own police friendlies. It seemed Chief Inspector Billings had been stupid enough to accept sweeteners from the Ryans’ rival too. Maura couldn’t afford to leave this unexplored – or unpunished. She gave Benny carte blanche to find out what he could.

  Chief Inspector Roland Billings was eating dinner with his wife and daughters when there was a resounding knock at the front door. He loved the house, a double-fronted detached in the best part of Brentwood. He assumed the visitor was something to do with him, it usually was in the evening. He was not expecting Benny Ryan and his Indian sidekick, though. He heard Ryan speaking before he saw him.

  ‘Is Roly in, my dear?’

  He used a mock-posh accent but the hint of menace in it was not lost on either Roland Billings or his wife Dolores. As he rose from his chair Billings’ heart was already halfway into his mouth.

  Benny walked into the room as if he owned it. Looking around him at the three young girls sitting there with mouths agape, he said heartily, ‘Can’t see these three on the bash, can you, Abul? Not with them braces on their teeth anyway. Give them a few years though, eh, Mr Billings? They’ll cook up lovely then. Just how you like them, young and impressionable. Those are the ones you like, ain’t they?’

  Dolores was already shepherding the girls from the room and Abul smiled widely at her as he helped.

  ‘Keep them upstairs and stay there yourself, love. Do not make any phone calls until we are gone or there will be real trouble, OK? We just want to talk for the moment.’

  Dolores was forty-six years old and well-preserved. She was aware that her husband kept a lot of cash in the house and like many a woman before her had spent it without much thought as to how it was obtained. Now she had an inkling how he’d arrived by the money and she was scared.

  Abul said quietly, ‘This ain’t a game, love. Your old man is in deep shit, and if his superiors get wind of this visit he will be in even bigger shit. Now take the girls and keep quiet no matter what. OK?’

  She nodded and hastened to get them away from the two terrifying intruders.

  Roland Billings sat back at his dining table with a feeling of extreme sickness in his gut.

  ‘What the hell do you think you are doing in my home?’

  His voice sounded far stronger than he felt.

  Benny laughed. ‘But I thought we was mates, Roland. Me and you and me Aunt Maura. You remember Maura, the one who gives you all that money regular as clockwork?’

  He looked around him admiringly. There were two long-case clocks in the dining room alone. There was a large London clock in the hall and numerous carriage clocks scattered around on tables and the mantelpiece. Billings was obviously a serious collector.

  ‘She would be pleased to see what you spent it on and all. Likes a bit of the old clock, does Maura. Like yourself, see.’

  ‘Get out of my fucking home and take the monkey with you!’

  Even Benny was shocked at the hatred in the other man’s voice.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re racist, Mr Billings?’

  His voice was incredulous. He looked at Abul and they both laughed as his mate said scathingly, ‘He is definitely filth, eh, Ben?’

  Benny was laughing loudly again and Billings was amazed that his own racism would make a criminal like Benny Ryan look down even further on him than he already did because he was a policeman.

  ‘I want you both out of here now.’ His voice was harsh but the nervous edge in it was there for anyone to hear.

  ‘But we’re your mates, Roland. Me and old Abul here. We pay your wages, my old son, so your daughters can go to a good school and you can get your cock sucked by little girls round the Cross.’

  ‘You are not my friends . . .’

  ‘Oh, hark at him, Abul. Well, Roland, my old granny has a saying: ‘‘Show me the company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are’’. So what does that make you then?’

  Billings stood up.

  ‘Get out of my home, Ryan.’

  Benny’s voice was dangerously quiet as he said, ‘Don’t fucking strong it, Mr Billings, because I am really going to hurt you anyway. We know, you see. We know everything now thanks to a visit we made to Liverpool. Vic Joliff was using the Scallies to stir up trouble for us. Now he’s on the lam and we think he’s had some official help, if you get my drift.’

 
They watched the policeman sit back down, the fight drained from him.

  ‘Bad, ain’t it, Mr Billings, how people can die in their beds of gunshot wounds and other self-inflicted troubles?’

  The threat was far from lost on the man before them and they knew it.

  ‘You was up Joliff’s arse, mate. Took his money and ours. You two-faced piece of shit cunt! My mother was shot on her own doorstep, did you know that? And the worst of it all was she had nothing to do with the family firm. I didn’t even like her as it happens but that ain’t the fucking point, is it? How would you like it if I shot your wife and daughters, eh? Fuck you right off, wouldn’t it?’

  Billings stared up at him without blinking. The threats were mounting with every sentence and the terror inside him was building.

  ‘I mean, imagine anyone thinking they could get one over on the Ryans. You wouldn’t ever have thought that yourself, would you, Mr Billings? A sensible man like you.’

  Billings was shaking his head so fast he felt faint.

  ‘Good man. But I’m sure you realise that some hands have got to be slapped and we thought we’d put you top of the shit list, seeing as how you and Vic were always so pally.’

  Benny turned up his own hands in a ‘nothing else I can do’ gesture and Abul started to laugh loudly, which made Billings more frightened than ever. He knew that whatever happened to him, they would enjoy doing it.

  ‘Look,’ he faltered, ‘not here . . . not in my home . . .’

  Benny was grinning now, and it was a terrifying expression.

  ‘Oh, it’s fucking all right to bring guns and trouble to my family’s homes but not yours? Is that what you think?’

  As he spoke he smashed the dinner plates on the floor. The sound echoed through the house and in the distance Benny could hear the crying of the woman and the girls upstairs.

  Picking up a fork from the debris, he stuck it forcibly into the back of the policeman’s hand, momentarily pinning him to the table top. Then, yanking the man up by his shirtfront, he dragged him protesting through to the kitchen. There was a big pot of water boiling on the Aga. It had spaghetti inside and was obviously the next course of their dinner.